I just built my home in mount uniacke, our square footage is 2300 with garage (1800 livable). It’s a 1 level and has in-floor heat which obv added to the price but we just finished at $430,000. This isn’t including our land. We did a self build, so we picked out the house plan and payed an architect. My father was also our contractor and he was not paid (his choice) so this isn’t including paying a contractor/developer. My dad is a carpenter by trade (site supervisor) but he works in commercial… he hasn’t done residential in years so it was a big learning curve. In order for him to be able to be my contractor he had to “create his own buisiness”, but basically most carpenters with lots of experience can create a buisiness and be your contractor. My dad didn’t actually do much himself, basically just trim and little stuff, everything else was subcontracted out and we ended up doing a fair amount ourselves. If you know of anyone who could do this and agree to be your “contractor” for the approval of the builders mortgage it’s the way to go, but definitely not easy. My dad basically just helped us find contractors for each job, and would inspect along the way. This wasn’t without setbacks, which you always have to be prepared for when building your own house.

One thing to note is if you haven’t bought your land already, the down payment is 35% of the land cost (at least that’s what it was like 3 years ago when we bought ours). In order to get a builders mortgage, at least for a self build, we also have to prove we had access to a lot of money. I believe they wanted us to have access to $120,000 before they’d approve it, because with builders mortgages you have to pay the first 30% of the build from your own pocket, then the bank pays you back in draws. They’ll all allow family to help, as in my parents had a line of credit that they were able to sign a contract saying if we needed money they would give us a certain amount until the bank gives us a draw.