We will be about 5% over - mainly bc of a select few upgrades. We were VERY juducious with these and really only upgraded where we knew we could not go back and change without a major overhaul (e.g windows) - things we could upgrade later we stayed within our allowance

We did stone remnants for the bath counters and that was a nice savings

for us it was the grading and landscaping that ended up being more than we thought - but I think of that as a seperate pile of money from the build

I like your prioritization / view on 'major overall' items in your budget. Think I'll follow that same logic. Thank you!

See my tale in your other thread abouth the church that had to abandon their basement plan, after the first dig of the backhoe.

THe biggest cause of budget overruns is right in the mirror. "We don't need to pay for an architect". "We're only doing this once, so let's go ahead with...." "But I WANT XYZ!"

Some clients are on firm budgets and need disipline, while others knowingly start low and plan to spend an unknown amount on changes and extras. Its best for the process, costs & schedule to know which. Clients with huge budgets and imaginations can (almost always) blow budgets quicker than disiplined lower budget clients.

Practical adivce

1. make sure your allowances are composed using real selections. Alternative is to contract with the builder to duplicate the finishes of an example home.

2. make prelim selections on Ferguson.home and had them to builder at pricing stage. (plumbing, appliances, lights, doors, hardware, etc)

3. make adjustments as needed (seek builders advice)

I did a whole house remodel, and mentally added 25% to the original budget. I came in very close in some areas, but I was much over estimates in others. One area that was significantly over the estimate was lighting. My designer warned me that my builder usually estimated low on lighting, and sure enough just one fixture was more than the entire lighting allowance. But I wanted what I wanted and so that extra expenditure was very deliberate. Same was true for cabinet hardware and door hardware (we needed dozens.) So I just ordered and paid for that separately on my own.

My designer also warned me that many people building / remodeling don't factor in the cost of window treatments. That was an eye opener as I hadn't counted on spending (low) five figures on shades, and that's only for 9 windows (although 4 of them are large.) (Haven't gotten to some of my other windows yet, and some will remain undressed.) Window treatments are likely not in a builder's bids / estimates, but you'll probably want some, at least in the bedrooms, as soon as you move in.

Oh, my, yes. Haven't even thought of that. I've seen many a new house with paper accordion shades that adhere to the window trim for longer than "just for a couple of months".

So much of the cost overruns depend on the building site and the complexity of the house design.
A relatively clear lot, not even necessarily small, and a simple house exterior will make estimates much more accurate.
I am building a house now, and because of a tricky lot, which needed a lot of tree removal, our site prep was 100% over budget. (However 3 different builders had similar initial numbers in our bidding process, so I do believe that once the subs got going it was more work than they realized.)
We also ended up having to pay the electric company to install 2 transformer boxes for our electricity because the run from the road was too long for one. That was a huge unexpected expense.
The level of detail on exterior trim, etc will require more materials and more labor time.
Like la la girl, we are trying to make materials choices based on how hard it would be to alter them down the line, as well as how much enjoyment we will really get from each choice.
For example, our architect specified cedar shakes on a small section of the house. The bid was over 4x the cost of just using the same metal on that space which will be in the rest of the roof. We decided that the shakes are absolutely not worth the cost difference. We will spend it on something that will have more of an impact for us ( or hopefully not have to spend that extra at all!)
Building right now is not for the faint of heart- prices are still rising, tariffs are adding costs, now fuel for transporting items…
But having pointed out all of that negative stuff, when I saw the progress on our build this weekend my feelings of excitement that things are finally taking shape were still greater than my feelings of budget worry.
Good luck on your build, it’s very exciting!

Another line item that is really expensive in our case is the Builders risk policy. We are paying that outside of the “house budget”
That is something you should ask about as insurance costs everywhere have risen dramatically.

oh my gosh yes - we also paid the utilities — and the electrical was about $600/mo over the winter bc of the blowers/heaters they were running to keep materials at temp etc - building now is for sure not for the feint of heart, and having enough cash on hand is super important

and yes dealing with window treatments now as @chicagoans smartly mentioned 🙈

And with a new build, it’s really not that much money to motorize shades/blinds. You will want to select your manufacturer in order to know the specs to get the electrical coordinated.

This wasn't a budget buster, but I did lose about $1k on some tile I ordered for our fireplace. I did a whole post about it here (link) but the TL/DR is that I didn't count on the variation of the tiles being as much as it turned out to be. I could have avoided it by paying more attention to the variation level (which for tiles is V1 on the low end and V4 on the high end) but I was lured in by the pretty marketing photo.

Just adding this in case someone is picking out tiles and has a certain look in mind. You can't always trust the marketing photos!

I roughly figured C$350 per sf. It's looking closer to C$550+ sf.

Credit unforseen soil conditions, framing repairs and delays turning a one year job into 21/2 years. (Let alone three years for a building permit.)

Here's a couple of doozies.

Construction w.c. C$8,618.09

Temporary construction and tree protection fencing C$14,926.47 (Not counting cost of removal and dump fees.)

@worthy reminds me... construction costs escalate over time at 1.25-1.75 CPI. There was significant inflation 2020-2023 so we're probably 50% higher than 2020. Decreases are rare. Always get current data from a builder.

And even more in the 51st state.

On the "plus" side, demand in the Toronto area has plunged, particularly for upper end homes. Great if you're building afresh. Not so much if you have inventory on hand.

Maybe Moose Jaw would be a better place to build?

It’s always the unexpected that gets you, so the contingency gets overrun so quickly. As we said to a builder once, it is our choice to upgrade something, we are not blaming you for that,,, but when the excavator starts the job, and then says “I was not expecting that” and walks away….that is actually your problem!

California got us before we started lol. There was some soft cost that got us early. For example, the water meter install had to be done before we could receive a building permit. Typically ~ $3 -5k, we had to pay ~18k. Permits in California cost us over 30k. Time - when the plans were submitted, approved and ground breaking, it was well over 1.5 years. Pricing changed on some of our design, some items were discontinued. Finally, I was totally under budget for landscaping. I wasn’t even close.

Don't have a lot of meetings.

I had a client that needed to reduce the budget for his new cottage. After each meeting we had to reduce the buget the budget went up.

If you enjoy the “hunt”, and I do, the scratch and dent appliance section can be a godsend. But, you do have to add in the lack of free delivery. It’s especially good for laundry machines, and fridges and stoves for ADUs or the bar in the basement. Open box lighting fixtures from the on line retailers can also save you a bundle, but you do need a long lead time for the hunt. search

@Theresa Peterson makes a very good point about the waste that can come with changing things down the line - I totally agree with that -

for me, the ”we can change it later” approach helps me be more decisive - I never seem to go back and actually change it but somehow thinking I could makes me feel better 😅 usually what happens is something that I think might bother me, ends up not being a big deal at all

We built in 2017 and our overages were unpredictable before hand. We needed extensive drainage and retaining blocks and gravel and who knows what far beyond what we thought we would during excavation because there is a stream under our home. While that all got sorted the price of lumber skyrocketed and our costs for lumber went uk about 30%. It sucked but wasn’t really controllable . We tried to save in other spots but in the end our build cost 1.2 and we wanted it to be 1. Zero regrets.