The True Cost of Building a Home Today

Everyone knows housing is not exactly cheap. For many people, the decision to build a new home is one of the most significant financial decisions they’ll make in their lives. Building a new home from the ground up gives you freedom and the ability to customize your dream home to your exact specifications, but it comes with a pretty major price tag.

The National Association of Home Builders recently released the results of a survey of 4,000 home builders, breaking down exactly how much each stage of construction on a new home costs. Overall, construction costs made up 64 percent of the price of a new home built in 2024, averaging $428,215 per house. The rest of the sales price is made up of overhead, general expenses and other financial aspects like financing, marketing costs and the sales commission.

So, what exactly goes into that $428,215? Here, we’ll break down the average cost of building a home by component, examining the essential stages of new construction and how they all contribute to the expenses of a house build.

FAMILY HANDYMAN

Site Work

Before there’s a house, there’s a site. In 2024, site work contributed an average of $32,719 to the cost of building a new home. A lot goes into preparing a site to be turned into a home, from engineering and architecture costs to building permit fees. Site work doesn’t stop when the build starts, either, as more inspections are required throughout the construction process. Still, site work is a fairly small piece of the pie, making up 7.6 percent of new home construction costs.

Foundation and Framing

Foundation and framing give you the bones and base of a home, so you want to make sure they’re done absolutely right. On average, the NAHB reports that framing a house cost an average of $70,982 in 2024. Foundations were less expensive, averaging out to $44,748 per new house. Taken together, pouring a foundation and building the frame contributed over a quarter of the total cost of new home construction.

Major System Rough-Ins

Of course, a house is more than just a concrete pad and a wooden frame. Every modern home requires three major systems: plumbing, electrical, and HVAC. Each of these systems cost about the same in 2024, averaging around $27,ooo. Combined, the initial cost of installing these systems was $82,319 — and that’s not including any appliances or fixtures.

Interior and Exterior Finishes

So you’ve got a house with a foundation, framing and all of its major systems… now you just need to finish the thing. Finishing an exterior was actually one of the less expensive stages of new home construction in 2024, averaging $57,510 for work that includes exterior wall finishes and window and door installation.

Interior finishes, though, were by far the most expensive category in the survey. This makes sense because so many aspects of construction fall into the category of “interior finishes.” Insulation, drywall, painting, cabinets, appliances and more all combined for an average cost of $103,391. That’s just under a quarter of the total cost of building a new home, which is all tied up into one stage of construction. Cabinets were the most expensive aspect of the interior finish, averaging about $20,000 per new home.

Final Steps of Construction and “Other” Expenses

After all of that comes the final steps of construction. This is truly a “finishing touches” stage that sees the completion of projects like the pouring of the driveway, porch and patio construction and general site cleanup. Luckily, this stage was the least expensive on average, totaling $27,710 per new home. The NAHB also included a final “Other” category in the survey that included $8,835 in costs that could not be directly attributed to the other categories.

Total Sales Price Breakdown

So that’s where the $428,215 in new home construction costs come from. Unfortunately, that’s still only about two-thirds of the total sales price. Once you add in all of the other financial considerations like financing, marketing and an 11 percent profit for the company building the home, the average total sales price of a newly constructed home in 2024 was $665,298. If you’re thinking about building a house from the ground up, make sure you consider every little thing that will go into the cost before setting off on your dream home-building journey.

Source:

NAHB, “Cost of Constructing a Home- 2024” (2024)