Anybody have any current data on this? Obviously it can vary, just looking for any data out there.

This can vary so much. I would say you are looking at around $175 a square foot to start.

Understood. If you can build it for 175, I'm sure it won't take much to get to 200-225/ft.

In temple, custom home with average finishes will cost closer to the 250 range

I'm a custom home builder in The hill country. We're having trouble getting them below $275/sf (that's conditioned sf). Most of our builds are running around $350/sf again conditioned sf.

OutdoorAg said:

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This can vary so much. I would say you are looking at around $175 a square foot to start.

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If you can build anything foe $175/SF do it immediately. Because that's about $100/SF below average of homes I see for sale these days.

I should have been more specific... this is in regards to the Temple / Belton area.

You can absolutely get a custom home built for $175-200in the Temple/Belton area. I guess I should have stipulated that it would have to be built on a lot or land that you already own. If the builder owns the lot, then there is no way. Also, it isn't going to be fancy but it is possible.

What builders would you trust in the Temple area? We are looking to build in east Bell County in the next few years.

$175-275 is a large range. Hopefully some of these prices will start calming down.

Empire Custom Homes by Collins Gregory. He's an Ag and does really cool stuff and exceptional quality.

rustyburban said:

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What builders would you trust in the Temple area? We are looking to build in east Bell County in the next few years.

$175-275 is a large range. Hopefully some of these prices will start calming down.

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People we interviewed for a remodel and/or know and would put our trust in:

Patrick Johnson Construction (Ag)
Elk Construction (didn't choose them for our remodel, but they seemed like quality people and i've seen their work and it's great.)
Orchard Valley Homes (did our remodel)

my wife really likes Brandon Whatley Homes, but i haven't met him or been in any of his houses.

c-jags said:

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rustyburban said:

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What builders would you trust in the Temple area? We are looking to build in east Bell County in the next few years.

$175-275 is a large range. Hopefully some of these prices will start calming down.

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People we interviewed for a remodel and/or know and would put our trust in:

Patrick Johnson Construction (Ag)
Elk Construction (didn't choose them for our remodel, but they seemed like quality people and i've seen their work and it's great.)
Orchard Valley Homes (did our remodel)

my wife really likes Brandon Whatley Homes, but i haven't met him or been in any of his houses.

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Brandon Whatley has nice looking homes if you are into the farmhouse look, and we looked at building with him a couple years ago, but our personal experience with him was not good. Before telling you his fee (I had to ask multiple times) he has you sign a design agreement for $3,500 (we have since found out he has a local draftsman do the work... we know because that guy designed us a home for roughly $1,800, and he told us he does the designs for whatley). After you are in $3,500 for design, you send it out to the subs for pricing and then you find out his fee is 15% plus another 10% for some kind of design related fee, for a total of Cost Plus 25%. We have since then priced out builds with several contractors and 12% seems pretty fair from that experience. So after you find out his cost plus % is twice that of others in the area, you may consider having a different contractor bid your plans... except for that whatley's design agreement states you will pay 10k to have another contractor build using his design (that you paid too much for ). Maybe it's just me, but I review construction contracts and budgets for a living, and I found this to be quite shady. If you go the whatley route, just ask a lot of questions about fees up front, and I would recommend you go directly to a draftsman instead of having him design it for you.

That's my $0.02.

We tracked our remodel fees pretty closely and they were around 12-15% upcharge the whole way the best we could tell. We felt that was fair.

We had our frustrations, but a lot of that were covid or sub related moreso than anything financial. The people were good to deal with.

25% is pretty obscene.

c-jags said:

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We tracked our remodel fees pretty closely and they were around 12-15% upcharge the whole way the best we could tell. We felt that was fair.

We had our frustrations, but a lot of that were covid or sub related moreso than anything financial. The people were good to deal with.

25% is pretty obscene.

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The worst part is that, unless you press him for it, he isn't going to tell you about the 25% until after you have invested a great deal of time and $ on the design and waiting for subs to provide pricing. It puts you in a place where you either eat the extra costs to move forward or start all over with someone else.

COSCAG67 said:

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c-jags said:

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We tracked our remodel fees pretty closely and they were around 12-15% upcharge the whole way the best we could tell. We felt that was fair.

We had our frustrations, but a lot of that were covid or sub related moreso than anything financial. The people were good to deal with.

25% is pretty obscene.

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the design and waiting for subs to provide pricing. It puts you in a place where you either eat the extra costs to move forward or start all over with someone else.

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My one issue I had was that we had a sub that gave a price that was a tad low and took forever to get before we signed that was a part of their final bid, finally signed the papers, and then they were 3+ weeks late, saw the work, and they decided to walk off the job because they knew they lowballed it.

Then they had to rebid and it came 4x higher (which was high but more realistic) and we had to wait another 3 weeks.

We had a lot of frustrations, and 99% of them came from subs. Don't get me wrong, we liked our contractors but they're depending on people that are not always the most dependable and it's a home so there are personal feelings that cloud the process.