alt.building.construction

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> My wife and I are at the very beginning stage of planning and building
> a new home. We're in the "driving around and looking at land" stage.
> The problem we're having is trying to ballpark the site prep costs.
> It's obvious that the prep cost for a flat, former corn field will be
> less than that of a hilly, rocky, heavily wooded site, but how do we
> figure out roughly what the cost will be. What we'd like to be able
> to do at this point is look at a piece of property and be able to say
> "this piece of land costs $x and the site prep will cost between $y
> and $z on top of that". Any estimating tricks would be appreciated.
>
Several factors to keep in mind:

* Location and availability of utility taps
* Soil composition
* Road availability
* Zoning variances (if needed)

What is the availability (and need) of the above in the location you wish to
build?

Preparing the site, in the absence of the above, might be a
spit-in-the-ocean, all things considered.