This has come up many times. Seems like you get as low as 8% and up to 20%. It depends greatly on your local market.

I personally think that builders at 8 and 10% are probably making some extra money elsewhere.

I've also seen builders have a fixed fee or %age plus and then charge an hourly rate for their supervisor. Total crap but I've seen it and that was on top of an 18% fee.

I paid 80k with a 540k cost on a 4000+unfinished basement. The problem with using that as a comparison is that in some markets that might be a basic house and in some it might be completely custom with far more complexity than a basic house.

I am getting ready to pay a higher percentage to build in a more challenging area. In my mind I can justify that because it is a smaller house but more complicated at the same time.

Thanks david_cary. I think in order to collect more information data or ballpark number, it will be helpful if anyone responding will also classify whether they are building a higher end custom home, an above average one or an average one etc in their area.

We built using a cost plus fixed fee contract in '09. Since there was some negotiation before we actually signed a contract, along with a fair amount of time passing, we agreed on a 10% fee from an early construction cost quote. We paid a builder fee of $21,300 with a construction cost of $229,700 for a total of $251,000. This is in SE TX for an approx. 2500 sf home. I would say our home is a slightly above-average custom home. We even had the latitude to use our own subs on different aspects of the build, but I could not find any better options than the builders own subs. We are very satisfied and happy with our builder's pricing.

In central,va we requested quotes from 3 builders. The highest was 30%. The lowest was 9%. The home was a 2800 square foot ranch with higher end finishes.

david_cary, I found the old thread that talks about builder's profit % extensively. That's helpful!

One follow-up question I have, does this profit % include overhead costs in general? I suppose overhead is around 2-3% of the entire construction cost. I got a few bids from various builders and they come in around 8%-12% (without overhead) which is pretty in line with what everyone's saying in this market. But if the average market % of 8-12% actually includes overhead costs, then I feel that I may be able to negotiate some more with the builders.

My fee# was split between overhead and profit. That is if I stated 15% - 9% was profit and 6% was overhead.