Hi Everyone,
Recent forum lurker and now in the initial stages of planning a build in Newtownabbey area. Hoping to build T shaped house on family land - approx 0.5 acres and flat surrounded by trees.
Footprint approx.140 m2 and 220 m2 overall. Father in law has started digging the trenches, laying ducting for utilities and putting down pipes for drainage so hoping to save money there and on future landscaping work.
From reading the forum posters work off specific build costs calculated to an overall price and I do intend to create a spreadsheet for this, but as we're complete beginners a ballpark figure would be helpful at this point. We've been told the average build is about £140-150/sq ft so we're hoping costs may have come down a bit by the end of next year which is realistically the earliest we'd be starting. If not we'll have to look at reducing the size.
As neither of us have any previous building experience we're going to go with a contractor. We'd LIKE to keep the build cost under 300k with a mortgage through Ecology but not sure if this figure is realistic given the increase in material and labour costs.
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated and I look forward to picking everyone's brains in the future!