Build Vs Buy

Simon,
I was refering to the experienced and established developers,not the build-your-own-home ones! My point was,they have the resources they need at their fingertips,everything at cost price,we don’t.
Show me the money-my uncle built his own home and it was alot of heartache-and he is a builder.He saved around 30,000. If it’s going to be your ‘dream home’you can still be involved,i know i would.Get prices before you start and make sure everything is taken into account-remember murphy’s law!.In the mean time i’ll try and find some more information for you.

I think there are a few things to consider here Show-me-the-Money (SMTM).
For your first option.
Organizing and timing trades and costs efficiently are critical to a job coming in on budget especially at the moment with costs and trade rates rising (skills shortage) so in order to keep prices attractive many of the larger companies will mass produce plans and any changes made incur variations to you purely due to the time taken to change. These building companies also negotiate lower prices with their tradies as a substitute for the quantity of work that they will get from them. If variations to the dwelling are made then you will get a variation to the contract that isn’t in your favour as this is when these guys are able to make their money (usually whether the variation reduced the price or not). Developers who also build will also reduce the margins on the land and/or building to make it cheaper for them to do the total job rather than have someone buy the land and employ another builder to do the home. This is becomming more common where we live. We are custom builders and if we want to build a spec home we get charged full price from the developer to buy his land, we then have to build the home and include our own margin on it to make it viable. For the developer he is able to build the exact same house and sell the package for less as he didn’t charge out his land (to himself) at the same retail price and when the new home market is slowing this is exactly what happens.
We often get asked why we haven’t built our own new home as we are builders. The answer is simple-It costs us nearly as much as it costs everyone else. Most people have an unrealistic notion of how much profit is in the final product, which is why nikikb’s father only saved $30K, and I say only because he probably didn’t charge out his own labour for his own house. If he had that $30K saving would have been lower. Unless you are trade qualified to do some of the work then you will probably not save even this much. I do not know a single custom builder that uses a project manager to organize their jobs – we don’t , we do it all ourselves to ensure that the job runs on time and that we don’t loose money on the job. If you are in a larger city and the developer/builder uses PM’s then you may be able to take it on but there could be reservations on their part if they are concerned about your experience costing them time and money. If you decided to go owner builder and employ all your own trades then you would pay more for initial building permits and also for warranty insurance if you ever sold the house. Unless you have trade contacts you may also find it hard to ensure trades turn up on time and woe to you if they do and the job isn’t suitably prepared for them (that idle time means money they are not earning). An architect who is doing a custom design will almost definately charge more for the plans compared to the mass drafted plans of the big companies so this is eating into your savings as well. Once you remove the GST from $200K you are left with approx $181K. Remove from that permits, engineering, architects and insurance and you have b/n $170-4K left. How many squares of living do you want to build? $170K isn’t going to go far for a custom home. Even we as builders cannot compete with the prices of the big companies, but we certainly can on quality and finish and this is where our niche is. If the bottom line is your bottom line then I would suggest that you get one of the mass builders to build you a home. While they are doing it watch, learn and get as involved as you can and then you will get a good idea if you can handle it next time. Make sure you do all your homework before you make your mind up and good luck. Julie