New home build: stuff to consider?
 

Sounds like some of you build stuff professionally, or have gone through the process yourself. Or have friends / family who've done it.

Where we're looking in Toronto, pricing on existing homes seems [naively] comparable to a teardown + build cost. At the same time, it seems like it'd be pretty damn fun to throw together our vision of a forever-home in SketchUp. Also an opportunity to do stuff that isn't available, like having a Garden Suite to rent out / have for the in-laws (Toronto's version of a laneway home, which just got approved last summer), while also re-allocating typical spaces / deleting extras that we'd never use. E.g. wtf's the point of a living room plus a family room?? Merge it or cram in an extra bedroom!!

What are some project realities that might be unexpected for someone who's never done it before? And is it realistic to expect a year to wrap up construction in today's climate? How typical is it for a builder to just disappear? How involved can you / do you have to be? How much would you budget for cost & schedule overruns? Would you do it again?

Am I reading this correct? Please confirm if my understanding is correct.

1. You are relocating to Toronto
2. You are coming from The Bay Area

I am asking because I am in disbelief.

Dunno where you’re getting your costs from but last I checked, in BC at least, it’s $500+ a sq ft builder cost.

Friends of ours just did a reno of a 25 year old Main Street condo through my brother in law who are as honest and cost-friendly as they come and it was over 100k for a fairly basic reno.

To build a 2500sq ft home and coach house in Toronto wouldn’t doubt you’re looking at 800-1 million for contractor grade finishing.

As well, if you have no experience in fairly advanced project management or construction, I HIGHLY recommended you not try and manage a project yourself, it will be a disaster and will cost you more in the long run. Get a construction manager with experience and references.

I have a vision in 5-10 years of building a custom home and managing it myself and ecen for me who actually built custom homes and townhomes etc. it’s extremely daunting, especially in Vancouver. I’m sure Toronto is similar if not worse

I also think many peoples “dream home” vision never becomes reality because of the extreme costs to do things like open floor plans etc. I’m not sure what engineering costs are now, but there are questions like, to obtain an open floor plan main floor, are you willing to eat a 25k engineering cost for structural beams etc. lol

It’s stressful just typing this out lol.. more power to ya if you go through with it, but in the last 5-10 things have gotten EXTREMELY harder for a home owner build

^ Honda to go on further from your post, why is it that building in Vancouver is SO DAMN EXPENSIVE compared to like building one in Calgary? We are looking at over $1M for a build in Vancouver but houses are selling for under $1M in Calgary, what gives?

If building is so expensive, even considering the much cheaper land cost and less stringent build codes, wouldn't an existing house with good bones and no major issues sell for over $1M in Calgary as well? I keep hearing 600-700k houses from there.

I imagine it's something to do with the cost of permits with the city, higher material costs due to more expensive rent from the supplier you're buying from, and labour shortage (thus cost) with tradespeople.

Going through the process of a remodel/new build (basically keeping foundation only). Costs are all over the map. Our biggest hassle has been the city. Our designer is very familiar with the city, and despite a now totally online process knows people in the department and can still meet to toss ideas back and fourth to see what is going to be approved. Your idea of a dream, may not be possible for many reasons. We are opting to spend a ton of time with a designer to get things right. A basic designer will be useless, so you need one with a ton of experience or an architect. Ours in particular has worked hand in hand with an architect design firm for 15-20 years. She’s not branching out on her own so she has connections and knows how things are done in high end homes. Her rate is very reasonable, but she states she does spend more time. We have been very happy so far and been able to get the city to approve everything we’ve worked through. I’d say this is very important, pending your landscape.

Builder pricing is all over the map. These big company will charge upwards of 2-3x what buddy guy will. Where is the discrepancy? I don’t know. How cheap do you go? I don’t know. I’d start looking at new builds in the area you want to build. Talk to the owners and see what they have to say, what they liked/disliked. Who they used etc.

We have our builder picked out who id never pick without a reference. His office is a disaster, everything is “no problem,” yadda yadda. But having experience from 3 builds in our circle, we are will to risk it…. And the price is right.

I don’t know what rent is like in your area, but we are housing our I laws for the build (building on their lot). That’s going to be about 6-7k/month for a roof over our heads while we build, on top of the loan for the build. It’s a lot of outgoing money.

