WWA-Contractor-D?

December 16, 2006 10:11 AM

HOME CONTSTRUCTION FILTER:Should I build a house from the ground up or buy a fixer?

Does anybody know average construction cost per square foot in the San Fernando Valley? And about how long it should take to build a 1700 square foot 3 bd 2ba home in this area?

I've looked and found lots cost between $150k and $250k in Sherman Oaks and Studio City, California and I can get free house plans. The neighboring homes sell for about $1.5 million. I'm trying to decide if it makes sense to build from scratch or buy a fixer. I like projects and am handy, so I really don't want to pay for a turn-key home.

posted by GIRLesq to home & garden (17 comments total)

There are a lot of hidden costs in constructing a house, building permits can be insanely high (something like $50K+ in the Santa Cruz area). I would like to build as well but between the cost of the lots, the cost of the permits and hassles, it may just make more sense to fix up.

But I would like to get some land with a house to live in and enough space to do some experimentation with alternate building techniques I've been reading about. Like Grancrete.
posted by fenriq at 10:26 AM on December 16, 2006

If you buy land in an area with a lot of new construction going on, you are probably going to have trouble getting workmen. Even if you can do the contractor work yourself, you'll need plumbers, electricians, etc. Can you pay them as much as they're making on the 1.5 million dollar homes?
posted by saffry at 10:32 AM on December 16, 2006

How funny that you should ask this question, since I live in the San Fernando valley and just signed a remodeling contract with my contractor a few days ago :) I also looked at lots before we bought a house last year. Most of the cheaper lots tends to be in nice areas (south of Blvd, sometimes with views etc), but they all tends to be hillside lots. This increases your construction costs massively. The city will require extra permits and inspections for hillsides. The construction requires lots of extra structural work if you build over the slope, or if you dig into the hillside and build retaining walls. Really a lot extra from what little I understand of new construction from our remodeling process. I have a hillside lot with an existing home we are remodeling, so I ran into some of this when we considered the idea of building a deck over the hill. I can put you in touch with our contractor if you are interested in getting a professional opinion (email is in my profile).
posted by Joh at 11:30 AM on December 16, 2006

Just anecdotally, it is much easier to build new than to fix up old. I know this first hand. I REALLY do.
posted by BrodieShadeTree at 11:35 AM on December 16, 2006

I am going to bring something up that you haven't mentioned, so if it doesn't work for you, I know you'll ignore it.

[bear with me, this is going to be a little broad] Houses are a little like puppies and kittens for me. There are already too many of them; no need to bring anymore of them into the world. Plus, some of the ones that are all ready in existence have interesting character traits to find out about over time -- of course some of these character traits are negative, but some of them are amazing. Its a bit of an added adventure. And some new construction has not so nice 'character' built into it too. An older house has settled where it's sitting for some time. Some of those older houses ended up in the nicest sites in a town and some of them have lovely, mature landscaping -- tree canopies etc.

I know it's part of the American dream to build your own place and have your own acreage, but it's not ecologically sound and, just to be incendiary, selfish.

. . . and considering what I paid for my somewhat run-down 90 year old house, and what the insurance company tells me it will cost to replace it (even considering that they inflate that price to keep my rates in a healthy profit-making range for them) -- it's got to be cheaper to buy something older and fix it up. Especially since you're not going to buy something that you haven't thoroughly checked out and know is sound.
posted by nnk at 11:40 AM on December 16, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

It depends on your temperament. If you buy a fixer-uper, you will likely live in the home while you fix it up. Do you mind living in a construction zone? Do your house mates mind? I bet they will mind more than you will. You can take your time with a fixer-uper- but most people take a lot longer than they plan.

If you build from scratch, there will be a period of a year or so where you are building but not living in the structure. Plus if the permits are so strict as previous posters say they are, you will likely need an architect. This can add 3 - 6% to the cost of construction.

There are so many factors here that I really think it depends on what you want to do, and the means that you have to accomplish it.
posted by Monday at 12:30 PM on December 16, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

The cost of permits for my house in Santa Cruz county was about double fenriq's number. Grading permits were about 20k of that. The stack of paper submitted was sixteen inches high with the plans flat. Included were: archaeological study report, Title Something-or-other energy calculations, ecological study report, seismic report including results of digging at three sites, fire suppression plans, well drawdown test... you get the picture.

The house is really wonderful and I am glad I went through the trouble. It would not be build-able today because of tightened requirements and about a 30% real-price increase of most materials.
posted by jet_silver at 12:34 PM on December 16, 2006

I can't speak to the costs, especially somewhere that still has a real estate bubble, but I have both renovated an older house, and built one from scratch. (Well...*I* didn't build it, I hired a builder to build it. I just made architectural suggestions and supervised.)

The renovation was a nightmare. The house wasn't really livable until I was done, and by then I hated it so very much I put it on the market. I'm no amateur to fixing stuff; I can lay tile, weld pipes, hang Sheetrock, do drywall, heck, I can even reseat a potty if I have someone else to help me lift the damn thing...but oh, holy mother of god...it sucks to spend years in a construction site. And trust me, any "fixer-upper" is likely to take years unless you hire a crew to just do it all for you. And even then, it's going to take months, possibly a year depending on how much needs to be fixed.

