What's Your Real Market?
The answer will have an impact on the selections you make and the final home cost.
Potential clients often ask for our homes' average cost per square foot. The question is understandable. Price per square foot is a metric the real estate industry uses to gauge the competitiveness of resale homes, and many homebuyers have internalized that way of thinking.
To their credit, most of our clients know that because custom homes are unique (which is why they want one) we can't make hard comparisons. So they ask for a ballpark figure, or price range. But to arrive at an accurate range, we need to have a discussion about details.
A lot of people don't realize just how far apart costs for two seemingly "comparable" custom homes can be. Every reputable custom builder will tell you that the answer to the square-foot question will depend on the architecture, the structure, the interior & exterior product selections, and the level of internal systems. Two seemingly similar homes can have build costs hundreds of thousands of dollars apart.
Yes, we understand that "it depends" can be used to counter nearly any query. It can also raise some people's defenses, who see it as the ante in a poker hand that includes bluffing and the withholding of information.
That assumption could not be further than the truth—at least not in our case. We really, really strive for transparent pricing because transparency serves our best interest and our clients' best interests. But to get there we have to have the aforementioned conversation about home details.
Keep in mind that many elements of a well built home by an experienced/reputable builder are "under the hood". Items such as silent floor truss systems, upper level waste & water piping, insulated ducting, sound deadening floors & walls, high grade paint, high quality windows & doors, uppper end lighting controls & home automation systems, to name a few.
Most of our clients get this once it's pointed out to them, and re-set their price anchor. Whether they plan on eventually selling the home, or whether they're building it as a legacy for their children, they want something that meets the standards for their real market. Average square-foot pricing then takes a back seat to a great result.
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