Historical Cost Ranges, By Trade
All this talk about costs going up made me wonder. My company has been improving property for almost 20 years, and although the $PSF number is creeping up, I wanted to understand where the exposure was.
We went back and sorted our historical construction cost data for our distinctive homes to see what the relative weighting of the different trades were. Our data base was based on the approximately $125M of distinctive homes we have developed or project managed over the last ten years.
This is what we found:
Conclusion: finishes are what you have to watch. The two single biggest variables are cabinetry and casework, and finishes.
And in our business, where the dream is sold from the finishes in, but built from the inside out, I start to understand why it is so difficult sometimes to keep these jobs on-time and on-budget.
