Is it more expensive to build?

[DelMarMom]

I’m looking at building. What is the ave. cost per sq. ft. to build a qualify house along the lines of Meadows del Mar or Alta del Mar? Are there significant “extra costs” on top of that besides landscaping? There’s so little on the market in Carmel Valley, RSF, Del Mar that we are looking at buying a lot and building.

[The-Shoveler]

Unless your going to be your own contractor, from what I have seen it can be quite a bit more expensive to build than buy an existing home (unless your going to do something really simple like a prefab).

Which seem unlikely in your case.

Building a custom home, the expenses can quickly go through the roof (you have to be a tough boss or hire someone who is and you can trust) (else the sky is the limit…)

[EconProf]

Unless you already have extensive knowledge in this field, there would be a steep learning curve involved. You would likely make many expensive mistakes, and learn a lot in the process. So if you kept on building houses, your costs would go down rapidly and your design savvy up by the time you built, say, five houses. Economies of scale come with building in volume, as all tract builders have learned.

[flyer]

I definitely agree with EP.

We, as well as friends and family have both built and remodeled in RSF, as well as other other locations in San Diego, but that was quite a few years ago.

At that time, because of the deals we were able to make with people we knew, it was very-cost effective, but, at today’s costs, you’ll definitely want to do a lot of research, and try to talk to others who have built within the last 5 years or so to get a feel for the current market.

Also, you might want to look at custom and
semi-custom communities like Santaluz in the 92127 zipcode. In addition, they are currently building some very nice estate homes in Del Sur in the same zip code, near Black Mountain, which people also seem to really like.

Here’s a link (and, no, I’m not affiliated with SP)

http://www.standardpacifichomes.com/new-homes/southern-california/san-diego/kingston-at-del-sur.aspx

[The-Shoveler]

I have seen more than one family go BK while building their dream home.

It’s easy to hire the wrong contractor and you have to (or you have to have someone) watch the crews like a hawk.

you really need to be able to trust the people you hire, good luck.

[ljinvestor]

Even if you have a good contractor, the city doesn’t always make it easy to build on undeveloped lot.

[duchess]

We’re breaking ground on a custom home in the Crosby next month. Cost to build is $250/square foot including pool and landscaping. The house is nearly 7k square feet. The finish level will be a big step above Alta Del Mar.

Soft costs (permits, architects, engineers) will be $150k on the low end. We received bids from architects that ranged between $40k-200k. Our architect recently went on his own after nearly 20 years at the $200k firm. He’s amazing and the costs are a fraction of his former employer.

We bought the lot two years ago and have had to do a tremendous amount of work to get to this point. You need a fair amount of free time and a lot of optimism to see a project like this through at a reasonable cost.

Getting a good lot at a decent price will be your first big challenge. We chose the Crosby over Santaluz because of the Solana Beach/San Dieguito schools.

I’m happy to answer questions or discuss details off-line. Perhaps I could help you avoid some of the mistakes we made along the way.

[Author]

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