Are these costs realistic for a 500m2 house

[Haylingbilly]

I think you will find that whilst there are areas you can make savings there are a lot of areas that you simply can't make any savings on and these constitute a good 50%. of the overall build costs. Things like plasterboard and plastering - there is surprisingly little variance in this - you can shop around as much as you like but the price will be the same, scaffolding, muck away, blocks, insulation (you can over pay), concrete, screed, timber, aggregates to name some but there are countless. You need to be on top of all of these but my point is that there is relatively little that you can do to meaningfully impact an awful lot of the costs of the build and they are fixed by site specific and your design. Slopping sites are notoriously expensive to build on and you haven't mentioned your ground conditions which will have a big impact too. I would think £2500 psqm is realistic and if you try too hard for £2000 you will make false economies which will show through in the completed build.

[jack]

10 minutes ago, Andy brown said:

I have been looking for land to do a development project but can't see any with a profit margin higher than 10%.

 

Agreed.

 

I stopped contributing to the thread when it was suggested that developer margins of 25% net are "pretty standard".

[Dave Jones]

1 hour ago, jack said:

 

Agreed.

 

I stopped contributing to the thread when it was suggested that developer margins of 25% net are "pretty standard".

 

25% is too low to be realistic.

[Russell griffiths]

@Kelvin A lot of little things massively up the cost of kitchens. My other half wanted a shadow gap all the way around the island. I was rather taken aback by the amount this added!  

 

Ive just had this priced, but instead of a black aluminium trim I had it priced up in black walnut. !!!!

We decided against it 🤣🤣

[saveasteading]

1 hour ago, Andy brown said:

whilst there are areas you can make savings..

Indeed. As a designer and contractor for decades, there was always the 'buyers' search for 5% off materials. Welcome of course.

It is much more productive though to avoid waste. This can be in not throwing ends away, but mostly is in efficient design.

 

Save 5% on the cost of 10m3 of concrete and that is £50. Buy 1m3 less through design and site control and that is £100. Have both.

Can you do that throughout the whole project and save 15%?  Yes but you need to contribute a lot of time and effort and have designers and contractors of similar mind.

And 25% saving by DIY. 

 

In business we could usually  save our clients 35% off the competitors' proposals, but that was mostly design changes but to the same standards. You have to know your subject backwards, so if anything allow 10% more for risk than assume savings.

[Kelvin]

17 hours ago, Russell griffiths said:

@Kelvin A lot of little things massively up the cost of kitchens. My other half wanted a shadow gap all the way around the island. I was rather taken aback by the amount this added!  

 

Ive just had this priced, but instead of a black aluminium trim I had it priced up in black walnut. !!!!

We decided against it 🤣🤣

Yep. I thought it was a typo at first. 😂 In fact the kitchen has cost us much more then we planned. Consequently we’ve compromised a bit on some of the finishing materials which has brought the kitchen cost back to our original budget. 

[miike]

Work has started now - timber frame deposit has been paid and site has been cleared. Excavation was supposed to start this week but has been pushed back to next week now due to waking up to a couple inches of snow covering the site, which was unexpected. 

 

Electricity and Gas connections have been paid for and were under £1500 together. Waiting on the water connection quote but spoke with them today and they said they expect it to be sub £500 as there's a pipe running along the site boundary. I'd budgeted £9k for connections so that was a nice start. I will update on costs as I go along for anyone interested. 10 year warranty with self build zone is £5.5k - waiting on a protek quote to see if it'll be cheaper. I also found that a local fibre optic company is installing 1GBS full fibre along the road next month so I've asked them to include this site in the work (current max is ~50mbs in the area). 

 

Question for people who chose a name for their house address, how did you decide what to pick? I was originally going to call it Redwood House due to a redwood tree on the site but unfortunately had to remove it due to it being rotten internally. Other suggestions I've had are Onyx House and Maple House. 

 

[Ralph]

16 minutes ago, miike said:

Question for people who chose a name for their house address, how did you decide what to pick? I was originally going to call it Redwood House due to a redwood tree on the site but unfortunately had to remove it due to it being rotten internally. Other suggestions I've had are Onyx House and Maple House. 

We found this really tricky and went round and round. We must have had a dozen different ones. Some based on the history of the area or old gaelic names. Some on the geography or things like trees.

 

Eventually it came down to it being a black barn style house and we have a fox that visits, Black Fox Barn. Makes about as much sense as anything else and is easy to spell for people.

