Hey Sarge,
Big congrats on making that pension work for ya!
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When we built our standard frame-construction home in the far burbs of Chicago in 1996, I spoke with a couple of architects to see how pricing goes. To hire an architect (in 1996) and construct a basic 2000 sq ft home, the entry level was about $100 sq ft. It only goes up from there. He said that we might be able to knock it back to $80 if we take the reins as the GC and do some of the sub-work ourselves as sweat equity.
That's when we realized the bank acct and cash flow wouldn't cooperate...right when a friend of mine recommended we look into modular housing.
We did a 1500 sq ft modular cape cod and came in around $65. A couple years later, we converted the unfinished attic area to 950 more sq ft and the overall avg cost wound up at about $56 per sq ft.
I'm not pushing modular housing on you; only trying to share the comparative costs for the outskirts of Chi-town some 13+ years ago.
This is a fairly large modular mfgr in the midwest that was on our short list when we were looking. We ultimately went with a different mfgr, but these folks are kinda unique in that they work factory direct with the homeowner. They do pretty much ALL the sub-work, except the foundation. Many/most of the modular manufacturers work thru home building contractors. Design Homes has a loft model that has always interested me as a nice vacation home.
