Key Post: Building a House

I know this might not be the right place to enquire about building a house, but maybe someone can point me in the right direction?

I hope to build a house in the next year or so, in County Galway, and I wonder if anyone could give me a ball park figure as to how much it would cost to build a house of circa 2,200sq ft?

I plan on going the direct labour route and can anyone tell me if there is much of a saving by doing this?

I'm currently a PAYE worker but would it be worth my while becoming self employed and getting all my material at cost price (exclusive of VAT)? What are the pitfalls (if any) of being self employed and working in a full time job?

Is there anyway I can save money and minimise costs?

Basicially, I'm trying to reduce what I pay for a house, I don't want to pay inflated prices and fund a builder's BMW if I can buy one for myself with the savings I make!

If nobody can help me with the costs could they please point me in the right direction of where I can find out building cost / direct labour savings information?

Thanks!

Re: Building a House

Hi,

The Scoiety of Chartered Surveyors have published [broken link removed] to rebuilding costs. It's mostly used for insurance purposes, but will give you a very rough ballpark figure.

There's an architect in Kells, Co. Meath called Jack Fitzsimons who regularly publishes a book called (I think) Bungalow Bliss about self-build homes, with plenty of tips, plans, layouts etc. A big bookshop like Easons will probably have it (and more like it in the same section).

Regards,

Liam D Ferguson
www.ferga.com

Cost of building

I am building at the moment and I am paying £160 per sq ft.
The specification is quite high, but this does not include a kitchen. The direct labour route should save you a fortune -I just didn't have the time or the inclination. The fact that it is Galway and not Dublin, should mean that you get a good bit cheaper than I did.
I have a feeling that if I was to get a quote now, I wouldn't be paying as much as £160. However, these are the risks we take.
You should also be aware that if you are getting an architect to oversee the job for you and do the plans etc. he will charge 8% of the build cost....that's a BMW for him/ her as well!
I also had to pay £3,750 to the council for their certification of the drainage work - this was the biggest swizz of them all!

Re: Cost of building

Even though the architect's fees were a significant part of the expense of a recent major home renovation, I would still use them again as the finished product is exactly what I wanted. He kept a close eye on the various aspects of the job and prevented a few dodgy practices as well as ensuring that I got exactly what was in the specification (ie what I was paying for!).

Re: Cost of building

Hi I am currently building in Co Galway an by direct Labour.I bought the site last year for £29000.
I expected the house to take 1 year to build and 10 month in to it things are going well as I have been our of the country for 2 months of this time.
You will always get someone who will not turn up when they are supposed to but a contractor could be the same.Anyhow if you are not in a big hurry with the house direct labour is the way to go.
My house is 2400sq feet and I also have a detached garage of about 350sq feet.
I have not gone for the cheapest materials,tradesmen based on the fact that It will be my own house.Also there was a good bit of development work on the site.
I estimate a price of £150,000 for the finished house including the site cost but excluding the price of a boundry wall or landscaping which I will do in a year or two.
If I had gone with the cheapest materials,tradesmen I quess I could build it for about £135,000.
I think the prices for tradesmen may have fallen over the last couple of months.
My house is 12 miles from Galway city.


Hope this will be of some help

Thanks Aristotle!

Thanks Aristotle,

Your information is exactly what I was looking for, the house I'm looking to build is exactly the same size as your house, give or take 100 sq ft.

Thanks again,

NH.

A few more questions....

Hi Aristotle,

I've a few more questions for you if you don't mind....

1) When you give the cost for the finished house, do you mean that the house is ready to move in to, ie: kitchen and bathrooms fitted, doors and windows fitted, floors tiled, etc? In other words live-able in-able?

2) Do you reckon you've saved much by going the direct labour route?

3) Do you have a driveway laid down yet or will that follow when you're doing the boundary wall and landscaping?

Thanks again,

NH.

Re: A few more questions....

Hi Need Help,

Did something similar recently. Got contractor to build house for about £45 Sq. Ft. . By the time it was ready to move in to (extras you mention) the cost was £70 Sq. Ft. This is for house only. The garden and railing can wait.

Knew the builder and trusted him. Was happy with everything. Would not have known where to start with the direct route but if you can get it done hassle free then it is probably cheaper. Isn't there some additional hefty insurance cost for the direct route?.

