In this video, Jackson Digney, Managing Director of Enduro Builders, explains why using a flat square‑metre rate to estimate a custom home budget is unreliable and often results in significant cost overruns. He illustrates the problem with a real tender from Adelaide: a 225 m² house designed for a $550,000 budget (≈$2,000‑$2,450 per m²) received three comparable builder quotes averaging $950,000 (≈$4,220 per m²). The discrepancy is attributed to numerous high‑end features—stone facades, rammed‑earth walls, split‑level slabs, extensive site works, premium joinery, doors and windows—that are not accounted for in a simple per‑square‑metre figure. Digney advises prospective homeowners to base budgeting on the specific features they want, request recent comparable project costs from builders, and understand that the final square‑metre size is often an outcome of design decisions rather than a starting point. He notes that custom home costs can range from $1,500 to $5,000 per m² depending on inclusions. The video concludes with a call to download a guide on building a custom home in Adelaide or to contact Enduro Builders for personalized advice.
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Trying to work out what you can afford to build can be daunting. It's why we live in a world where the square metre rate has become the standard method of working out the cost of your home. Today, we talk about why working on a square metre rate sends you on a trip down a very rocky road and share our experiences. Hi, my name is Jackson Digney and I'm the Managing Director and builder at Enduro Builders. Let's start by talking about recent projects we were invited to tender on in Adelaide. All of these homes had one thing in common. They were sized to suit a budget based on a square metre rate. One example is a 225 square metre home brought to us to price. This was designed to suit a construction budget of $550,000, meaning a square metre rate of roughly $2,000. $2,450 had been used to size the house. As this was a tender project, there were 3 prices done by different builders. All of the prices were within $10,000 of each other and came in at an average of $950,000. That's a square metre rate of $4,220. As an aside, this shows you that all custom home builders charge roughly the same amount of money for the same home when the real costs are compared apples for apples. So why was this the case? The reason is that no 2 custom homes are the same, and this home included a ton of additional items that just aren't catered for in a $2,500 square metre budget. In this case, these were items such as stone facades, rammed earth walls, split-level slab, significant site works, premium joinery, Premium doors and windows. For the homeowner, this was a disastrous outcome as there was a lot of compromise and change required to get the home to a lower, although not their original budget. As a professional builder, we always recommend looking at the cost of what you want to build from the point of view of what you want built. This means that often the square meterage of your home is a final outcome rather than the first thing we work out in order to establish budget and design fit. Building a 250 square metre home could cost anywhere between $1,500 and $5,000 per square metre, depending on what you want included in the building contract. So when you are calling potential builders, the best question to ask them is exactly what a home with similar features to what you want has cost to build for someone else in the recent past. This enables you to gauge how many things were included in the price and if they are things you have planned to have in your building contract. When you build yourself a new home, it's one of the biggest investments you may ever make, so you want to make sure that you are getting real, honest advice based on what similar homes actually cost rather than starting prices and square metre rates. To find out more about building a quality custom home, Beginning with being realistic about costs with your builder, download our guide on 5 Things to Know About Building a Custom Home in Adelaide. Or simply give us a call.
