To find the average cost for these projects click on cost per sq ft. The buildings give approx. sizes and costs. For detailed quotes, please click on the house to contact the builder or click here. The true direct cost of building a house is determined by several factors. Long before you are able to consider the actual cost of the particular house that you want to build you will need to know the approximate cost of the sort of home that you have in mind. This is essential to enable you to know the size of property you can afford. In any form of building work the labour content will form a substantial portion of the total cost. (Approximately 40% of the tender figure.) The cost per sq foot for houses is much the same providing that the buildings have simply foundations. Prices are per square ft in USD

In one form or another, this question is one of the most frequent requests we receive from our readers. Unfortunately, it is also one of the few questions that we simply cannot answer very specifically. Can you tell me how much it costs to take a vacation or send my kids to college? How much should I expect to spend on a new kitchen? What is the "average cost" of a dinner for two or a night out with friends?”

All of the above questions contain so many variables that it is impossible for anyone to answer them accurately without first asking several additional questions and gathering much more information. The same is true when calculating the cost to build a new house. Let's begin by considering what square foot construction costs really are, nothing more than the total cost of a given project divided by the total number of square feet in that project.

So, a 2,000 square foot house with total construction costs of $250,000 would cost $125 per square foot to build. Spend another $20,000 on a gourmet kitchen, an elegant master bath, marble tiles in the lounge, a fancy curved staircase or any other combination of "above average" features or finishes and that same 2,000 square foot house would now cost $135 per square foot to build; an increase of 8%. Now consider the structure itself, if the house in question is a single story, with all of the finished area on one floor, the roof would have to be large enough to cover the entire 2,000 feet of living space. Turn that single level into a two story and the roof size is instantly reduced by 50% because the second floor system became the roof for half of the area on the first floor.

Increase the roof pitch from 3/12 to 12/12 and the roof area (including framing and sheathing) quickly increases by 35%. Of course, these examples are oversimplified because they don't consider any other differences like the need to add the cost of staircase and take away the space they occupy, or in the case of a slab-on-grade foundation, the difference between the costs of a concrete slab versus a wooden floor system, but hopefully the point has been made.

The costs of similarly sized houses can also vary considerably due to the shape of the building, the number of corners or offsets in the design, the type of foundation and required local footing depth, the pitch of the roof, and many other design characteristics that are not directly related to the size of the house.