Re: A few more questions....

Yes for £150,000 the house will be liveable with fitted kitchen, 4 bathrooms tiled throughout and timber floors. Furniture+appliances will be extra off course.If I had bought cheaper windows etc the price would have been about £15,000 less.

I am not to sure how much I have sayed,but I do know the quality of work is good and that the materials used
are also good.

The driveways are done in small stones and the foothpaths and septic tank/perculation are also done.
The Tarmacadam will come later after the landscaping,boundry walls + kerbs.

Are you building the house to sell or as your own residence.???
This will probably determine the quality of tradesmen+materials that you will use to build the house.

Basically when I look at my house I compare it to what I could buy in Galway City for £150,000.
A basic 4 bedi semi detached will cost in the region of £140,000, now it may have a lot better rental potential than my house but I know which house I would be happier with.I was even contemplating buying a house in Galway city for £123,000 about 15 months ago before the site came along.

At the time I started building I could not even get a quotation from the 3 contractors that I approached.
Anyhow If I was to sell the house when finished (feb 2002 hopefully)I would expect to get about £220,000 for it.

Regards

Thanks

Thanks again for the extra information Aristotle.

The house we plan on building will be home and not an investment property, so like yourself, we'll try and have the good stuff in it.

Regards,

NH.

Re: Thanks

When you do a building job by direct labour, you (not the contractor) are responsible for purchasing of materials and hiring of sub-contractors. As the job goes on, you will retain some power over what goes into the house.

There is a lot of skimping going on in the trade with materials and when we built our house, we found it is well worth our while to pay a few bob extra on various things from time to time. A builder is not going to spend his own money on those extra touches for someone else's house.

Similarly, there are a lot of poorly-skilled tradesmen working in the building industry - plumbers, carpenters, plasterers etc. When we were halfway through our project, we approached a plasterer whom we knew was working nearby. We did a bit of detective work and found out that he wasn't a plasterer at all - just a blocklayer who had 'turned his hand' to plastering because there was more money in it. If a building contractor had used that chancer while building our house under a contract, we would have had no power to stop him.

Any architect who charges 8% of contract price for house plans, "supervision" and certification is ripping their customer off. The going rate for an architect/engineer (there's really no difference form the point of view of the private customer) in the North Midlands on a private building job should be less that £1,000 for the plans & the same for "supervision" and certification. Any architect who says he will "supervise" the job usually means he will call out 5 or 6 times to the site during the period of the building project. That's fine and dandy for complying with the certification requirements of the mortgage lender but it won't do much prevent tradesmen cutting any but the most obvious of corners.

When we were getting quotes for our house, building contractors told us that we couldn't proceed without taking on our own insurance - which would cost us a few grand and indemnify us against anyone being injured or worse during construction. I think this is a red herring as when I enquired with a few insurance companies, none were willing to quote, and I was told that nobody covered that type of risk any longer, as it was a fairly limited market with high risk.

In the end, we got each tradesman to confirm in writing that they were insured to work on our house and that we were indemnified against any injury or loss to them. One or two refused to do so, bu we had no choice but to engage them anyway or wait until kingdom come for the job to be finished. Thankfully, everything passed off without any such incident arising.

p.s. I would reckon direct labour saved us at least 25% of our total project cost.

Architect fees

The RIAI official charge rate for architects is 8% which should include plans, applying for pp, sourcing a builder (where brown envelopes come in), surveyance work, on-going site management which means more than 4 or 5 visits during construction - if anything is wrong you don't tell the builder, you tell the architect to sort it out.

I know it is a rip-off, but that is the official rate. It means though that you shouldn't have to do anything. The architect should be doing the lot including sourcing brochures for all the internal specs like sanitary, radiators, floors, kitchens..so that you just choose and thats it.

Go over your budget

How easy is it to go over your budget?
For example: if you get a qoute of 120000 to build a house, you get a morgage to cover this cost, and then you find towards the end the cash runs out.
Has the builder got it wrong or is he 'doing' you out of money?

Re: Go over your budget

Thanks, Vernon, for clarifying the point regarding the 8% architects fees. What's included for your 8% is indeed a lot more than I had understood.

