Calcatrice cockatrice logoCalcatrice.
Est. 2026
The ledger for
expensive decisions
Calculate the cost before you commit

Home Projects · Startup costs

How much does it cost to build a house?

Estimate what a builder will charge to put up a house, an ADU, or an addition, using the contract prices homeowners actually agreed to pay. This is what the construction costs. It is not what the land costs, and we keep those separate on purpose.

The "average cost to build a house" you have read everywhere is the wrong average. Census publishes both. The mean contract price is $576,500. The median is $404,000. The mean sits 43% above the median, because a handful of very large custom houses drag it up, and it describes almost nobody. We use the median throughout. Second thing, and it is the one that wrecks budgets: this figure excludes land. It is the contract price agreed with a general contractor by an owner who already owns the lot. If you still have to buy the land, that is a separate cheque, and there is a box for it above.

§ 01 Your numbers

The cost data covers new single-family houses. An ADU or a stand-alone addition is priced off the small-house end of that same data, which is our judgement call, not Census's.
Census stops at nine divisions. There is no free federal figure for your state or your city, and anyone who shows you one is modelling it.
The US median new contractor-built house is about 2,400 sq ft. We do not go below 800, because the data effectively does not either.
Not a made-up finish multiplier. These are the actual quartiles of what people in your division paid, so 'budget' means a quarter of real builds came in at or under that.
Leave at zero if you already own the lot, which is the situation the cost data describes. The contract price NEVER includes land, so add yours here.
Estimated cost
$411,768

Typical range $316,608 – $536,064

  • Construction contract (what the builder bills)$411,768
  • Land$0
  • Total$411,768
See next steps →

§ 02 What the number means

Your cost per square foot$172
Construction contract$411,768
Land (never in the contract)$0
US median (Census, 2025)$171.57/sq ft

Census does not document whether the contract price covers site work, a well, a septic system, the driveway, landscaping, appliances, architect's fees or permits. We probed the data and could not settle it. That ambiguity is probably the single biggest reason a real quote differs from this figure, and we would rather say so than pretend precision we do not have.

Where the money goes

Construction contract (what the builder bills)$411,768

Recommended next steps

Some links below are affiliate links. If you buy through them, Calcatrice may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. We only suggest tools that fit your result, and a company can't pay to show up here.

The median band. Ask every builder in writing what the contract price includes, especially site work, well, septic and driveway. Census does not document it, and neither do most contracts.

By the numbers

  • Census (2025): the median contract price for a new contractor-built single-family house is $171.57 per square foot, and the table says in its own header that this excludes the value of the improved lot. This is a price homeowners actually agreed to pay a builder, not a wage, not an index, and not a survey by someone selling construction.
  • Small houses cost MORE per square foot, not less. In the Census microdata a house under 1,200 sq ft runs about $200 per square foot against $157 for a 3,000 to 4,000 sq ft house, roughly 27 percent more. Kitchens, bathrooms, mechanicals and permits are near-fixed costs spread over less floor. Almost every cost guide online quotes one flat rate at any size, which badly underprices small builds and ADUs.
  • An unrelated method lands in the same place. ICC's Building Valuation Data, the table that jurisdictions adopt to set permit fees, puts an R-3 one-and-two-family dwelling of Type V-B wood-frame construction at $175.92 per square foot as of February 2026. That is 2.5 percent from the Census figure, and the two have nothing to do with each other.
  • Spec houses are cheaper per square foot than yours will be. Census puts new houses SOLD at $154.79 per square foot against $171.57 for contractor-built. Production builders repeat the same designs at scale. You hiring a builder for a one-off cannot buy at that rate, so do not benchmark against the price of a new-build estate house.

What is sourced here, and what is ours. The headline is not our model. The US median of $171.57 per square foot, the four regional figures, and the $404,000 median contract price are all published by the Census Bureau, from its Survey of Construction. We derive nothing to get them. These are ours, and you should treat them as weaker: the nine division figures and the quartiles (Census publishes only four broad regions, so we computed the divisions from its microdata, n=2,301 houses); the size adjustment (the gradient is measured, but assuming it applies cleanly on top of your division is our assumption); and above all the ADU and addition mode. Census measures houses, not ADUs. An ADU shares a lot and utilities, has awkward access, and is permitted differently. We price it off the small-house end of real house data because that is the closest honest anchor, and we stop at 800 sq ft because the sample runs out there: 10 houses below 800, none below 700. If you want a 600 sq ft ADU priced, no free federal source can do it, and anyone who claims to is guessing.

Sources: US Census Bureau, Survey of Construction: contract price per square foot (2025) · US Census Bureau, Survey of Construction: median and average contract price (2025) · US Census Bureau, SOC public-use microdata and codebook · ICC Building Valuation Data, February 2026 (code body; a model, not a measurement) · BLS PPI, inputs to construction industries excluding capital investment, labor and imports, series WPUIP230000 (2026 trend only)

