Price per m2

[Mike_scotland]

Hello,

Now i know that prices per m2 can vary madly likely from 1000m2 - 3000m2 depending on spec and how hands on you are yourself etc but here is a question whats included in the estimate of per m2? does it include the foundations? does it include architect fees? does it include drainage or site services to site? or is it just the build itself.

Anyone got any thoughts on this? it might change up and down the country but im based in Scotland and want to get together a rough m2 cost moving forward but i need to know what the normal is to included in this.

Thanks
 

Mike

[bassanclan]

I would say it doesn't include the land and associated buying costs, but does include everything else.

 

Grey areas are when buying serviced plots and those with planning permission already in place.

 

The problem comes when you have to spend excessively on one area early on e.g to get services on site, to get planning, to get out the ground etc. Then the temptation is always to ignore those costs and carry on building a £2000 per sqm house even if it's already resulting in a house that's too expensive for the area.

[Conor]

For our estimate for our mortgage we included everything from groundworks to floors and kitchen. Doesn't include landscaping, driveway, garage (future item), demolition of existing house, and utility costs (being done before first drawdown, and only electric).

 

Location has a huge impact on cost... I've been costing up concrete, windows, site works etc and they are all substantially cheaper than what the UK industry tell me they should be. E.g. concrete from £60/m³ instead of the typical £80/m³. You might find same story in N Scotland.

 

As regards accurate costs... Best getting a template and then going out and getting ballpark quotes from individual suppliers. Don't bother with a QS.

[Jeremy Harris]

Same as above, I included everything except the plot, but as our plot was discounted because of the need for extensive ground works to level it, and those ground works were the difference between what we paid for the plot and what it was worth, I didn't include them.  I did include the cost of services, drainage, foundations etc in the total build cost, along with surveyors fees, planning and building control costs (we didn't have any architects fees, but if we had I'd have included them).

[nod]

The 850 per mtr I quoted included all fees and connections But

we didn’t have any borrowing 

Architects and SE where kept to a minimum 2500  

We were also  dry lucky with Conections 

800 840 1250 

But we overspent by 4000 on difficult Groundworks 

I included Three German bathrooms and Kitchen

But at the time had no idea of cost for landscaping and 400 mtrs of driveway paving 

However the vat refund will cover what we have since spend With enough over for a couple of holidays 

[Gone West]

I've decided it's pointless trying to use cost/m2 as a comparison. I can make my costs/m2 vary significantly just by how I measure the area, whether I include tools I bought to do specific jobs, what paperwork I include, whether I include demolition. Do you include renting or buying a caravan while building. What standard of finish, will it be upgraded at a later date, so be done cheaply initially. How many storeys to the building. Too many variables to be useful.

[SteamyTea]

Is footprint, in metres squared, really the best gauge the building industry can come up with.

Would £/total wall length be better.

Then exclude kitchen and bathrooms and plot.

Then adjust for number of levels.

 

[Mike_scotland]

Nod - £2500 for a architect and engineer? 

How did you manage that?  i have been quoted 6k for drawings and planning, did your plot have planning already?

[MikeSharp01]

We included demolition of existing building and we are working on an all up cost -  including land of about 1600m2 and ex land ( with derilict old house) of about 1000m2 We have 196m2 of build including the garden room. We had services but had to pay for new gas connection- which we probably won't need and to divert the electric supply. We are doing about 80% of the work ourselves. 

[MikeSharp01]

Perhaps I should add that the Architects bill will be about 7% of the cost total build cost (ex land) They took us through design all the way through planning and as far as building control we are on hourly rate now but so far have used 0 hours!

[nod]

5 minutes ago, Mike_scotland said:

Nod - £2500 for a architect and engineer? 

How did you manage that?  i have been quoted 6k for drawings and planning, did your plot have planning already?

