My wife and I are planning on building a 1200sq ft house hopefully within the next year. A builder told me every corner that you have on a house will cost $6000. Dormer windows are $4000 each and do nothing. We plan to build a 30'x40' house with a simple gable roof. We'll have to find a trustworthy builder, as well. We've decided on smaller bedrooms and bathrooms and make the gathering area's larger. All you do in a bedroom involves the bed and I don't play football in the bathrooms. I just Shite,shower, and shave.

I took some plans I found online to my guy that drew them up,I made a few changes to the sizes of the rooms and moved a wall and that was it,cost me $900,take those plans and sit down with the draftsman and make whatever changes you want and he can walk you through to let you know what will work and what will not work

I'll be praying for ya! I am right dead in the middle of building a house now and I paid for 2 plans because the first plans we thought would fall within our budget....negative. The 2nd set got us closer to where we wanted to be. There are so many variables that can change your square footage cost that it'd be hard to put a number to it. If you are building a custom home I would figure no less than $100 a square foot but $110 is probably more realistic. Whatever number the builder gives you tack on 10% for overages and upgrades, its going to happen to price that in.

Best of luck!

Like a good friend told me, construction is a 4 letter word!

We charge our customers $120.00 per hour for me to draw up blueprints in CAD. Some of these part go into nuclear reactors and other precision fields.There is no way a set of house plans could or should cost 30k

Looks about as easy as it gets. Just draw them up yourself. Get an engineer to sign off on it and get to work.

I’ve worked on some pretty big jobs where 20-30k for a set is common.

You should probably charge more;)

Ha, I know a lot of people floating around that have paid a lot more than that to an architect

It’s not just spitting out a house on paper that works.

You’re talking about months of work and meetings, also seeing it through construction.

I think this is the route I'm gonna take.

Im a builder and all I do is real estate for a living.

$30,000 for a 4000 sq ft house PLAN is insane. Who would ever pay that??

That is $7.50 a sq ft just for the freaking plans. No way youll build at $100 a sq ft if you pay that just for the plans.

Go to the web and try sites like these:

https://www.houseplans.com/


http://www.homeplans.com/

https://www.theplancollection.com/

It will cost you about $1200 - 1700 for those plans and they provide you a license to build it.

Ive built a bunch of houses from sites like those.

I just built our own house from one of those companies. It is a big house too. I think we put 8100 sq ft under roof including house, garages and 3 porches.

And I built it right around $100 a sq ft of heated living space..,..INCLUDING the cost of the 2.2 acre lot, an attached 2 car garage 750 sq ft, a detached 1100 sq ft 3 1/2 car garage, a 20 x 40 built in pool with extra large concrete on all four sides and a hot tub pad and 1200 sq ft of finished porches with tile floors.

And yes, you can build for $100 a sq ft for sure.

I'm in a unique situation where I do tons of construction reviews several years after things are built. I've looked at houses built of napkins that were awesome and dumps and I've seen houses built from top end architectural plans that were crap and also pefect....and every other situation in between.

$30K for a set of plans is crazy. Period.

Architects: Their value comes in on working with the contractors and engineers for loads, details, special circumstances, RFIs, Project Mgt, Billing, etc. These are things a home designer does not do.

Most homes really do not need an architect, but a really thorough and tested home designer that is experienced in YOUR STYLE of home and is heavy on the details. Correct Details are the best friend of any good builder, sub and owner. Everyone is protected with proper design and installation of details (framing, flashing, grade, drainage, whatever).

The plans are the "plan", but plans always change....owner changes, environmental changes, site changes, unforeseen issues create changes, etc... This is where a Good Builder earns his premium fee...they can adapt, change, alter and still create a properly constructed and detailed product. This is also where other builders get into serous trouble because they won't put in the attention or they aren't experienced enough to troubleshoot in advance.

Most builder can build most of the homes out there from simple designer plans. But it is the attention to details and the details themselves that truly separate quality of homes and quality of builders.

That's what I did too, except I used a regular pencil and didn't spend that long on it. I got a guy I knew well to dry it in and finished it from there myself. I might have had $3 in the cost of the plans, but then the only inspector I had to deal with was on the septic tank.

I agree with that, for $30k (or near that) it needs to be start to finish custom for your family from scratch, in addition to all the things you pointed out they do

If it were me I would get a local builder that is recommended by someone you trust. Ask them for a plan similar to what you have and then customize the outside to incorporate the features of this plan that you really like. Adding some dormers to a gable and changing the siding to match your plan should be easy enough to calculate the cost of. They should have a good handle on the cost to build a plan they are familiar with.

For us we got a plan guy to draw us a set of some ideas we had then a builder to dry it in. We did alot of the rough stuff and then had insulation, hvac, drywall and cabinet contractors come in. Then we did flooring, paint and trim. Still working on some outside landscaping and trim details like tapered columns and staining doors. We did it for $100 a sq foot including 14 acres. I wish I had paid a painter and trim guy because I see my mistakes often but wife says its just me.