Log Homes, Buy or Build?
I have built a few custom homes as my own contractor over the years and feel pretty confident about my ability to plan, organize, budget and generally build a quality home. Having said this I assumed that building a large custom log home would be no different than any other home I have ever constructed.
My wife Kathy and I planed and planed, we got our hands on every piece of reference material we could find. I spent countless hours budgeting for materials and labor expenses and felt I had a pretty good handle on my construction schedule and budget.
Since we were going to be doing the majority of the labor for construction I thought we were easily going to be able to stay on budget.
I'm not going to go into my experiences in this post since I am going to be bloging on my log home building experiences in detail in the next few weeks. What I am going to say is that because of the custom nature of log homes and the extra labor involved in construction combined with the added difficulty of building at a remote site a 4000 square foot home that would have cost about $160 per foot ( if it was stick built ), is costing me about $220 per square foot to build ( without the land or the $75,000 in labor we provided ourselves).
Remember, that does not include the land the home sits on. Kathy and I have performed about 40% of the labor for the construction including the complete electrical wiring of our home!
Getting back to the point of this post: Is it better to build or buy a custom log home?
The answer is: That Depends! If you want a custom log home, I mean a real custom home made out of large logs and not a kit. If you want one in a specific area and none are available already you will have to build or accept another area where one you like is for sale. The great thing about buying a home like this already built is that if the home has been built over the last few years you will probably be able to buy it for considerably less than the owner spent to construct it!!! Thats a fact. I have been a Realtor for many years and I can tell you from experience that you can buy one of these homes a lot cheaper than you can build one for.
On the other hand. If you're like me and already have that "perfect spot" nothing else will do.
Date: Friday, May, 2nd 2008 @ 03:21:55 PMViews: 640
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