I feel like a lot of people talk about homes the same way they talk about engine swaps... just rip it out and put the other one in, no worries... get a mechanic to sort out the wiring... he charges HOW MUCH an hour? Fuck

i echo this. i considered doin the same on my previous old home many years ago and realized that i can't manage the job and work a full time job at the same time, it would be too stressful for me to balance work, family, etc. Ended up selling and buying a bigger, newer old home instead. plus i heard getting a construction loan was not as straight forward as a mortgage. on top of that you're probably renting a space for your family to add additional stress...

So the old company I worked for was a construction management firm, we mainly built townhomes in Surrey and Langley (300+ while I was there) we also built 6-7 custom homes.

In Vancouver we built a decent home, nothing special but nice as a favour for the owners friend, it was near main and 21st. This fucking house took LONGER to build than subdividing and building 3 giant custom homes in fort Langley.

I was never really privy to the expenses but I think a huge portion of the management fees, and also paying trades in Vancouver, is nothing is ever straight forward, and nothing EVER lines up for scheduling. I think that’s why it’s almost exclusively buddy guy contractors building in Vancouver, and to a lesser extent Chinese builders now.

I’m back in the construction industry (kinda) but I’m meeting all sorts of builders, I deal almost exclusively in Vancouver, and what I’m seeing, or at least the feeling I’m getting are the Chinese builders are actually copying the buddy guys model now. They have an army of cheap labour with only a few actual “professionals” this is common with everyone but I feel like it’s becoming increasingly a thing here lol

Ie. you have one electrician who can pull a permit, he’s the owner of the company, you’ve got 3-5 labourers/first years who do everything else. Same goes for their framers etc. looking like the framer is also doing finishing, etc. to save costs they are using as much overlap as humanly possible. Of course at the cost of quality.

Also what people, the media, CoV, etc etc. aren’t telling people about their wonderful new proposal of multi-plexes etc. is that just because you buy a duplex, and it has its own civic address, the lot your duplex is on is still only a single lot. No one is subdividing these multi plex lots. As a result some of these builders are absorbing HUGE bills for stuff like Hydro etc. because 3rd party services don’t serve a duplex as two independent lots, they serve them as a single lot (as it is in land title etc.)

Vancouver is just such a shit show for building compared to other cities. So I think contractors, trades, charge a premium right off the bat because they know they’re gonna be losing money on their scheduling alone

doesn't CoV require to build to step code now? i know for part 9 it's much easier, but using this build model, do they know how to keep the building air tight at all? i can picture a labourer going cowboy with the nailing gun turning your continuous barrier to swiss cheese

This is exactly why we gave up and decided to buy a new place instead of build at our old house. I actually love my old place a lot but the house would have been barely 3000sqft and we would have sunk in 1-1.5 mil just to create it. That, and the time it'll take to build will mean that we have to go live with the parents or rent for 1-2 years.

So we said fuck all that noise and ended up just buying a new place.

Not worth the headache unless you can stomach being a manager to chase your general contractor who then chases all the trades around like herding cats. Ive seen some of these builds in richmond go completely sideways and they end up being 2-3 years with only having the frame up. By that time the wood is so warped and fucked that you basically have to restart.

Still undergoing a reno now and I would not do it again. Major regrats. The amount of time and money put into the project even when it's through a GC just isn't worth it.

Permits are good for 2 years, and I'm coming up to needing to renew it. It's not even a full gut reno, like WTF. City inspectors show up majority of the time, the next day after calling for an inspection. Delays are definitely on the contractors side of things rather than dealings with the city.

buy an already built place and just be ignorant of the all the garbage that's produced these days. you'll have less gray hair.

It'll be an adjustment, for sure.

I think it's the right move though. My wife's family is there and we really need the help with kiddo, esp if we wind up with second. We also have a lot of friends there, a number of whom coincidentally also had kids this / last couple years.

I'm also a little concerned how competitive the academic environment seems out here in SV. My coworkers tell me their kids are struggling, despite after school tutoring / prep programs. I'd rather my kid have a fun time growing up. No doubt the opportunities are great for kids who are bright though: there are engineering summer camps from Apple, Google, NASA Ames, etc. Maybe one day we'll come back, if the kid is into it :).

We said the same thing after reno'ing the TH when we bought and moved in.

Then we did it all over again with the house despite. The market conditions didn't allow us to buy a newer house which meant comprehensive rework of all the finishings and shit. We didn't pull permits as it was mainly just cosmetic shit and some fixtures.

