Cost per sqm - what doesn’t it include

[ToughButterCup]

21 hours ago, Kelvin said:

...

we are doing this with our own money rather than borrowing. Psychologically it feels different! 

 

You are right.  It is the most useful stimulus to creative thinking.  Almost as useful a stimulus to thought as not having enough. As in ...

 

I overheard a very canny mum saying to her 7 (?) year old at the till (Aldi)

"Ok, you can have that , but I haven't got enough money for those sweets as well, so you choose what to put back on the shelf. Then we can afford your sweets."

Wish I could remember what the nipper put back on the shelf. 

[BotusBuild]

9 minutes ago, ToughButterCup said:

Wish I could remember what the nipper put back on the shelf. 

I saw something similar - the kid picked up mum's bottle of wine and took it away.

 

Fair play to the mother - she smiled, paid and left.

[Redoctober]

21 hours ago, Kelvin said:

Thanks all. 
 

While it doesn’t make a huge difference in reality we are doing this with our own money rather than borrowing. Psychologically it feels different! 

 

I can understand and relate to this comment. In a way, it also helps one come to terms with the fact that perhaps your end "costs" are or will not be leading you into a "massive" negative equity situation. 

But even my own comment has to be considered on an individual basis. Are you building a house which will be up for sale, within a short term period, or is it a much longer term / forever home? In which case any "precieved" overspend will hopefully be addressed by market forces over the coming years.

 

Just for completeness, we approached our plot purchase and subsequent build, with a "pot of available money" and tried to keep within that, regardless of what we were achieving per square metre. Thankfully, I was able to come out the other side with enough loose change to buy a bottle of bubbly at the end of it all ?

 

Our £ per Sm figure documented in my blog was for others to get a "feeling" of what could be achieved etc. It mattered very little to us as the main focus was on the "remaining" cash available!!

[BotusBuild]

I'm recording everything (bar the initial land purchase - £190k), including the power tools I am having to replace along the way, or invest in to help me build the house.

 

FYI - total cost so far is £82,000 - we have foundations in, and first floor concrete pour into Nudura tomorrow (yes I have checked with the concrete pouring company in relation to Storm Barra)

[Kelvin]

No I’ll be leaving this house feet first so hopefully we’ll be there for a long time so it reduces the financial risk over time. We’ll be mortgage free and no other debts  so that’s another incentive to stay tight on the costs. And similarly I have an idea of the amount of money I’d like to have left over. I get that some people put in every penny either through necessity or because they want the absolute best their money will buy.
 

This is all part of a significant life change for us. I quit a well paid but very stressful job and we are moving 400 miles. My focus is building this house then after that I’ll try and find another job. 

[Adrian Walker]

On 06/12/2021 at 08:03, Kelvin said:

I was browsing the forum the other day and one member referenced his costs as £2100/sqm for the build and £2800 including all the professional fees etc. Up until reading that I’d assumed that when  the cost per sqm is quoted by people (anf websites) it included all of the costs associated with the build. I now realise that might not be the case. In the example above it’s £700/sqm for all of that additional cost on top of the build. Applying that to our build suggests I am out by about 50% I realise every house is different and there are some costs that might not apply such as architects fees if you’ve not used one and that can be a big chunk of money. 
 

Is £700/sqm typical for all the other costs on top of the pure build costs? It seems very high to me. 

 

 

My take on the £/sqm is that it not a linear relationship and the sqm area is not defined.  Is it the building footprint, useable space, or something else.  It is often used by architects to gage a "ballpark' figure from a client.  Bearing in mind that very few architects have actually build a house, I think it's a crazy parameter.  If you are asking someone to design or build a house for you, tell them the total budget, or the amount that you have after other costs have been taken deducted, eg. land and solicitors fees. £/sqm does help anyone IMHO.

[Mr Punter]

24 minutes ago, Adrian Walker said:

Is it the building footprint, useable space, or something else. 

 

Normally it is the Gross Internal Area - measured from the inside of the outside walls.  Internal walls and staircases are counted in this.  I find £/m2 useful both for build cost budgeting and for sale and purchase prices.

 

I would not take the word of an architect when it comes to construction costs unless they have been in charge of a number of very similar schemes.

[LnP]

On 06/12/2021 at 11:08, Bitpipe said:

 

What was very useful, and something of a reality check, was (post PP approval) getting a QS to itemise the build elements and do a cost plan.

 

That sounds like good advice.

What information do you need to provide to a QS for them to do the cost plan?

Would it be better to get the QS cost plan before you go for PP, otherwise if you have to downsize to meet the budget, you might have to resubmit?

[Bitpipe]

I just used a per m2 estimate going into planning and to guide the architect on gross floor area, scale etc. 

 

The QS plan should be able to initially work off your planning drawings and make assumptions on cost of structure (assuming you know what you want here) and the first and second fix which is pretty generic. If you give them detailed BR drawings then they will be more accurate but this assumes you've decided on construction method etc.

 

We ended up with a 25 odd page spreadsheet, one page for each stage (e.g. preliminaries, ground works, structure, roofing, windows, etc etc..) and we were then able to use this as baseline for supplier / contractor quotes. Was also great to be able to give a contractor a fairly accurate quantity for things like plastering and flooring as the QS calculated all those measurements from the drawings.

 

As we got quotes, we tweaked the spreadsheet and most things were cheaper, a few more expensive. Made it easier to decide if we had budget to push the boat out on fancier stairs etc.

 

[CC45]

We started nearly 7 years ago - I've been recording every cost including what we are spending on the soft & hard landscaping, boundary fences, etc I'm hoping we will be between 1,000 & 1,200.  Stuff has got very expensive in the last two years - we would be no where near that if we were building now.  I've got 6 spare 8x4 x 140mm celotex sheets that were left over from 5 years ago - fantastic return, wish I had more left over!  I will report back what we finish at once I put the VAT claim in..... hopefully this summer.