Arthur · 114 units
Location: Vancouver, WA
Farragut, Kenton, Ashley, Fircrest, Livingstone
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View the projectClient Story · Seattle, WA
Quoted $725K by builders. She's building it herself for $461K.
$725K+
What builders quoted
$461K
What she's building for
$171
Her cost per sq ft
100%
Inspections passed first time
Reina bought land in Seattle and pushed the permits through on her own. Then the quotes came in at around $400 per square foot, $725,000 to $800,000 for a 2,400 sq ft home, far past her budget. Inside BuildUp she realized she could run the build herself, and do it for about $171 per square foot.
She had the land and the permits. Then every builder quoted $400 a square foot.
Reina did the entire permitting process on her own before she ever found us. Then the quotes arrived: $725,000 to $800,000 for her 2,400 sq ft home, and one company wanted $60,000 just to handle the permit she had already secured herself. She was stuck, and the custom quotes were quoting away her equity.
The same build for $461K
Inside BuildUp she saw the real numbers: owner-run builds land in the $171 per square foot range in her market. That put her exact build at about $461,000 instead of $725,000 or more. Same house, same specs, hundreds of thousands of dollars kept as her equity instead of a builder's margin.
What actually made the difference
Contractor sourcing, budgets, scheduling, and the contracts we hand our members. When subs asked her for deposits, she knew not to pay one: signed contract first, 10% after the first inspection passes, then staged payments as work verifies. That structure alone protected her from getting burned.
Zero experience. 60% done. Every inspection passed first time.
Reina had no construction background. Three and a half months after permit approval she was 60% through the build, on pace to finish in four to five months, with every inspection passed on the first attempt. Her rating of the difficulty: a 1 out of 10. And she is already scouting land for the next one, with townhomes on the list after that.
“I'm building this for about $461,000 compared to being quoted $725,000 to $800,000 to do this exact same build. So I'm saving hundreds of thousands.”
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