I get that the answer to this is going to be “It depends,” but I’m just looking for a general idea. Assume the following:
This takes place in the US.
This is just a regular, run-of-the-mill housing contract, where a customer hires a contractor to build a house on a plot of land. No pre-fab homes, no competing team of builders next door to see who can build it the fastest, etc.
Building codes are followed to the letter, but sudden and last-minute paperwork hassles can be expected.
Under these conditions, how long is it, on average, from the day the contractor shows up to clear the land until the day the homeowner has his keys and can pull up the U-Haul truck?
Best case, three months. That’s a big contractor with specialized crews. They often stock builder grade supplies like tubs, sinks, faucets. They get a better price buying 20 tubs then you can buying only one.
Try to find a new subdivision. Theres usually one or maybe a handful of builders putting up houses there. It’s more efficient to build several homes close together. Crew can jump from one house to another as needed.
It can take longer with smaller size contractors. They have to sub out work they don’t do. But it shouldn’t be over 5 to 6 months.
I know a guy that did 80% of the work on houses he built. Took him 8 months to build a house. But most of the labor profit was his to keep. He just recently retired.
Also (and sorry, I know this isn’t your question) but if you are truly considering building, don’t rule out factory-built modular homes. These are highly customizable, go up much faster with lower labor costs, and the end result will probably last better than a stick built home. Here is one builder and some of the styles they can do.
(I don’t have any financial interest in this or any other factory that builds homes, but if I ever have to build a new home, that’s how I would do it.)
Roddy
Another option is to buy a house already under construction. That still leaves the option of picking appliances, sinks, tubs, floor coverings, paint colors and so on. It’s a custom home without the hassle of planning the whole build.
Builders thee days use a lot of prefab. Roof trusses are prefab. You’d have to find a really old school builder that still stick framed a roof. Engineered wall panels are getting popular. They already have the insulation and drywall installed from the factory. They are the future. But a lot of builders still frame and insulate their own walls.
My dad used to build custom houses, with a 3-4 man crew.
Building a house involves a lot of steps:
[ol]
[li]Obtaining permits[/li][li]Clearing the lot[/li][li]Grading the lot[/li][li]Digging and pouring the footing for the foundation[/li][li]Laying the foundation[/li][li]Framing[/li][li]Roofing[/li][li]Rough Electrical[/li][li]Plumbing[/li][li]HVAC[/li][li]Flooring[/li][li]Sheetrock[/li][li]Installing fixtures[/li][li]Painting[/li][li]Siding[/li][li]Landscaping[/li][/ol]
Many of these steps will be performed by subcontractors and all will need to be inspected, which involves a lot of delays. Bad weather will delay many of these steps.
About 6 months, ± 2 would be typical, IIRC although the vast majority of the work will be completed within a 2-3 month span.
I should have clarified my 3 to 4 month estimate was for a new subdivision. Lots are already cleared and graded, water and other utilities are available. The builder just builds the foundation and puts up the house.
Clearing land and getting it graded for a house can take awhile and is expensive. Probably a month at least if theres trees to knock down. Theres a lot of debris to haul off. Fill dirt may need to be trucked in.
You have to figure 6 months minimum. Prefab, modular, and panelized housing can go up a lot faster, but as mentioned above, clearing and grading land and getting a foundation laid takes time. Here in the Northeast you plan to have most of the construction season, say April through September or October taken up to build from scratch.
It does depend on a lot of things though. A small simple stick frame house on a slab using prefab roofing trusses can go up pretty fast.
A house can be built very quickly if the permitting delays are managed well. You can get a very large custom house up in 3 or 4 months. It usually takes about 6, though. In Atlanta, we had to wait almost a month for the tree permits alone.
However, different parts take more or less time. Form/final surveys were generally somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 months, which means from the point when they put the foundation form up to when we were doing the final survey of the lot and house, was about 2 months.
I know this because in college, I was a surveyor part time, and we did a lot of form and final surveys, and in a lot of cases, the form surveys we did in June were the finals we were doing in August. Once the form’s up and surveyed, the foundation goes in pretty fast, and the framing is done really fast as well- like 2-3 weeks at most. The majority of the time is the interior and the exterior stuff, and the final finish stuff. (we’d see forms we surveyed being worked on as well.
I wasn’t ever on the initial surveys to lay out subdivisions (was for roads though), but I do know that if you buy in a wooded area, the grading/clearing will take a lot longer. If it was a relatively clear area, they do the grading/clearing en masse with heavy equipment for the whole subdivision at once, which they can’t do if they intend to save a lot of trees.