The Architect I’d dealt with before 

and told him We couldn’t afford to go over 2000 His able assistant did most of the work 

There was your standard county Counsul submission fees on top which we paid directly

He only had one site visit and no involvement after materials had been passed 

Not a bad earner

 

The SE has done quite a bit for me over the years and is the local authority guy to go to 

350 for foundations and 150 for lintels steels and a couple of alterations 

Planning had insisted on peculation and ground tests 

He said your across from a sand pit quarry No point  I will speak to planning One phone call and that was that

 

we didn’t have any rental costs

But if we had I wouldn’t have included in the build cost 

Same with tools bought or hired

I have most things

But I did include the scaf hire

and two months for a diesel.cement mixer 

a roller dumper two excavators 

Though If I’d purchased these I would have knocked the sale price off my calcs  

[nod]

28 minutes ago, MikeSharp01 said:

We included demolition of existing building and we are working on an all up cost -  including land of about 1600m2 and ex land ( with derilict old house) of about 1000m2 We have 196m2 of build including the garden room. We had services but had to pay for new gas connection- which we probably won't need and to divert the electric supply. We are doing about 80% of the work ourselves. 

Ah 

we haven’t included the cost of the plot Just build cost and services 

 

[nod]

If we where to include best money spent I would say local authority BC £850  Similar to private

The difference being unlimited visits Call before 10am for same day Twice in one day with foundations and drainage

Fantastic value for money   

[MikeSharp01]

Our plot was not expensive well under 150k including on costs. I do tend to agree with @PeterStarck that working it out this way is misleading but then most approaches are a bit wonky. VFM is very hard to work out as it is mostly a perception thing controlled by where you stand - literally, so I won't tile our roof and walls because I have a fear of heights so the roofer VFM is going to be high almost no matter what it costs if you get my drift. Also in our case the relative cost of the Architects is good VFM as neither of us are great with aesthetic challenges and we wanted a stand out design.

[Redoctober]

It might be worth your while sending your plans off to an online estimator - for the sake of £150 or so, they provide you with a detailed breakdown of likely costs based on your spec. If the budget needs to be trimmed, then it allows you to see where possible savings could be made thereafter. 

[LA3222]

I am of the opinion that any spend associated with your self  build either directly or indirectly should be factored into any £/m2 calculations.  Be it tools you buy, rent you pay, fees you pay - all of it.  The way I see it is, would you have spent that money if you weren't building a house? If the answer is no then it is a cost arising out of and attributable to the self build.

 

I can't help but feel that people tend to massage the numbers in these sorts of threads, maybe it's because self builders want to convince themselves they have spent less than they have.

 

Why is the plot cost routinely omitted from these figures? It's clearly a cost arising out of choosing to self build.  It is the easiest and commonest way to massage the figures to make them look more favourable.  Even the magazines routinely seperate plot out from total build cost.

 

I am including everything, I expect to break even at best on final market value but I'm ok with that. 

[SteamyTea]

12 minutes ago, LA3222 said:

am including everything

Part of the question was

3 hours ago, Mike_scotland said:

or is it just the build itself.

My view is that building is just that. Foundation and services, walls, roofs, windows, doors, heating, wiring. Basically a finished shell.

The rest is decoration. 

Some people could spend the price of my house on a kitchen, bathroom and garage.

Edited August 25, 2019 by SteamyTea

[LA3222]

27 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

The rest is decoration. 

And therin lies the rub.  The 'standard' of build will vary from build to build which is why when £/m2 is referred to it is usually in the context of £2000/m2 + for top spec & contracted out

£1000/m2 - is where people have done it all themselves.

 

So the 'decoration' you refer to is covered  by spec/build method.  What we are talking about are which costs should be included in this figure.  My opinion is that anything you spend which would not otherwise have been spent should be included.  To exclude costs is not indicative of the true amount spent by the self builder.

 

You can then caveat that cost with "we went top spec and did nothing" or "we went budget and did everything". 

[LA3222]

I would live to see a thread where members were honest about the true cost of their spend with everything included - I suspect the £/m2 may be very different.

[SteamyTea]

1 minute ago, LA3222 said:

honest about the true cost of their spend with everything included

Buyer's Regret is a well studied psychological condition.

