Friday, June 8, 2007

Total Budget

Estimated Cost: $364,591

$53,286 - Road, underground utilities and set costs total estimate;

$278,305 - The factory-manufactured module, foundation, septic, siding, appliances, basement electric, HVAC, concrete floor, contractor's estimate for finished basement, and deck;

$33,000 - Res4's 15% design fee.

Actual Cost:

Notes:
Our intention is to do much of the finishing work ourselves, but I have used the contractor estimates even for those items where we hope to earn some sweat equity. As we go along we'll update the Actual numbers to reflect where we realized some savings and where we went over.

7 comments:

Hilton T. Blackwell said...

I love that you are blogging this!

We are going to build a prefab in Hawaii and then fractionalize it into 6 shares. I hope to blog ours too!

Miriam said...

Thank you for posting your project details. I'd like to know if you have a final (if it's ever really final) cost on the project. I have a piece of land in Maine with a trailer on it and a hill like the one you show in your section drawing. I'm very interested in the actual final costs.
Thank you.
Miriam Winocour
New York NY &
Union ME

Chris said...

Hi Miriam - we don't have a final number yet. At this point what we do have is a giant ziploc bag with all of our receipts in it. Updating this page is on my list but pretty low down in order of priority. I'll post an update on the main page when I get these numbers uupdated (so you don't have to keep checking here).

I'm sure we're over budget, though - mostly changes and unforeseen costs. And I'll try to detail that best as I can.

Chris

Unknown said...

Did your overall budget include the cost of land- or was that separate?

caroline said...

I admire the design of your house. But I am always shocked to see on blogs such as yours and in magazines like Dwell or others how much the modern prefab units cost per square foot. I am building a modular house located in Virginia an hour from D.C. and here's what I spent on the units from the factory:

I bought our modular units from North American Housing Corp. of Frederick, Md (they have factories in Front Royal, Va. and elsewhere). We got 2,736 square feet of modular units from them for just under $118,000.

I didn't see anything I liked in their designs so I designed my own based on their criteria for certain dimensions, etc. So they called mine a custom job. I based my design on a simple, traditional early American farmhouse -- but I kicked around lots of modern ideas on paper before I decided to go with traditional.

Your house includes special windows and doors, etc. that North American Housing doesn't offer, but if someone out there pines for modern and just can't afford $152 a square foot (and that's for just the units -- when I am done with my whole project it will be just $128 per square foot for everything (except the price of the land the house sits on) -- and if I factor in the unfinished basement square footage that price goes down to about $80 per square foot), I think going with a regular modular company could be an affordable alternative.

Caroline
Virginia

Unknown said...

Well,

I trully appreciate Chris' effort and letting us read and learn the ins and outs of building a prefabricated house. I enjoyed your writing style as well! All these information I can use to be a more educated and energy conscious home buyer. Perhaps there will be more comment (such as Miriam) from New Yorker as I'm interested to know more possibilities in New York.

Hilton Blackwell's comment is interesting too, I'd never thought of building a house for time-share. Also, perhaps Caroline can expand on her experience. However, thank you for giving a light comparison (complete with a builder name) on traditional looking vs. modern looking modular. Some people do not realized (including myself a couple of months back) that traditional looking house can be modular as well. (qualitycraftedhomesonline.com)

Jodi
Queens, NY

rn said...

I really appreciate the budget breakdown, I've been searching and asking around for weeks, trying to get some sense of what I could be in for in terms of site costs and those unexpected hits. Out of curiosity sis you investigate net-zero, solar, composting toilets etc..? And I dig the dutchtubs! (but $6k..wow)