Does anyone know the general difference in price between buying an apartment complex and actually having it built new? What percentage would you save if any if you were to build yourself and by that I mean hiring a professional company to come in and do it.
It depends upon where you are buying.
You can buy all the houses you want in Detroit for $3,000 apiece. You aren’t going to build them for that. Some of those $3,000 houses would cost you $200,000 to build from scratch.
In my town, it is cheaper to build— if you can get the land, which you might not be able to do.
Brand new apartments, built to meet today’s tastes and to fit today’s furniture, are going to be a lot easier to find tenants for.
Tenants all seem to have king size beds, huge big screens and over-stuffed furniture. Older apartments with itty bitty rooms won’t hold their furniture, so the older apartments are harder to rent.
I’ve wondered the same thing. My real estate business is in central IL where property values are low. I can buy a lot to build on for between $7k-15K. That being said, the existing buildings are very reasonable too. So far for me, it has been more cost effective to look for properties for sale that need a little work and then update them.