How this estimate is calculated

  • The cost is the contract price a homeowner agreed with a general contractor to build a new single-family house on land the owner already owned. It EXCLUDES land, by definition. It is not a wage, not a materials index, and not a builder's advertised rate.
  • We use the MEDIAN, never the mean. Census's own mean contract price is 43 percent above its median, because very large custom houses pull it up. We also drop the rows Census top-and-bottom-coded for disclosure, which otherwise understate the smallest size band by about 18 percent: those rows have artificially inflated square footage, so their cost per square foot comes out too low, and they pile up in exactly the small-house bins an ADU sits in.
  • Figures are in 2025 dollars, the latest complete year. Construction input prices are still climbing in 2026: the BLS index of inputs to construction industries (series WPUIP230000) averaged about 5 percent higher over January to May 2026 than over the same months of 2025. So a build starting today will likely price above this. We do NOT escalate the number by that index, for two reasons. It measures inputs, and it says so in its own title: it excludes capital investment, labour and imports, while the contract price you sign is materials plus labour plus overhead plus the builder's margin. And 2026 is not a complete year yet. Treat the 5 percent as a directional warning, not a multiplier.
  • The nine division figures are our computation from Census microdata; Census itself publishes only four broad regions. Sample sizes in New England and Mountain are thin, so those two carry genuinely wide error bars and should be read as a rough centre of gravity.
  • The size gradient does not fall forever, and we will not pretend it does. Cost per square foot drops as houses get bigger, right up to the 3,000 to 4,000 sq ft band ($157 per sq ft), and then it ticks back UP above 4,000 sq ft ($163 per sq ft), because houses that big tend to carry expensive finishes. That reversal is in the measured data, so we ship it rather than smooth it. It does mean the total steps up as you cross 4,000 sq ft. We use measured size bands rather than a fitted curve, so the total also steps, rather than glides, at every band edge. Read the output as the centre of a band, not as a precise function of your square footage.
  • We apply no basement premium. Houses with basements do look 14 percent more expensive nationally, but once you control for which division they are in, the effect flips sign. Basements cluster in expensive northern states, so the 'basement premium' is mostly a map, and we will not sell it to you as a construction cost.

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to build a house?
The US median is $171.57 per square foot, so a typical 2,400 sq ft house runs about $412,000 to build. That comes from the Census Bureau's Survey of Construction, and it is the contract price homeowners actually agreed to pay a builder in 2025. Two things it does not include: the land, and any change orders you sign later. Census separately puts the median total contract at $404,000, which lands within 2 percent of the same answer.
Does the cost to build a house include the land?
No, and this is the mistake that ruins budgets. The Census figure is the CONTRACT price, which applies to homeowners who already owned their lot and hired a general contractor. Census says so in the table header: it excludes the value of the improved lot. The trap is that Census also publishes a SALES price for new houses, and the raw sales price does include the lot. Take the houses Census sold in 2025, divide the full sales price by floor area, and you get about $190 per square foot. Net the lot back out, as Census does in its own published table, and the same houses come to $154.79. Same houses, same year: the only difference is the lot. So the lot is about 19 percent of that $190 figure, and leaving it in inflates the true build cost per square foot by about 23 percent. Those are two views of one gap, not two different facts, and it is worth being careful about which one you are quoting. If you are comparing two per-square-foot numbers and one looks suspiciously high, this is usually why: someone has left the land in.
Is it cheaper to build a smaller house?
Cheaper in total, yes. Cheaper per square foot, no, and it is the opposite of what most people assume. In the Census data a house under 1,200 sq ft costs about $200 per square foot, while a 3,000 to 4,000 sq ft house costs about $157. That is roughly 27 percent more per foot for the small one. A kitchen, two bathrooms, a furnace, a service panel and a permit cost about the same whether you spread them over 1,000 feet or 3,000. Almost every online cost guide quotes one flat rate regardless of size, which makes small builds look far cheaper than they are.
How much does it cost to build an ADU?
Honestly: no free federal source measures ADUs, so treat every number you see, including ours, with suspicion. What we can say is that Census's smallest real houses, 800 to 1,200 sq ft, ran about $200 per square foot in the microdata. Carrying that size gradient onto the published US median is what the calculator above does, and it puts a 900 sq ft ADU around $196 per square foot, or roughly $176,000, before land, utilities or permits. We will not price anything under 800 sq ft, and here is exactly why: in the pooled sample of 2,301 contractor-built houses there are only 10 below 800 sq ft, none at all below 700, and the smallest house in the file is 720 sq ft. A 500 sq ft ADU is simply off the end of the data, and any figure for it would be extrapolation dressed up as a statistic. Note too that an ADU is not a small house: access is usually cramped, you are tying into existing utilities, and permitting is its own adventure. Those push costs up, not down, so treat the $200 per square foot as a floor rather than a forecast.
Can I use this for a kitchen remodel, a basement finish or a second storey?
No, and we would rather turn the question down than make a number up. This data covers NEW single-family houses only. ICC, whose valuation table we cite as a cross-check, is explicit that it does not apply to alterations or repairs to existing buildings, because the scope varies too much to be meaningful. It does carve out one exception, which is an addition that is essentially a stand-alone building attached to an existing one, and that is the only kind of addition this calculator will touch. Anything that tears into your existing structure is outside it.
Why is my builder's quote so much higher than this?
Usually one of four reasons. Your land needs work, and Census does not document whether site work, a well, a septic system or the driveway sit inside that contract price, so assume they may not. Your finishes are above the median, which is what the upper-quartile option above is for. Your build is in an expensive metro, and Census only resolves to nine broad divisions, so a coastal city is averaged in with rural counties. Or it is simply 2026: the BLS index of inputs to construction industries is running about 5 percent above the same months of 2025, and these are 2025 dollars. A quote well above the median is not automatically a rip-off, but it is worth asking a builder to itemise exactly which of those four it is.
Why does the Pacific division look so cheap?
It surprises people, and it is real rather than an error. Pacific comes out at $174 per square foot, below Middle Atlantic and well below New England. The reason is who is in the sample: contractor-built houses on land the owner already holds are mostly rural and exurban Washington, Oregon and inland California, not coastal custom builds. Census also trims the most expensive few percent of houses within each division for privacy, which clips exactly the expensive California tail. So the figure is right for what it measures, and it is not a San Francisco build cost. We would rather explain that than quietly inflate the number.

Related calculators

Solar panel cost
Calculator
Window replacement cost
Calculator