I am in the process of building a home. All of the builders have given me a average rule of thumb of $55 per square foot. A basic three car garage will run in the $44k range. Most are 24x34

We built a 2 car 2-story workshop with a 2 car garage door and we paid $38,000 and that was with can lights, powder room, and wall mount heat & air.

I had a garage 26 x 30 built last summer for $25000.00. Contractor did excavation,concrete slab, all steel building with man door, insulation, two windows, and two garage doors. Electrical was done by myself, about $1000.00 in material, and trenching.

Am completing a 24 x 34 right now (metro Charlotte, NC) with vinyl siding and brick facade on partial slab and crawl with private office. Gareage area suited for 3 car storage or 2 car storage and game room. Concrete work with foundation, crawl, waterproofing, infill (140 yds of fly ash), compaction testing, 6" concrete slab, stud walls 16 OC, 200-amp 6 circuit electrical, architectural shingles, siding and brick total of $30K or $37/sf. I still have to finish interior walls to my specs.

If you are in this area and need a good link to a contractor, post it here

thecorvetteguy, We are building in the metro Charlotte area and are interested in a contractor for a garage. I would appreciate the link.

I'm building a 24x26" bermed into the hillside with full concrete below and living quarters above. I'm approaching $100/sf and still have the interior trim to go. $20K in excavation and $18K in concrete was necessary because of site conditions. Normal site prep and foundation would be one-tenth of that. I also have a solar-tube in the bath, an air exchanger, a 225A service with 240V up and down, and some other extras. It is, of course, the "little" extras that add up fastest.

Buy a copy of the "Means Cost Estimator" from your local mega-hardware store. It's used by contractors to bid on projects. It us updated yearly and contains regional calculations for different parts of the US. My concrete sub was within a few dollars of the Means estimator. The roofer was high, and I told him. He dropped his bid $1,000 just based on me saying he was $1,000 high.

My guess would be that you won't get under $50/sf unless you do a lot of the work yourself and keep things simple.

Mark

Wanted to say thanks to everyone for their responses. We've gotten a few quotes but are very disheartened at the lack of response we've been getting from builders in our area. I can't believe that in over a month I've only been able to get two out of six responses. Those who have responded have given me quotes that are more than the cost of the original house. (One came in with 165k!!)

At any rate, I've given up the idea of any type of enclosed connection to the house, as well as storage space upstairs in the garage. Just too darn expensive. Three car garage, good size workshop area is all we're looking to do now with electric and a plumbing rough in. Anyone know a decent contractor in Northern MD? Have cash will travel :)

I'm wondering if the people on the post from Charlotte could pass along the names of the contractors they worked with on their projects. I'm in the process of having a 2 car garage addition quoted and would love to know who did those projects so I could contact them.

Probably a long shot, but does anyone know a contractor that would do a similar project in central Mass? I would love to get it done for less than $50/sq foot!

These prices just amaze me.

We just built a new house. We added an attached 44' x 26' drive-in workshop with 10' high, 12' wide doors in both ends, insulated and fully finished inside, for about $50K over the price of the house and garage alone. That included a metal roof, cement board siding, four high quality casement windows, one interior door, and a separate 200 amp sub-panel. There is only 26 feet of common wall on one side.

It worked out to just over $43 sf.

Finding contractors in your area is easy,they are all over the internet, just do a small search and you should find what you are looking for.
http://www.yellowpages.com/charlotte-nc/building-contractors

Below is a garage building guide that will help you with the cost of every step of the process.

Hope this helps

Here is a link that might be useful: garage building guide

I live in Oregon and I've been qouoted about $80/sq. foot for a garage/shop with a bonus room with bath over. Seems high. I realize this discussion was started back in '07 but does anyone know how much the going rate is for something like this. We dream of having it done for $40K but have been told expect it to be closer to $60-70. Thoughts?

I would like to build a garage in the Seattle WA area and am not sure of the cost. This wold be an attached garage to an existing house Let me know.

After reading the posts I'm still not sure if I have a handle on cost differences between adding a detached or attached garage/shop. I haven't nailed down what I'm going to do yet. I currently have small shop (inadequate) in the back of an oversized two car attached garage. The garage is on the left side of the house. I'm considering extending out toward the street with two doors again facing the street. I'm also considering extending out for a three car with right side facing doors. A third consideration is adding a single car garage with shop to the right side of the house. The first two options allow me to turn the old space into half shop half game room.
I'd love to get a ball park figure on all three to see the impact on pricing. In any case I will be doing the electrical and the interiors. I hope I have'nt jumped off topic here.

@chudimac Can you please give me info on who you used

@chudimac
@kare7

I am also interested to know who you hired for your Central NC build.

Thanks!

I currently have a 2600 square foot garage w/about 1700 sq ft additional on the second floor. My father in law built it 30 years ago. I can't believe how much it would cost to replace it at current prices! In fact the county doesn't allow detached garages this size anymore.

I found a lot of information about the cost of building a garage here, http://www.costevaluation.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-build-a-garage/