The cost-sheet was created after seeing many shifting and shifty budget conversations. Subsequently, we decided to take the topic of construction costs head-on. Lately, we’ve been having ever-more informed conversations about construction costs with current and potential clients. Escalating construction costs and protracted permitting timelines amongst most building departments in our area have made the Cost-Sheet more useful than ever. As an architecture firm with both feet on the ground, discussing the finances of design and construction couldn’t be more important. The goal was both simple and far-reaching. We wanted to create a straightforward baseline for discussing project costs (simple) and one that our industry could start using to help compare apples to apples (far-reaching).

Now in 2019, we are sensing a slowing market, significant economic challenges, and political turmoil. Further, we are deeply mired in an affordable housing crisis.  It’s a minefield of issues for the design and construction industry to navigate with each factor pushing and pulling regional construction costs.

We believe that housing will continue to be created and groups like us, with our 30 years of experience, can guide that process to continue to have happy clients. We have always maintained that this is best accomplished by being candid from the initial conversation all the way through the process to get the final result. With all that said, it’s timely to update our numbers and so we’re unveiling the 2019 Residential Construction Budget Cost Sheet.

 

RESIDENTIAL COST SHEET

ITEMS THAT YOUR CONSTRUCTION BUDGET SHOULD INCLUDE

  • Construction Costs – Every physical piece of the project and the labor to place it: including excavation, utility placement / connection, foundation / flatwork, framing, roof, flashing, Gutter, cannales, window & shade & door, stucco, exterior trim, decks, hardware, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, insulation, drywall / plaster, millwork, finish floor, ceiling finish, specialty metal work, countertop, tiles, bath accessories, mirror, fireplace, stairs & Handrail, decorative metal, light fixtures & bulbs, exposed beam / column, appliances, paint / Stain.
  • General Condition – Portapotty, site security, specialty tools, staging, recyclable center, material storage, miscellaneous.
  • Debris removal
  • Final cleaning
  • Special Conditions
  • Sales Tax
  • Construction Management

ITEMS THAT YOUR PROJECT BUDGET SHOULD CONSIDER

  • Architectural fees – typically range 6 – 12% depending on project type and scope.
  • Design consultant – such as surveyor, geotech, HERS rater, civil engineer, etc.
  • Permit fees
  • Utilities
  • Demolition and/or site perp
  • Landscape
  • Cistern
  • PV system
  • Exterior shading

TYPICAL CONSTRUCTION BUDGET

  • Full scale remodel $225 ± $50 /SF
  • New construction $300 ± $50 / SF

It’s worth breaking things down further to better understand why we’re seeing construction costs continuing to accelerate, far beyond just typical inflation. Here in the Southwest, several items have continued to intensify over the last 5 years, while new items have been added. These items, more than others, have fueled the construction cost acceleration.

 

BUILDING DEPARTMENT REGULATIONS

The requirements around drainage, impervious surface area, and stormwater management have become permitting projects in and of themselves. The design requirements often introduce additional pages to the drawing set, weeks of extra design work, additional consultants, and time-consuming reviews at the city/county. Civil engineers are now required to provide a design package on a single-family residence that would have been commensurate with a commercial project 5 years ago. The construction involves additional earthwork, costly site measures, and significant increases to site labour — all to support both temporary and permanent measures. All of this has left us with the feeling of literally pouring cash into the ground.

The necessity of geotechnical engineering is almost a guarantee on residential projects now. In our area, most sites have challenging environmental factors (e.g., steep slope, soil condition, etc). This work requires additional site visits, construction inspection/observations, additional coordination, and expensive reports with added cost implications in construction.

We have wonderful engineers we work with so this isn’t meant to disparage them in any way. We’re noting that they are now being pulled into all scales and types of project, and this can simply increase conditions and costs on those projects.

On the permitting side of the equation, far-reaching permit document requirements are adding significant time and energy to the permit process. Whereas the permit review process used to be an evaluation of the construction documents, the permit requirements are now tangential to the point of requiring a set of drawings, and a slew of supporting documentation, unique to the permit process alone.  The additional time, energy, and costs of this are reflected (if not magnified) on site in both time and dollars.

Beyond the land use and building code impacts, the secondary codes for MEP (Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing, etc.) continue to add gratuitous provisions that make our heads (and wallets) hurt. We’ve discussed this previously, but new electrical provisions (for example) like adding ground fault protection throughout a home rather than to critical circuits adds 5% to an electrical budget. Once you tack on a series of code changes like this, with marginal benefit, your MEP costs can easily be 25% more than just a few years ago.

The new building code requires fire sprinkler in all residential buildings.  Although this addition has been debated in the county, almost all of projects have required an automatic sprinkler system.  This add from $6 – $10 per square foot to our construction budget.

CLIENT EXPECTATIONS

More so than in years past, we’re noticing higher expectations on behalf of clients. It’s becoming more difficult (and expensive) to attain a level of acceptable completeness. Some of this is just math…as costs increase, it seems like more should be gained with the expense.

We’ve found ourselves in a bit of a Catch-22 here. We very much understand and appreciate that our clients are making a substantial investment in their project. It’s typically the single largest personal investment in their lifetime. For many, it may also be the only time they build new or substantially remodel. Without a doubt, the level of execution in construction should be of very high quality given the investment. We also do not take for granted that our clients trust us to lead them on this journey, including the journey of setting expectations and delivering on them. We greatly appreciate that our clients haven’t been able to find something they could simply purchase to meet their needs and desires, so they are hiring us to make it for them. That is a clear indication that this is very important to them.

Yet, we find this situation needs to be balanced with a reasonable level of execution. Many hands (and overlapping feet and tool belts and equipment) go into making the final product. While we don’t accept even a whiff of substandard work from any of these participants or their part, not every single inch of a project will reach perfection. It certainly could, but that’s a whole different level of budget that we are not promoting. As the cheat sheet above notes, achieving perfection is a 40%+ construction budget addition. In our view, we are achieving “A” quality work. Attaining flawless perfection in every aspect of a project isn’t what we consider to be cost-effective or even sensible. There is an acceptable level that we can agree to and deliver (and we may have another whole blog post on this topic).

VENDORS & SUPPLIERS

A decade’s worth of industry demands has placed most vendors and suppliers into a constant state of being overwhelmed and overcommitted. Subsequently, their pricing continues to increase. And this has a chain reaction. Our vendor’s vendors have supply and bandwidth issues and this effects the whole chain.

OTHER & UNFORESEEABLE

As a resourceful, cost-effective architecture practice, we’re obviously not fans of unnecessary cost increases. We like to think of ourselves as the group that produces effective and accurate design budgets that complement the elegant and functional homes we endeavour to create. Along with that philosophy, we’ve generated some methods for savvy clients to navigate through and minimize the escalating construction costs.

  • Reuse the foundation of an existing home
  • Be reasonable with what is sustainable
  • Being “green” doesn’t always make sense
  • Start thinking of sustainability more as built-in utility rather than as a fashionable trend
  • Limit the number of reviewers/variables on a project
  • Find a good team and trust them
  • Be reasonable with what is achievable in the finished product and set clear expectations with the builder

(obvious defects get fixed, but ease up on total perfection or get your checkbook out)

Years ago, we may have suggested that the ideas expressed above are simply our opinions and that there are different ways to go about designing, building, and financing a project. But with much more experience under our belts and more projects added to the portfolio, what may have been subjective information is moving more into the knowledge-based category. As with any advice, feel free to take it, leave it, or counter-offer.

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