Price Per Square Foot

Ask any builder around the country what question makes him crazy and you’ll find agreement coast to coast. It’s the same old question buyers have been asking for centuries, “How much do you charge per square foot.”

As a custom home builder who has had his fill of fielding these square foot questions, Tom Stephani, president of Crystal Lake – based Custom Construction Concepts, Inc., has a quick comeback. He feels that answering the how much per square foot question is like a car salesman trying to compare a Ford with a Ferrari. Although the two might be the same size, they are very different vehicles. In the same vein, Stephani believes a builder cannot give an off-the-cuff quote on a custom built home when the price is dependent on an almost infinite number of variables with only one of them being size.

Stephani’s Ford versus Ferrari analogy underscores the main reason why he is driven to help fellow builders avoid answering the price per square foot question. That’s why Stephani educates custom home buyers to the many variables involved in building a home-greatly reducing the risk of a builder running into that dreaded question.

Stephani is a builder who firmly believes that an educated customer is the best customer and will go to great lengths to instruct buyers on the finer points of custom home building. He has found that furnishing a pat answer to the price per square foot question ultimately damages a builder’s credibility and destroys a buyer’s trust.

Stephani also stresses to customers that the type of home, whether it’s ranch, tri-level, two-story, and bi-level, can come into play when trying to compute the bottom line. The style of home also needs to be taken into consideration and is not factored into a pat price per square foot quote.

Stephani says that this is the reasoning he presents to prospective clients who broach the price per square foot question. He explains that he cannot give a price per square foot breakdown until he has the entire list of specifications for the home. This approach usually has the two parties working together for a common goal instead of bickering over budget overruns based on a hasty quotation.

Stephani hopes to strike another chord with builders and potential buyers when he states, “You should choose a builder as you would a doctor-because you want the very best. Now, would you seek a consultation with a doctor by asking how much he charges per pound?”

But, just as a doctor’s misdiagnosis can pave the way towards ill-will between doctor and patient, Stephani believes that a hasty price quote per square foot can have similar repercussions for home builders.