[saveasteading]

When you are talking about the project, what do you call it?

[Kelvin]

Already ahead. Good start. 
 

Our field actually has a name. Hill of St Fink so that’s been the project name but too much of a mouthful for the house name. The burn through our plot is called Craigie Burn and there’s a sandstone cliff above the burn called Craigie Den which is on our land so that was our first choice but there’s already a house called that apparently. We are going to build a seating area beneath the cliff by the burn which we’ll call Craigie Den. 
 

We’re building a traditional Longhouse so it’s called The Longhouse, Hill of St Fink. 

Edited March 9, 2023 by Kelvin

[saveasteading]

Wandering slightly off subject....I really dislike how developers name their estates after what they have destroyed.

The Orchard etc.

[markc]

13 minutes ago, saveasteading said:

Wandering slightly off subject....I really dislike how developers name their estates after what they have destroyed.

The Orchard etc.

100% agree, we were talking about this a few days ago.

[miike]

Build Update: 

 

For anyone curious how costs have been stacking up so far, we are getting close to a shell. All the hard stuff has now been completed (~100 muck away loads, leveling out the sloping site, foundations, basement, steel beams etc.). The semi-submerged basement has been completed and we're building the brickwork for the upper floors now. 

 

I changed from TF as their engineer wanted to use a huge amount of steel to support the frame so it ended up being more cost effective to continue with masonry. 3G windows have been ordered and should be here early November. I've changed the cladding from render to a long format Scandinavian brick that I really love (google 'the burnt timber pavilion' to see an example of it). 

 

My original estimate was £544k to bring it to a shell, I'm currently on track for £590k, with the main increase coming from additional steel beams and the fancy brick. 

 

This leaves me with £200k for the internals. I've been pretty active the past few months in sourcing bargains for this stage and I've done pretty well - I've been managing to source materials/items at massive discounts which leaves the majority of the budget for labour. I've already bought a kitchen for the house for £4.5k which was a used designer one with gaggenau appliances, but the owner just needed it gone from their Chelsea townhouse ASAP so sold it for peanuts. Bit early to buy it but it was the perfect size and couldn't pass up at that price. 

 

[Kelvin]

Good stuff. Any pictures? 
 

Bargain kitchen. Well done. Our ovens and hob were dearer 😂 

 

Does the £590k include the windows so it’s to weathertight? We were £850/m² to get to weathertight including all insulation and airtight layer, also 3G windows and 3G rooflights. Adding in all the roofing and cladding we are at £1287/m². That includes all fees. 
 

Is the 200k to complete the fit out to finish? 
 

 

[miike]

15 minutes ago, Kelvin said:

Good stuff. Any pictures? 
 

Bargain kitchen. Well done. Our ovens and hob were dearer 😂 

 

Does the £590k include the windows so it’s to weathertight? We were £850/m² to get to weathertight including all insulation and airtight layer, also 3G windows and 3G rooflights. Adding in all the roofing and cladding we are at £1287/m². That includes all fees. 
 

Is the 200k to complete the fit out to finish? 
 

 

 

That does include the windows, so I'm at £1,161 m2 to watertight. I definitely feel that the build industry has cooled down a lot recently, it is much easier to find people with availability and negotiate discounts on materials than a year ago. 

 

The 200k would be to finish but based on prices I've recently managed to secure for a number of different things (tiles, bathrooms, flooring), I'm feeling reasonably good about it. 

[bgmill]

That's really good going for such a modern house with that much glass.

 

We're going to be at about £1200/m2 to weathertight (including roof but not insulation), and that's with no muck away, easy groundworks and a much simpler design than yours.

[GK22]

Hi Miike

 

That's interesting. Can you post some pictures. 

 

Thanks

[GK22]

On 04/09/2023 at 12:37, miike said:

 

That does include the windows, so I'm at £1,161 m2 to watertight. I definitely feel that the build industry has cooled down a lot recently, it is much easier to find people with availability and negotiate discounts on materials than a year ago. 

 

The 200k would be to finish but based on prices I've recently managed to secure for a number of different things (tiles, bathrooms, flooring), I'm feeling reasonably good about it. 

I am looking at approx 2400-2500 per m2 to finish... that's if no more surprises!

200k to finish a build your size would be phenomenal.

Edited April 19 by GK22
spell