NZ 1st homebuyers are ScReWeD...

[minimoke]

Might have to do some research into house building costs to give me a clearer idea of the components you get for the $.

Heres a starting point for you – check out all the features used to sell a new home. http://www.stonewood.co.nz/pages/new-home-features.aspx. There’s a huge pick list in there which makes it hard to come up with a valuation as Macdunk has suggested.

Builders know about building stuff but do they know the costs associated with, say programmable timers. Many builders will send your plans to a Quantity Surveyor (often within firms like Placemakers and Carters and they will come up with a PC sum – like $15,000 for a kitchen. They will also send the plans to their subbies – a drainlayer will come up with a price for the drains - say $15,000 for stuff which is below ground which you don’t get to see. So you may end up with $350,000 to build a 230sqm home. The moment you start fiddling with the plans you can guarantee the PC Sum to go up. Small builders won’t necessarily get as sharp a price as a large building firm – but they may not be far off. The building supply firms are having to carry greater credit risk now .

So as a local rule of thumb you can build for $1,000 a SQM for a low spec house, $1500 for a well speced house and if you have $2,000 plus a sqm you will end up with something pretty special.

[foodee]

Cam
You might find this of use:-

http://www.dbh.govt.nz/bofficials-es...building-costs

cheers