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Beginning a new custom home or a renovation is a huge undertaking and can be quite overwhelming, especially when money is involved! It is often the biggest purchase in people lives.

We have made this blog post to help potential new custom home clients in Ontario get a sense of how much it will cost to build their dream project.

In order to help people create an accurate Budget for new custom home or Passive House construction or renovation projects, Coolearth has created a simple excel worksheet to make transparent those costs and help create realistic budgets. The worksheet presents, at a high level, different items to consider. It can be used as a quick tool to provide a general understanding of how much a project will cost.

The more you can be informed, the more pleasant your journey of building your dream home will be.

Download a free budgeting worksheet to calculate how much a new custom home in Ontario will cost here.

We also want to include a few key things to keep in mind when preparing a budget or thinking about the cost of your dream home.

HST

HST is charged on new homes. On a $750,000 home HST equates to almost $100,000.

Basements

When you are preparing your budget be sure to include the square footage of a basement in the square footage of the home. For instance, in a 2,000 squre foot home with a 1,000 square foot basement. The square footage of the project is 3,000 sqft.

Contingency Allowance

A further consideration is the need for a contingency allowance. There are many moving parts in any building project, and sometimes unforeseen site conditions such as buried underground structures, extreme weather events, or other things happen which are beyond our control. Therefore we recommend a minimum contingency of 10-20% especially when starting out. As the project progresses you can lessen the contingency allowance as you gain more detailed pricing information and the design is refined.

Architects and Engineers

Be sure to include in the budget the Architect’s and Engineer’s fees, which might amount to 5-10% of the budget.

Some final things to consider:

• Net-zero/ passive homes generally price at $350-450/ sq. ft, compared to $250-350/ sq/ ft. for an average home. Different qualities and costs of finishing materials can dramatically impact the cost (i.e marble floor versus engineered wood).

• Land costs: Carrying costs for the property, lawyers and agent fees, building permits and property surveys/ reports.

• If you are renovating, that might mean finding a secondary, temporary dwelling.

We hope this helps! Please let us know if you have any questions.