custom home building cost

Sorry, I must not know what I am talking about. We've only built roughly 2500 or so production homes in the past 15 years in Silicon Valley alone. We've also built several very nice homes [$10 - $20M] in Los Altos Hills [which did include pools, crazy landscapes, rare woods, special finishings, etc] and those costs were not close to your soaring $1000 psf, but thank god us "bottom feeders" figured out how to do it reasonably and have our "McMansion" end up in Architectural Digest.

 

Here's one in Atherton.

Zillow.com Brand new construction. 50 Prado Secoya St, Atherton, CA 94027 5 beds, 9.5 baths, 12,110 sq ft
ZESTIMATE™: $6,850,881 Zestimate
Over an acre.

The Value Range is the high and low estimated market value for which Zillow values a home. The more information, the smaller the range, and the more accurate the Zestimate. See data coverage and accuracy table Value Range: $6,234,302 - $7,741,496

30-day change: -$19,262 Last updated: 03/14/2007

 

Wanna come work for me?

 

Chris- out of curriousity what was cost/ft^2 for your Los Altos Hills projects? I would suspect between $500-1k/ft given the level of apointment, and depending on size.
PS: Nice portfolio for a bottom feeder! (j/k)

PPS: I am working on a helipad right now, do I compute that in ft^2 or not?

 

Zillow.com has widely varrying accuracy, from somewhat relivant, to total nonsense.

Actual SOLD prices are the only data that constitutes a comp in my opinion.

 

Agreed. Zillow is largely fanciful and the other times just flat out stupid.

--Dan

 

The "all-in" cost for the home referenced was about $850 psf - most improvements were requested by owner - vinyard, ponds, pools, water features, gate, palms, etc [this included rough and finish grading of 1.5 acres]. With respect to the heli-pad and as it relates to this discussion, personally I'd eliminate it from the cost psf # since a heli-pad to me is very special purpose improvement; a-typical of most #'s used with generic psf construction cost reference......with that said and as you are aware, generic #'s are very difficult to discuss because of the varying degree of "nice" or as you say, "McMansions" (j/k) varies just as widely-

Although the # outlined above is far in excess of the $500 range cited earlier, a very nice home can be built for far less than the heavy #'s outlined on this board and for far less than the $500 # I cited earlier.....these #'s are for those that want the ultimate in every respect....thus the varying degree of nice I suppose.

For reference how did the owner get a permit for a heli-pad?

 

Sounds like a fun project!

I essentially agree with all of this, especially varying on the total size of the house. It's relatively easy to busty $1000/ft^2 on a 3000ft house that's on an 11 acre hillside, including tennis courts, roads, terraced gardens, roman pools, etc. (a current project, it is going to be in the $3.5m range when done, most of the variables in cost will come from how much rock is encountered in grading the avg 2:1 hillside.)

Conversely, if the house was 15k ft, it would not be near $1k/ft^2.

Price/ft^2 is almost a meaningless marker these days.

You're going to laugh; he barely wants it, the county is requireing it. (remote area, permitted recreational use ranch.)

 

First hand experience:

Custom homes in Atherton start at 400/ft and go up to 1000/ft. Reputable companies that do high end spec homes will do custom homes (higher grade than their spec homes) for 450+/ft to 650/ft. This is for home construction alone and does not include land, landscaping, site work. Home build only including basement. Atherton builders will be 100-200/ft more expensive than contractors from Los Altos which is about 5-6 miles south.

The 1000/ft builds (no landscape, permit, fees, site work) do exist and are a combination of high end materials and loads of technology plus some greedy contractors.

Land (good part of Atherton), landscaping, permits and fees, and build for a 10000 sq ft home on 1 acre in Atherton will cost at least 1000/ft to 1200/ft for a luxury home with a reasonable builder (500/ft house build cost). This house will sell for 14-15MM when done in today's market.