Come along as we build our custom home- lessons learned in real time.

[Anonymous]

How did you find a lot for 85k?

[Anonymous]

OP here. Back to talk permitting and pre construction work. Time got away from me--meant to post this weeks ago. I'm hoping others find this informative, or interesting, or weigh in with their own experience. After we engaged the architect, we got her recommendations on an engineer. We interviewed a couple, but went with her experience. As a non-engineer, I found it really hard to know who was good. Any engineers out there--few good blog posts or podcasts on engineering work would be really great content. if we had gone with a design-build firm, with everything handled in house, they would have done all of this for us. Of course, there is an additional cost involved in that.

Here are a few of the items that the engineering firm handled:
Boundary/Site Topography survey
Stormwater management plan
Site grading plan
Tree planting plan
Sediment management plan

Engineers will also handle house stake out, brick points, wall check, final house location, grading check and certifications.
While the final bill isn't in yet, we should be right at 15K for everything listed above. The hourly rates for this ranged between 150/hr for the Principal & Sr Engineer, to 80/hour for the CAD professional, and 65/hour for admin.

The engineer + architect are two pillar who got us through the permitting process. Which turned into a real problem. Will add that detail in the next few posts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How did you find a lot for 85k?

Don't know if PP is still around but, we set up search parameters on Redfin for the areas we were looking at. Then we waited, and got a bit lucky, too. The lot we bought already had utility hook ups, including sewer, water, gas, electricity. I don't know how much it would cost in money, time and permitting to get that all done. And our lot had already been cleared of most trees, another bit of luck.

Redfin tells me similar-ish lots to ours are now going for 120K. We bought in 2020, weeks before the pandemic hit. I'd say we looked for about 8-9 months before we found our lot.

[Anonymous]

CP. Dreaming of a future.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Total cost: 82K

As someone who went through the new build process in 2020 too, I was interested in this thread until I read that. OP, you're describing a situation/location that is not relevant to probably 95% of people on this forum

Yeah, this is like rural pricing. In the DMV area, it’d be more like $600,000 for a tear down, $200,000 to tear it down, $500,000 for an architect, and $1million to build.

If we could custom build for 1.4 million, we’d all be doing it. Instead. We spend that much on a house that just checks a couple boxes and we have to renovate it.

$200,000 to tear down a house? $500,000 for an architect? Um…no.

[Anonymous]

So we have the plans, the engineer...and then COVID hits. It really felt like the world was ending. We were paralyzed for a few months as we just watched and waited, and contemplated selling the lot. Ultimately decided to go forward because our reasons for building hadn't changed. Took us until late 2020 to really get underway with the engineer. So we paid the deposit and went forward and then our engineer disappeared. Stopped answering calls, voicemail was full, emails, everything. We couldn't reach him, and neither could our architect. She was mystified;they'd worked together several times over the years. We reached out to other engineering firms, but by this time, everyone was building and renovating--the ones we talked to had waiting lists, prices were going nowhere but up.

This was it, time to throw in the towel and admit that building was a mistake, eat the 5K loss and move on. Then lo and behold, the engineer called us, after about 3 months of being MIA. It was a 2 person engineering firm and BOTH engineers had caught COVID. One of them had died, and the other had been in the hospital on a ventilator for 2 months. And, the lead engineers wife caught COVID and was also hospitalized, and his brother-in-law, who had also died. It was awful. He was a lovely person and the scale of tragedy he endured was breathtaking. He asked us to stay with him, because on top of everything he was now in danger of losing his business. So that is what we did. We had the ability to wait and it was the right thing to do: but I would say this added about 1 year to the overall length of the project.

The only lesson I have here, other than having a lot of flexibility on timeline, is that a lot of the key companies involved in building a small businesses. Really small. With the builder and the engineer in particular, a good question to ask upfront would be: what is the plan if anything happens to the business owner?

[Anonymous]

So, the project is from years ago. What sort of narcissist feels the need to do a 3 year after the fact blog?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We decided to go take the road less traveled and build. First time we’ve done this and wanted to share in case others find this useful, and get advice from the DC hive too. Maybe others will chime in with their experiences, too.

Some of this will not be chronological, since we bought the lot some time ago. But I’ll try to cover stages from lot selection, site prep, construction and budget along the way.

Might split this into more than one thread, depending on how unwieldy this gets.

Other details: building somewhere in the DMV region, house will be about 5,500 feet including garage, and we have a budget of $1.4 m, all in.
And, we're NOT going with a design-build firm--that means more hands on managing this project, and having to find everyone from the architect, to the engineer, to the builder ourselves. But it should save us money.

Can it be done, on time and within budget? With our sanity intact? Tune in....

I admittedly do not have first-hand experience in this arena but I'm getting strong "pennywise/pound foolish" vibes from this decision. You are saving a bit to have an exponential increase in stress and opportunities for things to go very wrong, and likely dooming your timeline as well.

If you do design/build, you’re paying a premium for convenience, often quite a lot. It’s pretty normal to hire an architect to design and help oversee, along with a separate contractor. This is different from serving as your own general contractor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So, the project is from years ago. What sort of narcissist feels the need to do a 3 year after the fact blog?

oh good god. This is a really helpful set of experiences for some us to hear. This is an anonymous forum so it's not like the OP is getting fame out of sharing their experiences. Lighten up.

[Anonymous]

Agree. And a very rational voice telling the story

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Total cost: 82K

As someone who went through the new build process in 2020 too, I was interested in this thread until I read that. OP, you're describing a situation/location that is not relevant to probably 95% of people on this forum

Yeah, this is like rural pricing. In the DMV area, it’d be more like $600,000 for a tear down, $200,000 to tear it down, $500,000 for an architect, and $1million to build.

If we could custom build for 1.4 million, we’d all be doing it. Instead. We spend that much on a house that just checks a couple boxes and we have to renovate it.

It was 30k to teardown our house in McLean about 5 years ago, not sure why is 200k now

To add the house we tore down was 800k, architect was 12k, the build was 900k

Yeah, 2023 is very different than 2018 when I custom built in Mclean as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So, the project is from years ago. What sort of narcissist feels the need to do a 3 year after the fact blog?

Seriously?? I’m all in on this, I have land I want to build on one day and it’s nice to get a first hand account. Mine is more complicated and will need a well and very complicated septic system installed but it’s still pertinent to me. If you don’t like it jog on.

[Anonymous]

https://www.wusa9.com/video/news/investigations/families-claim-virginia-homebuilder-took-money-but-never-finished-their-houses/65-eb421f44-3574-4fb9-9a5f-aeece4b8d322


This is what I think of.

[Anonymous]

Don’t let the negative posts deter you OP. This is quite interesting

[Anonymous]

I’m not OP but also building a custom home in MD! Framing is up, went through the electrical rough in. I’ll say this, it really is amazing what goes into a house especially the stuff behind the walls. The electrical especially is one of those things where all you see are wires and where the outlets go and you can’t really picture how this will end up.