I am saying that I want to build our next home. Wife thinks it's never going to happen.

Heated driveway

I bought a teardown on a standard lot in Vancouver and went through the process of building a custom home in 2013. The general contractor (Chinese builder) was my wife's uncle and he has been in the business already for many years, so he was trustworthy and knew what he was doing. The entire build from demolition to move in took about 9 months; we were fortunate to have minimal delays and everything ran smoothly for the most part. This was 10 years ago so things have definitely changed and you're looking at Toronto so my situation won't apply to you.

If you decide to go ahead with a new build, the only advice I can give is this: build something similar to the other new houses in your neighbourhood. This can include:

-Features (if nobody has a sauna in your area, don't include one; if grease/wok kitchen is popular, you must have one too)
-finishings (fancy millwork/tiling? you should also consider something similar)
-ceiling heights (if the new houses have 10' ceilings, you should also have 10' ceilings)
-etc.

This will affect your ability to re-sell the house down the line.

You don't want to build a palace if you live in a modest neighbourhood, nor do you want to build a crappy looking house if you live in a fancy neighbourhood.

Thanks all for the insights, this is really helpful. Yeah sounds like if we go through with this, we'd have to budget extra for help with construction management and someone connected to work with the city for permitting, or risk a disaster.

I've always heard this and I don't doubt it's true, but I wonder why it doesn't also go the other way around? E.g. if you were the only house in the neighborhood with a rooftop deck, then wouldn't the house stand out to buyers as the one to get?

Yeah but most people are lemmings. That’s why nobody buys any colors anymore for cars. It’s black white silver or grey. Anything else and you’re just asking to take a spanking on depreciation.

I kind of think a neighbourhood++ house would sell better. It's kind of like buying a OEM+ build car where the common issues are taken care of and it's a better than stock example. I would pick a house that's slightly nicer than the ones around me maybe it's just me :pokerface:

That's full of shit actually. It's BS that the dealers are pushing because they want to order less variations. It's been documented that colours are sell quicker.

@hondaracer
My understanding is that outside vancouver, it’s much cheaper/easier/quicker to get permits and if you use buddy guy builders you can achieve $200/sqft. But just beware the costcutting shit they pull hidden behind the drywall.

Is it a lot cheaper to reuse the old foundation or not worthwhile and start from scratch?

school's school IMO. I've done elementary here, HS in another province, post secondary in 3 diff provinces. Your kid(s) can be bright or may be struggle, you're going to have to deal with it regardless of location. I have 1 years ahead of the curve, 1 years behind (all good now though). both ended the same - I had to pay $ for tutoring outside of the public school system: 1 to give confidence/keep up, 1 to keep them progressing (1 year he was cruising and tutoring other kids in class b/c teacher didn't give a shit on him as he was so advanced and learned nothing).

moral of the story, you may need to spend $ to invest on your kid(s) education regardless of location, my 2 cents anyway...

now i know why couples with kids are so poor and those without have all the toys :okay:

i feel like this should be in the parenting thread instead :lol

If you're just going to build the same house everyone else has why even build? Obviously don't go too over the top but if I'm going through all that hassle there should be some benefit to it.

Only reason we are reusing the foundation is due to bylaws. We can build .75, whereas a new build would be .60fsr (previously .70). A remodel lets us use every square inch. With the city taking away square footage from the house for my larger garage, every little bit is needed. I doubt there is any cost savings at all. New footings need to be added etc etc.



I think that’s a smart move building aspects of a house similar to others if you plan on selling. Custom homes will always be custom homes to the builder. Slightly awkward to everyone else. A spec homes will be cheaper too! We are going to have some things in our house that if we were to resell people would be like “why did they do this.” But it’s our priorities and wanted it that way… and my wife will never let us sell her childhood home. lol.

You can look into something like modular construction / prefab where most of the items are built in a warehouse and then assembled on site. Benefits are its usually better quality control and depending on who you go with, its cheaper.

Like i wanted to go with Bone Structure before (all steel framing, can erect (lol) a house in like 1-2 weeks once everything is ready) but the wife doesnt really like those super modern designs.

https://www.myhousedesignbuild.com/p...ure-vancouver/

There’s a time and place for modular, it’s not cheap, and quality can be hit or miss
There may be something to panelized, but costs more as well

They say it’s faster but they can’t speed up city permits
With Modular you’ll want to read in to the fine print on what you get for home owner warranty as well