Building a house required an extraordinary amount of supervision on my part. I cannot tell you how much stuff I made the builder rip out and do again until it was right. If I hadn't been on site at least once a day after the walls started getting framed, all sorts of non-code work would have gotten hidden. (For example, they didn't put greenboard sheetrock in the bathrooms by the water pipes. Totally against code, and a set up for a huge disaster down the line. There were windows that weren't level, and don't even get me started on the floor they installed while I was on vacation that was a cheap laminate when I'd paid for sand and stain. That one they just had to reimburse me for, because they'd framed the second story while I was gone and it was too late to rip out the bottom floor and install something that was 5" thicker. They would have had to deconstruct the house entirely.)

It took a full crew of 10-12 workers, plus a construction chief and an architect about 10 months to build my house. (but for calculation purposes, I built one about twice the size you're considering, so your build may only take 5 or 6 months.) I cannot even imagine trying to do it myself, after watching them do it. That's a whole lot of work and knowledge.

Familiarizing yourself with builder code is a really good idea for either renovations or building from scratch.

From my experience, if I ever have to move again, I would look for a preowned that didn't need an extensive amount of repairs, or if possible, I would look for a really old, interesting place, and not live there until it had been renovated, but I don't think I ever want to live through renovations in my living space again.
posted by dejah420 at 12:37 PM on December 16, 2006

Have you considered a pre-fab like those on fablist? There are a lot of options in California. A lot of them are likely able to provide assistance with permits and such.
posted by jimmythefish at 12:52 PM on December 16, 2006

This tool will help you calculate the cost to build new -- I have no idea what the accuracy is, but it does allow you to select variables such as quality of build, geographic area, etc.
posted by katemonster at 2:12 PM on December 16, 2006

I can't speak for the cost of building new in your area (sounds like Cali people deal with a lot of permitting, etc) but here in Chicago almost every time a home changes hands it's either knocked down or if the facade has historical value it is gutted and built new (by gutted I mean everything except the outside street facing wall is torn out.) In Lincoln Park on the north side this has caused quite a bit of outrage as people level 100 year old homes and throw up McMansions.

The reasoning is easy to understand: the newly rich types (investment bankers, lawyers, etc) don't value the history and want everything new - and it is cheaper to build new than to rehab (unless you DIY in which case the opposite is true) so they gut their homes or level them all together and throw up impressive, but ultimately inferior McMansions in their place.

And inferior is key here. These are homes built with off the shelf supplies from Home Depot. We're talking pressure board instead of solid wood, drywall in place of plaster, poured concrete over cut stone. It'll be interested to see how many of these budget mansions are around 100 years from now - not that I'll be here but I'm it'll be a shame trying to find a quality home in the future.

It sounds like you like these sorts of projects - so shop around. Find that charming and well built home and make it your own - one upgrade at a time!
posted by wfrgms at 4:15 PM on December 16, 2006

If you do build it yourself, I highly recommend going the pre-fabulous route. We didn't do a "modern" house, but the process was MUCH easier going with a pre-fab. I would suggest that you get a contractor, though (even though you're handy), and be sure to check references.
posted by Alt F4 at 5:53 PM on December 16, 2006

In my own case (Austin, TX), I seriously contemplated building from scratch, and wound up buying a house and extensively renovating.

The renovation was handled entirely by a contractor, and took about 3 months, while I was residing nearby. This made the process vastly faster and less painful, as we weren't in each others' ways, but I was on hand whenever needed.

All-up, this cost around $240K (about $15K over budget). My estimate is that to do the same thing as new construction would have been at least $310K, would have taken much longer—9 months is optimistic—meaning I'd have incurred double living expenses for another 6+ months.

The idea of building one's own home is very attractive, and I haven't completely gotten it out of my mind. You might want to check out Yestermorrow.
posted by adamrice at 5:58 PM on December 16, 2006

i'll second what BrodieShadeTree said. i work in construction, and from what i have seen in my area, i live in tennessee, building from the ground up is most of the time cheaper. of course depending on the how much your fixer up would cost , to purchase , and how much you were willing to spend on it. good luck.
posted by nola at 7:45 PM on December 16, 2006

(This is all advice heard from my dad, so it may be a bit strange.)

My dad built the house I'm currently typing from. (Few caveats though: he only had to worry about himself and my mother, it was done in the early 70's, in Maryland, and he's a mechanical engineer.)

He said it was the worst decision ever. There was nothing but headaches involved with the area (near a county border and watershed), permits, and then trying to hire people to do various things that you can't necessarily get done properly if you do it yourself (in his case, some of the more serious plumbing and electrical work).

Pre-fab sounds like the way to go. Fixer-uppers seem awesome on the surface, but oftentimes they end up turning into a nightmare of never-finished-ness. Building it yourself can be tricky, especially if you decide to change/add things later. (In my house, we currently don't have working heat or air conditioning because of this.)

YMMV, of course.
posted by sperose at 12:40 AM on December 17, 2006

If land and labor are affordable, it makes a big difference. Where I live, land is very expensive, but I still fantasize about building a house, so that I could have a really energy-effcicient home. If you build, do a lot of research on builders. Energy is unlikely to get more plentiful or cheaper, so go as green and energy-efficient as possible. In the long run, you'll get your investment back.
posted by theora55 at 8:22 AM on December 17, 2006

You guys are so awesome. Thanks!
posted by GIRLesq at 6:06 PM on December 21, 2006