Is it cheaper to tear down our existing house and rebuild, or buy a new construction?

[Anonymous]

Excel is your friend. Get quotes from builders for extras that you want, permitting and teardown and length of construction. Get similarly spec'd new construction houses sold for comps (redfin). Check how much rent is for what you need (house? Apartment?). Get recent comps for your own house to be sure that it will go for 800K. Column 1 total costs to teardown and build, column 2 1.2 mil minus net profit from potential sale of your house. Nobody here would give you precise estimates, you need to figure out your wish list and shop it with a few builders.

[Anonymous]

What did you decide to do? We are in the same situation on the west coast - curious how it turned out for you

[Anonymous]

How about remodelling as of a new wing on the north end app 1000 so ft

[Anonymous]

It depends.

[Anonymous]

We have a similar dilemma.

Our house was built in1963. The original builder didn’t use any rebar in the foundation. We got a foundation crack during the1994 Northridge earthquake. Over the years, the crack has gotten worse.

Houses nearby (mind you, also lacking rebar, but perhaps without a similar foundational crack) are selling for $750-$775,000.

We LOVE the area. The question is, do we rebuild (after finally being free of mortgage payments) or move to a new house in a cheaper area?

[Anonymous]

I want to tear down and rebuild 1,700 sq ft is there anyone in the Mississippi area that does that kind of work and what I am looking at as for as price. thank you

[Anonymous]

Building yourself is cheaper. We had a 1.6m budget in mclean. After looking at homes at that range we ended up buying a 800k lot and building for 800k for a 7000sf house. House appraised at 2.3M. if we bought new construction it would have been 2.3m way out of our budget.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:9:11 here. PP, we did not use NDI. I would rather not say who we used, but we found that there are at least a handful of small to mid-size builders in Bethesda who will build a house for under a million without compromising quality. I personally preferred the smaller builders to the mass production ones.

A lot of the builders I have heard of are listed here on Mary Murphy's website: http://maryjmurphy.com/new_custom_homes

Thanks for the link. This is helpful.

Interesting list, but it doesn't include high end builders.

[Anonymous]

All of this thread is nonsense.

Just DIY the teardown and rebuild. Rent a dumpster and hire some guys hanging around Home depot. It is not rocket science. Seriously I have built a few houses like this and easily sold them. Invest in some quality tools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Building yourself is cheaper. We had a 1.6m budget in mclean. After looking at homes at that range we ended up buying a 800k lot and building for 800k for a 7000sf house. House appraised at 2.3M. if we bought new construction it would have been 2.3m way out of our budget.

What builder did you use and were you happy? High, medium or low end finishes?

[Anonymous]

Yes always cheaper to teardown and build

[Anonymous]

Tell me people, if one (like OP), has a large outstanding mortgage on the property, how can you possibly proceed with tearing down the house? Don't you have to pay off the mortgage? Is there some sort of roll over vehicle? I am familiar with build-to-permanent loans, but they are not for the cost of the house being demolished.

What happens with the mortgage in this scenario?

[Anonymous]

We went through the process of tearing down and rebuilding.

For the same quality, same design, same everything, it is typically more expensive to build your own than to buy a lived-in home that is say 5-10 years old and still new-ish.

The key to building your own isn't to save money, but to get exactly what you want, which is often quite important for people who buy higher priced homes.

I understand that some people build their own to save money, because there is a lack of homes in their price segment on the market, or that they'd like to trade off quality for more space at the same price. For example, people see a 6000-sqft above grade home for $1.8M and think to themselves that they can build a 6000-sqft new home near by for 1.6, or that they can get 7500-sqft out of a a 1.8M budget.

I have friends who have gone through the rebuild experience after seeing what we did. Some of their homes have creaky floorboards 2 years into it.

Note that I've also seen some really expensive but poorly built custom homes, so getting the right team together is definitely important.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Building yourself is cheaper. We had a 1.6m budget in mclean. After looking at homes at that range we ended up buying a 800k lot and building for 800k for a 7000sf house. House appraised at 2.3M. if we bought new construction it would have been 2.3m way out of our budget.

There is no way you can build a 7000sf house for $800k. That's just over $100sf - impossible.

[Anonymous]

Usually you make about 20-30% instant equity when building