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This Blog is part two of a series:

When it came to the building process we figured out that there were two different ways of doing it. One was to hire a builder that was what I call a (all the bells and whistles) builder. These companies are numerous. Most in our area build for anywhere from $125/sft to $140/sft. These builders do everything that you want and you will be able to get all the latest and the greatest. In many cases this may be the type of builder that you choose to use.

However, for us, we needed to build in a less expensive way. We needed to be able to build a house that was almost 3,000 s/ft to suit the size of our family. (There are 6 of us). So, we discovered that there are other builders who build in this area and are what I call (get me what I need) builders. These companies build the same house as the others but they begin with a plain house and you add only what you think you will need. This was great for my wife and I, we paid extra for the things that we could not change later (taller ceilings, brick, crawlspace, taller windows downstairs, side entry garage, etc.). I was willing to do without some of the other extras until I could do them myself. If you can do some things yourself you can save a lot of money in the building process.

These (get me what it need) builders can build houses for as low as $60/sft. This is a significant savings compared to the others. The $60 is a base price for sure, and if you are like us you will make some changes to their base, but in the end, we got what we wanted and did it for about half of what the other guys would have charged. We discovered that there were three of these building companies in the area.

Everybody’s different and we all have different needs. However, for us this was the way to go. I hope this will be helpful to someone in the process of trying to build a house.

If I can be of help please feel free to ask!