Charlie: John and Texas City Tom. He wonders, how does he determine the price of his home? In other words he’s shopping, he wants to know-
Tom: Yes.
Charlie: How should I expect … How much should I pay to expect, pay per square foot for a home?
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Tom: That’s a question that can never be answered. I don’t know. Because, every home is different. Every home has a different appliance. Every home has a different roof. Every home has a different build, a lot that it’s sitting on.
Charlie: Yeah but you’re in the the neighborhood. But anyhow in a neighborhood, can’t you say that it’s going to … Houses in this neighborhood are about this much per square foot or so on?
Tom: No. No. That’s actually really a good point you’re making. When you sell a home for, that’s been there for a long time, you can go and look at the square footage costs in the neighborhood for the last six months, see whichever, every home that has sold. Say in the last six months 14 homes were sold. The square footage and what the average square foot cost was for that person. But if you’re building a new one no.
Charlie: But if I’m building a new one. Is there no-
Tom: No. You have to have the plans. You have to have the lot. The lot is going to cost different prices.
Charlie: There’s no range Tom? I mean for how much it would cost to build a custom home?
Tom: Yeah I could give you a range. Anywhere from 150 to $500 a square foot.
Charlie: That’s like when-
Tom: I’m serious. You can’t. This is why you price it out. Now when I was building, I was building homes about a hundred fifty to $250 a square foot. But people wanted steam showers. You know they were custom homes. You can’t, there is no regular cost that you can go from neighborhood to neighborhood, from acreage to acreage and say hey, all the homes are going to be in this range. The range is going to go all over the place. So-
Charlie: Okay.
Tom: No. You have to have it priced out from your plans. That’s why you go to builders, you have them price out the home. You take a look at what they’ve got on there. They’re going to give you appliance allowances, carpet allowances, floor covering allowances.
Charlie: True.
Tom: And every … You go to one neighborhood it’s a million dollars for a lot. You go to another neighborhood it’s $25,000 for the lot.
Charlie: Years ago when I was working, when I was, first here in Houston, we looked at buying a house in West U.
Tom: There?
Charlie: Well back in the 80’s, if you could fog a mirror, they’d sell you a house.
Tom: Yes.
Charlie: So we looked at buying this house in West U. And she says it was for her, it was practically a tear down, she says $400,000. And I said you’re out of your mind. And she said well the lot alone is worth 300,000 or $400,000. I said, so the house is free.
Tom: Yeah pretty much. There are cases like that.
Charlie: Right.
Tom: But it’s so many variables it’s amazing. You build the same house on 50 acres, that you would build on a little suburban lot you don’t have to worry about it. And when you do it on the 50 acres you have to have wells, you have to have propane tanks, you have to have septic systems. You have to build a road to get to your home/ You have to buy the electrical service as they run 15 poles to the house because you want it back on the back 20 acres. It’s not house-to-house. There’s no range. So it’s only done after the fact when the neighborhoods developed, that you can do a per square foot cost of a home that’s … And it’s either usually 20-30 years old the neighborhoods.