How Long Does It Take To Build A House?
Wondering how long it might take you to build a home? Well, here's an overview of traditional stick frame construction.
Transcript:
Hey, we're going to talk about how long does it take to build a house? I get asked this all the time. A lot of people are surprised at how long it takes, but we'll sort of go through the process. And we'll try to do that quickly. Also going to go through the process because some people may be thinking, well, I'm going to buy a house, and, it's halfway built but I don't really know how long it's going to take until it's done. Well, if you use the tips that I give you in this video, then you'll be able to sort of project about when they'll be able to be done just by looking at the information that we go over here.
If you like this video, don't forget, subscribe to my channel. I need more subscribers to keep the content coming. But hopefully, we'll do this nice and quick and easy, so One remind people that building a house is not easy. So it's a custom project, even if they have stock housing, floor plans, even if they're building at a neighborhood of 200 houses.
It's still not that easy and in other parts of the country I'm in Massachusetts, it can go faster. A lot of that is simply because they build bigger neighborhoods and they get into sort of a manufacturing mentality, but in this part of the world even if they're building a fairly large development, They have a hard time, breaking the five-month barrier, and we're going to see why. A couple of the reasons why stuff usually gets delayed, is because cities and towns are involved, right? And they don't necessarily do everything exactly when the builder needs it done? And homeowners a lot of times caused delays. I know when I've helped people, buy new construction, I've had to remind them constantly about the kinds of things that they need to order to make sure that the building is not stopped.
Again, i'm going to remind everyone that this is, you know, my overview for a stick frame, built house, okay? Not modular construction, which doesn't really save that much time, but It's a stick-frame built house which is the majority of the construction around here, an ideal situation and you know it just sort of assumes that everything happens when it's supposed to happen. The first thing you got to do is you're going to take a big hole of the ground - you got to put in a foundation, right? That takes in and of itself about a week, but generally, you have to let the concrete dry too. So they used to let the concrete dry for weeks and weeks and weeks before they start to build on it. But today, they don't today. They, they pretty much start framing the house as soon as they feel like, it'll hold a nail. They get right into it and then they frame it and a lot of people think that the framing is what takes the longest period of time, but it doesn't it can happen incredibly fast. The framers around here are generally really good and they just tend to move right along especially if they've got a good plan. But after it's framed, you've got to make it weather tight.
You know especially around here. You know we get a lot of rain. Rain isn't going to speed anything up. So the first thing you want to start doing is putting roof on putting that siding on putting the windows on and once it's weather tight, then you can get the other contractors in there. The electric the plumbing (contractors) and they can do what's called the rough install. Okay. So they don't put in any of the fixtures, but they run the plumbing and they run all the wires that are going to go behind the walls. No switches. But, Again all the plumbing and wiring that was behind the wall. This used to take a little bit longer but today with PEX you can do it really quick and most of the time. If you can ideally, you're going to try to get the plumber's in the electricians in there, as soon as it's dry and safe to do so. Now after that, everything's got to stop and pretty much everything needs to stop because the town has to come out and do an inspection and it's called the rough inspection, which is why i've called it here, you know, the rough phase even though the plumbers really don't call it that, so, and then we get to the next (phase). Oh yeah, so we're not done. So once the rough inspection is signed off by the town, then you have then the builder can go ahead and insulate.
This does not take that long, i've seen them insulate, a fairly large house in about two days, takes longer if you're going to use foam cell installation, but if you're going to use the regular pink stuff, which is still code, most places it's a week, you know, and it's really quick. But the problem is is as soon as that installation is done. You're going to stop again, and there's another inspection. So, in the reason is because the step that's after this is drywall, you can't cover up the insulation before the inspection has has seen it, right? So To do the rough (inspection), they need to make sure that all the things that are important there like the electric is up to code. The plumbing is up to code. They need to make sure that that's OK. That's what they look at during the rough inspection. Once you start putting insulation and you cover up all the plumbing in the electric or a lot of it. Then they can't see it. And that's bad. So that's why they have to stop twice with the only intermediate step being insulation, but after that, we can start building the house again. Drywall and plaster that typically takes a week, but you do need to factor in a couple of extra days to make sure that the plaster dries. Then generally the finished carpenter goes in there and he puts in baseboard, he puts in only a crown molding. He does the wraps around the doors and the windows.
I mean, it's a week and that's if he's got a crew you know if it's kind of a two-man show, they usually work in two main crews and that can take longer. Once that's in, then you can start doing the cabinetry and believe it or not, that usually only takes about a week. Finished, carpentry overlaps, a little there today, for most of the new construction and then everyone can get in there and start putting in the sinks and things. They can start putting in the showers and that's called the, the final kitchen and bath, right? So you add all that up together and it's another five weeks going by. Let's see. And then, to finish up. You've pretty much had everything done, but now you've got to have the painters in there. You really can't do anything else. If you're trying to paint the house quickly, he's got to do the baseboard. He's got to do the walls, they got drop cloths everywhere, Some of these things you can do in in a slightly different order, but for the most part, the painters are in there before the flooring guy is going there and that keeps the paint off the floor. So, but you can do it the other way. Flooring can take a week. It takes longer, if you're going to do in-place, hardwood flooring, instead of pre-finished, But I mean you can generally carpet three bedrooms a day with a good crew, like that does not take very long. There's a lot of flooring that you can put in in a few hours. So if you have enough guys, it's pretty easy to do the flooring for an entire house in less than a week.
Then you're going to stop again because basically good news is the house is done but the town still isn't done with the house. They need to issue a certificate of occupancy or a CO for short. And that means that they've got to come out and make sure that the final plumbing looks good. The final electrical looks good that they don't see anything unsafe. When they do that, final inspection. And so once that that is signed off, you know, then there's a few days while the builder finishes the punch list and then he can close. So, You add all of that up. And it turns out that this came out to 13 weeks, which is four months, which is absolutely the single fastest way you can probably build a house around here. The kinds of delays that people run into again you know, if they're ready to install a kitchen cabinets but the kitchen cabinets have it arrived. Well then everyone's got to sit around and wait for that to happen. I mean, if you think about the things that you, you know, you you can you start painting the kitchen, Or putting the flooring in without the kitchen cabinets, you really can't. And so the builder doesn't do a lot of (those type of) things. Generally he he prefers that when the subs go in there that have access to the house and they can do it as fast as possible, right? But that generally means giving them complete access and that means that they don't do a lot of partial stuff, if something gets delayed, same thing with the electrical, I mean, you can't, if you order a specialty fixtures to do, You know, nice lamps and pendants and everything else. And they're not, and they don't come in. I mean, even if it's just a kitchen pendant lamp, He can't get the final sign off. You know, the builder can't get the final signature from the town until every single fixture is in. Again, that's around here. You know, again, I'm just being You know I'm sure in other parts of the world, this is not true but around here they tend to take that kind of stuff, very seriously. So That's how long it takes to build a house. I hope that you like this. If you enjoyed this, don't forget to subscribe. And if you're thinking about building house, give me a call. I can probably help. So uh and that's it. Talk to you later. Bye.
