Cost per m2 with minimal tradesmen

[deuce22]

Hi.

 

I have been reading through a lot of posts on here regarding costings and I'm curious to know what is a realistic per m2 cost for a new build when 70-80% of the work will be completed by either myself or subcontractors that I know.

 

I've read a few posts stating, that they would like to get it done for £1000 and they are doing most of the work. What amount of work does that mean? If the range is between £1200-£1500 using contractors it doesn't seem that much less taking on the work yourself. A family member has recently completed a 300m2 property and he has told me that it cost £500 per m2 to complete, including a detached garage, drive and landscaping.

 

I've been involved in a new build once before, but wasn't in charge, so I don't know the finished costs. I need to get a better idea as this will determine the size of the property that I'm designing.

 

Thanks in advance.

[ProDave]

We paid a builder to do the foundations, and build and erect the frame.  Since then I have done everything including the roof tiling, exterior cladding, insulation, plasterboard, wiring, plumbing, internal joinery.  The only thing I got somebody in for was the external rendering and internal plastering.

 

I should just scrape in under £1000 per square metre.

[newhome]

Depends what standards you are building to and the choice of fittings etc. If you choose to fit everything as cheaply as possible and build to minimum insulation standards etc then the costs will be lower,  but most people don’t want the cheapest of everything even if they choose budget items in some areas. I think there are economies of scale too, ie a 300 m2 house doesn’t cost twice as much as a 150 m2 one. 

Edited May 30, 2018 by newhome

[deuce22]

ProDave.

 

That's almost identical to what I'll be doing. I will be doing all the groundwork and constructing a stick build on site myself, so there's a bit of a saving there. I'll carcass the plumbing and electric and then get in the tradesmen to connect up and commission. I have friends or family that cover every trade, so whoever I use the costs will be on a family/friend rate. I'm speaking with a builder who clad his house onto 100mm fibreboard, so apart from the footings there were no costs for block - brickwork or render. It'd be handy to do the same thing, but I'm not sure whether a 100% cladded property would look right.

 

newhome.

 

I'm looking to build it at a good standard. I'm not planning to use anything that's top of the range, but I also won't be shopping in home bargains.

 

 

Thanks both for your input.

[newhome]

There are a lot of costs that don’t actually go into the fabric of the house, eg planning permission, building warrant, connection of services, warranty, insurance, scaffold and plant hire, architect and structural engineer fees. Those can add up to quite a significant amount before you even lay one brick. 

[deuce22]

What I'm trying to do is separate the construction from the other things you've mentioned. I'm not adding those amounts into the m2 cost.

[AliG]

1 hour ago, newhome said:

Depends what standards you are building to and the choice of fittings etc. If you choose to fit everything as cheaply as possible and build to minimum insulation standards etc then the costs will be lower,  but most people don’t want the cheapest of everything even if they choose budget items in some areas. I think there are economies of scale too, ie a 300 m2 house doesn’t cost twice as much as a 150 m2 one. 

 

Sadly not my experience!

 

There are some fixed costs like utilities, but generally tradesmen like tilers and bricks change per square metre. They tend to have plenty of work so the price doesn't fall very much for a big job.

 

I would guess £800-1000 per square metre doing a lot of work yourself and depending on spec.

 

As has been said, there is a lot of inconsistency in what people include to calculate these figures. Do you include architects fees, structural engineer, flashy kitchen etc? It seems from what I read on here self building is generally more expensive than you would think.

 

I am probably coming in at around £1900 per square metre including everything. Costs of things such as landscaping soon mount up. Do people include these in the build costs? It's about 4% of my costs.

 

Other house in my street which appears to be a much cheaper timber frame build apparently came in at £2100/metre but that is just a figure I have heard. IT doesn't have all the stone work etc that has added to our costs.

Edited May 30, 2018 by AliG

[newhome]

Ah well I think most people would include everything apart from the plot in the per m2 price. My build including those things came in at 760 m2 including a detached garage that I didn’t include in the square meterage. Mine started in 2009 however so a while ago. 

[newhome]

5 minutes ago, AliG said:

They tend to have plenty of work so the price doesn't fall very much for a big job.

 

Yes I would agree with that statement at the present time however when we started our build in 2009 the housing market had just collapsed and builders were trying to get every job they could, so prices were competitive. The state of the housing market can thus influence costs too. 

[AliG]

I wish I had the cash to buy a site and build then. I came close to buying a plot that a bankrupt developer owned.

 

It has a block of flats  on it now.

Edited May 30, 2018 by AliG

[daiking]

3 minutes ago, newhome said:

 

Yes I would agree with that statement at the present time however when we started our build in 2009 the housing market had just collapsed and builders were trying to get every job they could, so prices were competitive. The state of the housing market can thus influence costs too. 

