House cost per square foot estimate
Early budget for a home from heated area, garage and porch area, finish level, region and site costs.
Get this tool with its role plan
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Comes with the product manager plan: every tool for the role, from $10.20 a month at the launch price.
- Your own numbers, worked out as often as you like
- The full budget sheet you can print or save to My work
- 3 cited sources, linked, with the checks to make
- Every other tool for the same role, in the same plan
- A plain-words read of your result (a fuller AI read with the Bifrost AI add-on)
Included in these role plans
Example result · fictional numbers
What you get: budget sheet
Worked out by this tool from its default inputs. Its role plan lets you run your own numbers, print the sheet and save it.
$800,087.50 all-in, $333.37 per heated sq ft, with fees, 9 months of loan interest
- Adjusted rate
- $206.25 per heated sq ft
- Building cost
- $556,875
- Site and soft costs
- $45,000
- Contingency
- $48,150
- Total budget
- $650,025
- All-in cost per heated sq ft
- $270.84
Project budget sheet
- Building cost
- $556,875.00 at $206.25 per heated sq ft
- Site, permits and utilities
- $45,000.00
- Contingency
- $48,150.00 (8.0%)
- Construction budget (shared tool)
- $650,025.00
- Design and engineering
- $27,843.75 (5.0% of building)
- Builder overhead and profit
- $97,503.75 (15.0%)
and 4 more lines
Also on the sheet
- Building cost by stage (NAHB 2024 shares) · 8 lines, starting with “Site work (permits, fees, design, inspections), 7.6%”
- Checks · 3 lines, starting with “Your overhead and profit”
The plain-words read of this example
The construction budget is $650,025.00; with design, builder overhead and profit, 9 months of loan interest, the project comes to $800,087.50, or $333.37 per heated sq ft. On NAHB's 2024 shares, interior finishes are the largest stage at $134,206.88 and major systems next at $106,920.00. NAHB builders' overhead and profit equal 25.9% of construction cost, against your 15.0%. Check the base rate against Census price per square foot for new homes.
3 cited sources
- Cost of Constructing a Home in 2024 (National Association of Home Builders (Eye on Housing))
- Characteristics of New Housing: current tables (U.S. Census Bureau)
- Primary Mortgage Market Survey (PMMS) (Freddie Mac)
Plus 5 step-by-step checks, a print layout and a link that reopens it with your numbers.