House Construction Costs

The cluster focuses on debates about the high costs of building houses, especially in the US, including breakdowns of materials, labor, land, permits, and comparisons to cheaper prefab or international options.

πŸ“‰ Falling 0.3x Politics & Society
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#1132
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Keywords

NY wikihouse.cc US CA COST PG searshomes.org index.php TH NYC house houses cost home homes build construction materials costs land

Sample Comments

_joel β€’ Jan 9, 2023 β€’ View on HN

I'd say very minimal compared to the rest of the costs of building a house.

ncann β€’ May 27, 2021 β€’ View on HN

It still adds 20-30k when building a new house so not exactly a trivial amount.

ktpsns β€’ Jul 30, 2019 β€’ View on HN

From my feeling the price tags are way too high to be paid by private people. For 10k$ one can also rebuild a personal home in a way that a room gets access to sunlight. (This number comes from experience, in central Europe)

osigurdson β€’ Mar 21, 2023 β€’ View on HN

The land has some value. Also, home construction seems very inefficient - every home is a snowflake even if identical to the one next door. Drywall finishing as an example is very time consuming and hard to do correctly . You need a lot of experience to be good at it (if you don’t believe me, just try it and weep at your results). Then, once this is done even painting is an entirely manual process costing $4K+.

AyyWS β€’ Sep 20, 2022 β€’ View on HN

I spent half the prefab cost for land and a 3600 sq ft house.

martythemaniak β€’ Jan 22, 2024 β€’ View on HN

Depends on local market, but housing material doesn't contribute much to house prices. Land, permits, development charges, fees, make up an enormous percentage. You don't have much on labor.In other words, no one will buy a shack for $500k when a proper house would cost $600k

georgeoliver β€’ Apr 20, 2022 β€’ View on HN

I build homes. This isn't standard in the US. I don't know how much cost it added -- probably not a lot. 10-20% I'm guessing. But, it's not low-cost.

colonelpopcorn β€’ Oct 22, 2018 β€’ View on HN

The catalog price of the home is just for the materials, though, isn't it? It's not taking into account real estate, legal, administrative, or labor costs. Those are probably what's driving housing cost more than anything these days. I imagine you could get just the materials necessary to build the Classic home for around that much.

thesausageking β€’ Jun 30, 2021 β€’ View on HN

This house is 375 sq ft and uses low end materials, and it doesn't include setup, so it's going to cost ~$100k, or $266 / sq ft. Most new home construction is more like $150 / sq ft. And with this system, you're very limited in what you can build.Who's the target customer for this?

pascalxus β€’ Mar 6, 2017 β€’ View on HN

this house is much more cost effective. Here in CA, it's hard to build a house for less than 200$ per square foot (either due to laws or local labor conditions) - not even including land and permit cost.