 

I hope those times happen again and those c**** are begging me to clean my gutters for a fiver.

 

#notbitter

[AliG]

Lol, harsh.

 

My view at work has always been that there are only a few times you are in a position with leverage and able to maximise your earnings. Someone unexpectedly leaves, you get  a better offer etc. You have to take advantage of these situations as you may not get the chance again. After all they'd get rid of you at the drop of a hat if they couldn't afford to pay you. As long as you are being fair and reasonable about it, at the end of the day we work to earn money so you may as well try and earn as much as possible.

[newhome]

7 minutes ago, AliG said:

I wish I had the cash to buy a site and build then. I came close to buying a plot that a bankrupt developer owned.

 

It has a block of flats  on it now.

 

Not quite the same but we bought the plot here from a small developer who had put the foundations in, couldn’t sell the house he had built next door so sold the plot to us. He later went bankrupt I understand. Had we known we may have pushed for a better price on the plot but the OH was so desperate to buy it we overpaid a little I believe. 

[ProDave]

1 hour ago, deuce22 said:

ProDave.

 

That's almost identical to what I'll be doing. I will be doing all the groundwork and constructing a stick build on site myself, so there's a bit of a saving there. I'll carcass the plumbing and electric and then get in the tradesmen to connect up and commission. I have friends or family that cover every trade, so whoever I use the costs will be on a family/friend rate. I'm speaking with a builder who clad his house onto 100mm fibreboard, so apart from the footings there were no costs for block - brickwork or render. It'd be handy to do the same thing, but I'm not sure whether a 100% cladded property would look right.

 

newhome.

 

I'm looking to build it at a good standard. I'm not planning to use anything that's top of the range, but I also won't be shopping in home bargains.

 

 

Thanks both for your input.

Wood fibre can take render, in this case the Baumit.com version. Gives the traditional Highland look without any blockwork

 

 

My wife and I fitted all the wood fibre ourselves then got a man to render it.

[SteamyTea]

29 minutes ago, ProDave said:

My wife and I fitted all the wood fibre ourselves then got a man to render it.

What thickness woodfibre did you use?

And has any of the render gone mouldy.  There are some places down here that are now green and brown.

[PeterW]

Currently on target to deliver a 168sqm 3 bed/2 bath with room in roof at around £122k so £720/m2 and that isn't including a VAT reclaim as its classed as a conversion. Pays to shop around and pick trades carefully.

[Crofter]

There definitely is an economy of scale factor. A simple consideration of volume: surface area tells you that smaller houses need more materials per m2 than big houses. In addition there are many fixed costs such as fees, services, and to some extent fixtures and fittings (you still only need one oven, one front door,etc)

 

My build was at the extreme end of the DIY scale. I designed and built every aspect of it, but had a digger driver at the start to create the access (major work involving rock breaking and building up ground), and I also had a plasterer, an electrician, and a plumber who signed off the UVC. I had no causal labor or any other site workers, so apart from those three guys it was all materials costs only.

 

It has worked out at just shy of £1000/m2 including all fees and services. My site was not the cheapest to develop, thanks to that access issue and an expensive sewerage treatment system that gobbled up nearly 20% of my budget. The spec was reasonably high including 3G windows.

If I had doubled the size of the house,I think my cost/m2 would have been slashed. I just couldn't afford to spend any more, and doing all the work myself has already taken me three years.

 

 

 

[newhome]

8 hours ago, PeterW said:

Currently on target to deliver a 168sqm 3 bed/2 bath with room in roof at around £122k so £720/m2 and that isn't including a VAT reclaim as its classed as a conversion. Pays to shop around and pick trades carefully.

 

Including all fees? Is it a new build in all but name or was there a structure there to start with? 100% paid labour? 

[Ferdinand]

12 hours ago, deuce22 said:

Hi.

 

I have been reading through a lot of posts on here regarding costings and I'm curious to know what is a realistic per m2 cost for a new build when 70-80% of the work will be completed by either myself or subcontractors that I know.

 

I've read a few posts stating, that they would like to get it done for £1000 and they are doing most of the work. What amount of work does that mean? If the range is between £1200-£1500 using contractors it doesn't seem that much less taking on the work yourself. A family member has recently completed a 300m2 property and he has told me that it cost £500 per m2 to complete, including a detached garage, drive and landscaping.

 

I've been involved in a new build once before, but wasn't in charge, so I don't know the finished costs. I need to get a better idea as this will determine the size of the property that I'm designing.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Such a comparison is basically meaningless until you know whether the figure is apples or oranges, and what is included. But each £100 per sqm on a 150k budget is £10000.

