Building Your Own Home

[2dream]

My DH built our house from the ground up. Not on a slab. Pier and beam. Took about 2 years. Actually he built half the house first. Then built the 2nd half. It is rustic style. Built with Cypress siding. Most of it was dunnage and either free or low cost. Once it is planed and stained you would never know. This man even stopped and picked up a 2 x 4 that fell off of someones truck.
All the inside cabinets are also built with the same cypress dunnage.
There are places in the sheet rock that you can tell everything is not completely perfect as far as being square. But in the end there was no mortage. All was free and clear.
Lots of material came second hand. An example of second hand is on of our windows is actually an old glass paned door turned sideways and installed as a window. Looks wonderful and everyone wants to know where we got the window. I can tell you a million second hand ideas.
Visit all construction sites. Offer to clean up the site. You can get tons of good material just for cleaning up a construction site. You would not believe what gets trashed.
All work was done after getting off work from his real job. Hard work - heck yeah. Worth it not to have a mortage. OH YEAH.

 

[firebugfab]

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There are WAY too many "if's" for that statement to be anywhere near correct. Location problems? functionality problems? external depreciation problems (market conditions)? Mainly simply location. I can't build a 1/2 million dollar home in a neighborhood of $100K homes and expect to get 125% gain. I can't build a 1 bedroom million dollar house and expect 125% return. Over improved for the area? How about if I build something totally unique such as a dome house or A frame? Does the market show I can build such a thing and get 125% return on it? What if your building in a declining market? There are way too many in's and out's. I hear every day how the appreciation rate the homeowner read on the internet is "x" so based on what they paid 3 years ago, their house is now worth "Y". Simply not true. Every case is unique.

Quote:
OP is in South Texas. I don't work that market but NE TX is BOOMING right now. We have not seen the hurt that the rest of the country has because our base economy is oil and gas and is pumping lots of money into the economy. I would guess the same holds true down South.


Oh, and to the OP, be sure and add in the cost for a chicken house also

 

[redoak]

You could go half way and buy a fixer upper with good bones. That way you could live there and fix it up and make it your style and not have to pay rent at the same time. My wife and I were in your shoes about 4 years ago. We thought about buying some land but there is already enough old farm land build on around upstate NY and alot of places for sale. So we bought a house more for the land/location and have done some serious remodeling.

 

[hoosier]

We had our house built in '95 and it was very stressful. Even though you have it built to your specs, once you are in the house there are things you wish you had done differently. I don't say this to discourage you from doing it, just to prepare you. We came in slightly under budget because the lighting we chose was cheaper than budgeted. Also, we had priced cabinets at one place and used that price to budget. It turns out we liked another manufacturer's design better and they were cheaper.
We read a very good book about things to be aware of while building. I can't remember the title and we loaned it out and never got it back. It might have been "Build It Right", but I am sure there are several to choose from.
Best of luck!

 

[DuckLady]

We had a manufactured home put on an acre of bare land. The land had to have a sand filter system for the septic which drove up the price by several thousand. But the land was perfect, so we went with it. We paid a lot in cash, like the water meter, garage, sidewalks and driveway, which kept the construction loan down, which kept our mortgage amount down. We hired a contractor because we knew nothing about construction and wanted to be legal and strictly in code.

Do your research, run some numbers and get several estimates from contractors to get an idea of costs. Remember you would be paying for their services and that will help with budget projections. If you decide to go with a contractor's services, ask for references, again get several estimates in writing, look at their work and if possible, talk to their customers to assess their satisfaction.

 

[Oblio13]

I built my own house. It was very satisfying, but also very frustrating. I learned as I went, a lot of things the hard way. I hired out some jobs, and got ripped off by a couple subs. I check out a lot of construction projects out of curiosity, and am appalled at some of the shortcuts builders take. I think the quality of my house is far better than almost any other I've seen. Literally every board in my house was hand-selected. And it's overbuilt: If the architect called for 2x8's, I used 2x10's. I used ice-and-water shield like I owned the company. My foundation walls are 10" thick instead of the standard 8". I routed chamfers on the corners of all the posts and beams and trim pieces, which took a long time but adds a nice touch.

I didn't take out a construction loan, I had saved some money and finished it paycheck-by-paycheck. It took me about five years. There are a few details that I still haven't gotten to, like the insides of a couple closets.

I'd do it again. In fact, we just bought some more property, and I am going to do it again. I'm looking forward to it because I can do an even better job with the experience I gained.