Building Your New Home: Why Buying Land & Hiring An Architect Shouldn't Be Your First Steps
A couple walks into my office, smiling ear to ear and carrying their freshly printed plans from the Architect for their new home.
“Hello! We are here for our 11:00 appointment!”
“Excellent! Come in and tell me about your project. I see you have plans drawn up, can we take a look at them?”
We unroll the drawings and I see a beautifully designed home that has everything they want. Then I notice the Architecture firm on the info bar and immediately know from past experience that there will be a lot of pricey details.
“Okay, so tell me about your budget. Did the Architect give you any pricing parameters?”
“Well, we told him we wanted to be under or at $1 million. He said he designed it around $150 per square foot.”
“Well, based on this design, this is easily a $250 or $300/SF design for a 4,000 square foot home. Did he think he was designing on a house-only budget or an ‘all in’ budget?"
They're not sure.
"I want to be honest with you - right now you would have difficulty building this house for under budget. But maybe we can work through the drawings and value engineer some more cost effective options. Sound good? Ok, tell me more about the land.”
They are a bit silent right now, and I have to ask, “What’s wrong?”
“Well, we closed on a lot on the river. It’s beautiful! There are beautiful big oaks on it and it’s amazing, but we paid $600,000 for it. So we figured we might be a bit over budget; but the Architect thought that by bidding it out we could probably beat the $150/SF number, putting us closer to our $1M budget.”
“Okay, well we can talk about the overall budget in a bit, but I don’t see how you can build this home for any less than $200/SF. Let’s pull up the land online and take a look.
Wow, there are a lot of beautiful oaks on the property! Definitely some big ones and at least a few that will have to be taken out for the home - "
“Oh this isn’t what it looks like now! We have been out there over the weekends cutting down the smaller stuff to clear it out ourselves. Do you think that will save us some money on clearing costs?”
I am speechless and heartbroken for this couple.
“Have you ever heard of the County Tree Mitigation Fund?”
“No.”
“It's a law in place to protect and monetize the cutting down of larger protected species for new developments and houses. They charge $75-125/inch depending on the size and species in order to cut it down. There are what's called ‘credit trees’ that offset those costs if you don’t cut them down. These are smaller trees (2”-11.25” caliper)…”
It began to sink in that they had cut down all of their “credit trees” and likely had about $8,000 to $12,000 of unnecessary additional costs to their project.
They realized they had purchased land way outside of their budget, cut down trees that could have saved them money, and hired an architect that designed what they wanted, but not something that they could afford.
We talked for another half hour about some potential scenarios, and I encouraged them to talk to some other builders.
The couple ended up selling the lot, moving into an existing home, and paid around $50,000 to end up with nothing but a set of drawings reminding them of their Dream Forever Home.
The moral of the story is that you don't know what you don't know when it comes to building a new home - and small missteps can be costly.
BuildPath Construction Advisors are here to be your advocate throughout the entire home-building process and help you to gain a clear understanding of your project and budget before you put money down.
When you're thinking about building or renovating, BuildPath is your first step.
Schedule your free strategy call today to get your questions answered up front and see whether you should move forward with buying land or hiring a contractor.