 

eg Is the plot included, planning fees, curtains, kitchen gadgets, the wall mounted TV, the garden features that are developed 2-5 years later?

 

Remarkable results are possible, but quite often several chunks get left out as these things are naturally nebulous.

 

I am working towards building a rental bungalow or two, and the figure in my head is 100k-120k including plot and finishing to a good lettable standard with all paid labour for a 100sqm 3 bed chalet-bungalow. Possible? No idea yet.

 

F

 

Edited May 31, 2018 by Ferdinand

[ToughButterCup]

10 hours ago, deuce22 said:

[..] I'm not adding those amounts into the m2 cost.

 

And there's the trap. 

There are so many ways of accounting for (kidding oneself about) the true cost of a self-build.  Everyone has their own idea of what constitutes a cost, and what doesn't. And yet everyone wants to know. Of all the people who visit us, everyone, and I mean everyone always wants to talk about cost.

 

The only fair, consistent and publicly available models of costing a build are given by the the RICS, or SPONS. Those models don't work very well for self build (they weren't designed for that). I stopped listing mine (on BH) because of some consistently tactless comment. So people tend to keep schtum. Just in case they might be seen as having  overpaid I suspect. 

 

You will get a close a figure as possible asking on BH. But local variations always apply.

 

The  thing is, once you are hooked into a new-build, there's no going back. No reserve parachute. You just dig in and get the  job done. 

[SteamyTea]

My view is that everything built should be included except fittings i.e. kitchen, bathroom, internal doors.

Or to look at it the other way, not the ground the house sits on, but all the professional fees, licence fees, unexpected works, utilities.

 

Basically the only things that are not in the calculation are the things that can vary wildly in price for the same utility value.

 

So basically cost it out on what you want except the vanity items.

[Ian]

49 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

I am working towards building a rental bungalow or two, and the figure in my head is 100k-120k including plot and finishing to a good lettable standard with all paid labour for a 100sqm 3 bed chalet-bungalow. Possible? No idea yet.

 

@Ferdinand

My own build was similar to what you've described. It's a timber frame, cedar weatherboarded 2 bed bungalow that we use as a holiday home. It's 71 sq.m internal size on a large 1.5 acre steeply sloping plot with awkward access. 

My wife and I both work full time so the only work we did ourselves was the painting & decorating + I did the design work, all drawings and building regs myself and some project management during the build as we didn't use a main contractor. The timber frame contractor gave us a shell minus windows and the rest was separate trades.

The build time for the house itself start to finish took 8 months but the whole process took 5 years as PP took 2 years inc an appeal and the garden was done after the main build at weekends.

Costs:

The cost for the 71 sq.m building was £96k including all fixtures and finishes to a mid/high standard, a new sewage treatment plant and all new foul & surface water drains. (I could have easily reduced the cost by £10k by choosing cheaper finishes.) £96k for 71 sq.m is £1,350 sq.m

 

I didn't have to pay for the land but extra to the above costs were: the cost for all the external works was £5k inc 150 linear metres of perimeter fencing and 3 gates

 

Other costs were £7k and included: the fee for a Planning Consultant (well worth his fee btw!); PP and Building Regs application fees; air pressure test,;SAP calcs; demolition of an abandoned building that was on the site.

 

So overall cost for the 71 sq.m build was £108k which is £1,521 sq.m

 

Edited May 31, 2018 by Ian

[PeterW]

1 hour ago, newhome said:

 

Including all fees? Is it a new build in all but name or was there a structure there to start with? 100% paid labour? 

 

Plot bought with a double garage on it for conversion but that cost more to strip and retain than it would have done to demolish and rebuild...! 

 

No architects fees as the plot had PP so just BRegs and Warranty costs. 

 

Room in roof certainly saves money as it reduces wall build and utilises all the “lost” space. 

 

Probably about £10k of free labour in there but otherwise all paid.  

[newhome]

40 minutes ago, PeterW said:

Probably about £10k of free labour in there but otherwise all paid.  

 

That’s pretty impressive then. Maybe little willy needs a pay rise! 

 

 

[Stones]

@deuce22  one thing to perhaps be wary of when using family and friends to do work for you, is that there is a cost.  Perhaps not up front, but at some point those family members and friends will want the favour repaid.  If you're happy working on that basis and having to repay time to someone else long after your project is finished, fine, but one way or another you will pay for your build.

 

As to what m2 cost is achievable, as others have said, there are so many factors that can influence the final figure.  Our first and second self builds were very simple and commercial, i.e. the spec was a bit better than a major developer but not hugely, and consequently, the saving against market value was quite significant, but as we progressed down the self build route (6 in total) we have chosen to spend that saving to achieve a much higher standard of finish, fittings, fixtures and a design that is optimised for the way we want to live, rather than a developers bottom line.