I take great pleasure when I see a small child cry, say when their ice cream or chips are taken by a seagull.

Even funnier when it happens to grown ups.

[newhome]

7 minutes ago, LA3222 said:

I would live to see a thread where members were honest about the true cost of their spend with everything included - I suspect the £/m2 may be very different.

 

?? I don't really know what you are getting at here. I could tell you down to the last penny what I spent as I tracked everything obsessively. There are always going to be some differences in the way people calculate things and what someone perceives as worth spending extra money on that will add to the £/m2. My plot came with the foundations already laid within the plot price so am I supposed to try to unpick the cost of the foundations to add that to the m2 price? 

 

[Ferdinand]

10 minutes ago, LA3222 said:

I would live to see a thread where members were honest about the true cost of their spend with everything included - I suspect the £/m2 may be very different.

 

Possibly not quite the terminology intended ?. It is about understanding different ways of modelling similar things.

 

However people have tried, and here is a recent one with an SS to which many variations of build cost are included by quite a few people.

 

May be useful to build on this.

 

 

Edited August 25, 2019 by Ferdinand

[Jeremy Harris]

The problem with including the cost of things like tools is that some may start off with pretty much all the tools they need, others may end up buying most of the tools they use during the build. 

 

I had pretty much everything I needed in terms of tools, but did buy a few extras, mainly additional Makita battery packs, plus a new circular saw to replace an old one that burned out when cutting the last of our bamboo flooring.  Not sure about including the whole cost of that, though, as the saw that burned out was more than 15 years old, so could have gone at any time, and the replacement saw has had a fair bit of use since the build has been finished, as have the Makita batteries, which now get used mainly to run the lawn mower, hedge trimmer and strimmer.

 

One big tool purchase that was dedicated to the build was a scaffold tower, but I sold that on to our plasterer after we'd finished with it, and I included the difference between the purchase and sale price in our build cost.  Like @newhome, I kept a spreadsheet with every cost detailed, and updated this at the end of each week, so the costs I've recorded are pretty accurate.  There may be the odd fiver here and there that didn't get written down, but I doubt that it changed the overall price per m² to any significant degree.  Our build did cost around £100 or so per m² more we'd budgeted for, plus our budget was reduced at the last minute due to unforeseen circumstances (Santander refusing the mortgage they had agreed and promised when I tried to draw down on it), so we ended building for not much less than the market value of the house, although house prices here have carried on rising, so now the house looks to be better value than it did when almost complete.

[nod]

1 hour ago, LA3222 said:

I am of the opinion that any spend associated with your self  build either directly or indirectly should be factored into any £/m2 calculations.  Be it tools you buy, rent you pay, fees you pay - all of it.  The way I see it is, would you have spent that money if you weren't building a house? If the answer is no then it is a cost arising out of and attributable to the self build.

 

I can't help but feel that people tend to massage the numbers in these sorts of threads, maybe it's because self builders want to convince themselves they have spent less than they have.

 

Why is the plot cost routinely omitted from these figures? It's clearly a cost arising out of choosing to self build.  It is the easiest and commonest way to massage the figures to make them look more favourable.  Even the magazines routinely seperate plot out from total build cost.

 

I am including everything, I expect to break even at best on final market value but I'm ok with that. 

Quick answer to that a plot in south wales my cost under a 100

Same plot where I am is over 200

Se 400 London who knows

Most who come on here know exactly how much the plot will cost But don’t know how much the bricks and mirror and associated costs 

 

It would be very misleading for someone who has been gifted a plot To give an overall figure without making this clear 

 

[newhome]

4 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

One big tool purchase that was dedicated to the build was a scaffold tower, but I sold that on to our plasterer after we'd finished with it, and I included the difference between the purchase and sale price in our build cost. 

 

We bought a scaffold tower too and had intended to keep it simply because it meant that any maintenance jobs could be DIYed later on. I was never going to use it myself however so I gave it to my neighbour. Whether that should be a cost against the house or not is debatable as it saved us much more than it cost during the build.