How is budgeting catered for in such a system? Does the architect have a total budget that they can't exceed, and as srennos asks, what happens when the budget runs out earlier than expected?

Budgeting

Well you should probably budget £120 per sq ft to start with. If you want to include fancy windows/ floors you can start adding. The way I did it was that the architect gave me a ball-park price per sq ft and I worked to that. This was for a bog standard house with ordinary windows/ doors etc. For every addition he gave me a figure to add to the £120. Like if you want oak doors inside and oak skirting boards, this will go on top of the normal build cost.

The architect should draw up plans and list specifications which will tell you exactly what you are paying for. Within the specifications are PC Sums to include things like floors/ sanitary wear/ Iron mongery/ contingency sums/ heating/ electrical. So for eg. if you have a PC sum of £5,000 in for heating, you budget for this amount and if it comes in less than this, well and good. It is up to the architect to make sure that what is going in is good, and also reasonable. Usually the PC sums are always overstated so that you dont under-budget. Some surveyors suggest that you get a Bill of Quantities, which lists evertything down to the last nut and bolt, but this is not recommended for smaller jobs.

When you get a quote from the builder, the full amount will include the money set aside for PC sums. You should also get a fixed price contract, so that you know you are not going to have to sepnd more than is set out at the start.

Things to remember are the following:

The price per sq. ft. does not include the architects fees.
Additonal costs are things like the money payable to the council for certification of the drainage works. That cost me £3,750 if you don't mind!
Get the architect to give you a schedule of payments so that you know when the bulider will want money and how much at ech stage. As a general rule, no money is paid until the roof starts.
The builders quote may not include things like tiling/ flooring/ kitchen/ fireplace.

There are probably many other considerations which I am forgetting about, but this a good start.

V

fees

The 8%+ Architects fees have the design process built in to the price. As with most purchases nowadays people will make up there own mind and effectively design their own house. All most people want is to have plans drawn from their own ideas. As suggested above an engineer will provide ‘drawings’ for £1000. They will not be detailed plans and will come on A3 size paper and have no roof plan. Most builders can work from them and prefer the plans not to bee too detailed anyway. The crucial bit is the inspections and an engineer will do 6 of these for £1,000.
As with the cost of most labour services there is a rural/town divide. Townies pay the £20,000 fee and rural people pay the £2000 with a bit of spitting on their hands involved.
I'm afraid I fall in to the foolish townie category. I was getting my roof slates replaced and had aggreed to pay the asking price of £12,000. My Dad, from the country, arrived on the moning the builders were starting and haggled them down to £6,000 based on the fact he had an idea on how much it should really have cost which was around £5000.
Morale : if the builder can arrive to to the job quickly you are probably paying twice the price.

Re: Building a House

My experience of renovating an old house may not be applicable because its a lot easier to draw/photocopy a set of plans if you are building on a open site than if you are working in a terrace. Despite this, I have nothing but praise for my architect. As Tommy says there is "a lot of skimping going on in the trade with materials" and he noticed three separate attempts to replace things with inferior quality materials to what was agreed in the PC. While the RIAI give an 8% guideline, most architects (especially solo practitioners) are willing to negotiate. My architect was from the country but the house was in Dublin, so townies aren't necessarily excluded from good deals.

While most people have a good general idea of what they want, a good architect knows what works and how much it will cost. The best plans are a compromise between the two.

questions to Aristotle, John Palmer and Tedd re building

Aristotle,

You said you are building a house in Co. Galway. I am wondering if you used an architect and if so, if you had a good experience - would you mind passing me on his/her contact details, please? - I'm keen get good advice on my plans/design (as I want to give it to a building contractor). I will be building in Co. Galway too.

John Palmer,
You were happy with your building contractor (you didn't say which county you built in) - does he do work in Co. Galway - if so would you mind passing me on contact details, please??

Tedd,
You were happy with your architect, - you said he was from down the country but not where - anywhere near Co. Galway and would you mind passing on his details??

THANKS!!

Troccoli (totally new to this building thing, doing it on my own and keen to work with people who come recommended etc!)

Architectural services in Galway

Sean keane @ 091 569 522

arch

600 yoyoz., that fellas a gansta..