Almost everyone faces your situation as they work through the design and construction of a custom home.

As a general rule, it's almost always less expensive to buy an existing house than to design and build one's own home.

That said, in many cases buying an existing home is only the first step, followed by remodeling, followed by replacing construction and equipment which may be more than 10 years old and subject to wear and tear. So buying an existing home, is only the initial expense!

It all depends on one's individual situation and budget. A custom designed home will give you what you need and much of what you want. Being new construction, there will be minimal expense for upkeep and replacement in the first 10 years or so.

Any existing house, older than about 20 years old, will have a lot of renewal and replacement expense in store. And the existing house will not necessarily have what you want the way you want it.

Hope you can work it out for your best interest. Good luck on your project.

Thanks, as we've never built before, we are having a little sticker shock. But we are having so much fun with the process so far, I hate to give it up. We are spending some time this weekend with both the builder and architect looking at ways to make the design more in line with our original budget.

We are in a similar situation, and have seen the same sticker shock. We did the whole remodel thing 6 years ago, but as VC said, that is just the beginning. We kept the old foundation and it was a nightmare (but our fault, not blaming anyone but us). We were able to get out after 6 years at just above what we had in it, thankfully. This time, brand new foundation, with 2013 eng. standards, not 1954. 9' ceilings as well, so truly extra space that can be used. After the sticker shock, we pared down, have a great design and hopefully break ground in a month. Won't be easy financially, but we are pretty conservative. As hot as our market is, we wshould be very safe. Good luck

We also went through the same thing. We bought our property in 2003 and put our other house up for sale in 2010 and finally sold it last spring. We met with our builder, and he estimated (before actually getting subs quotes) over $100 per sq ft. This went up from $65 per sq ft in 2004.

We were devastated. So we started looking at existing houses. But in our area, there were no houses similar to what we were wanting to build, and they were also more expensive than building (even at the increased price per sq ft.).

So check around your local listings, depending on your area, it may not necessarily be cheaper to buy existing than to build. And when building, you get what you want (or least as close as possible).

Also, the actual estimated cost to build with quotes was less than the over $100 per sq ft. Though now that we are nearing the end of our build, it is getting closer to that $100 price but still cheaper than buying an existing.

Kim

Thanks for the comments. We are going out this weekend to look at existing homes with a realtor. Right now, we want to make sure that there isn't another home out there that we like better and may be cheaper. We are also asking our realtor her opinion of the plan we are building and value and salability in the future. Hopefully, by the end of the weekend we will have more information which should lead, but not always, to a wiser decision. :)

With my experience, if you are considering building a home on a budget, be prepared for your project to run over in cost. We thought we had our budget lined up pretty well, but have come accross some unexpected cost, We also looked for pre-existing homes and Fixer uppers" but decided to to build in the end. We will break ground next week and cross our fingers we will not get to many more unplanned overage costs. I think we fell in love with the dream of building on our own property and jumped into it without really researching what it really takes to construct a home and were very nieve on the reality of building. There is so much involved. I know in the end it will all be worth it, it has been a exciting but tough process.

I think this a reality check almost every one faces. One Suggestion I wanted to give you was. If you are looking for a fixer upper than make sure you like the size of the existing house and most of the layout. As long as the changed are cosmetic you may be ok (even this will cost more than you expect unless you do a lot if yourself). If yiu start talking about knocking down walls and expansion the costs are again high.
Good luck.

Thanks for all the responses. We went out this weekend, looked at existing houses, also met with the builder and architect again discussing budget and spent a lot of time on our lot. After much time and discussion, we are moving ahead with the build. This was a necessary step in our decision process and I'm glad we went through it now, early in the stage. Thanks again and I"ll see you on other forums as we get further into the build!