Cost to Set Up Land for a Barndominium

MIKAELA in MINNESOTA writes: “Hi Mike, my name is Mikaela and I’ve been working with Lucas about possibly purchasing two kits from your company to build on some land in Minnesota. My mom and I are hoping we can make it happen, but I had some questions and he suggested I reach out to you. I have been researching costs to do a from scratch build and we checked with the companies that do the whole project, and their costs are just a bit too high for us so we were hoping we can get a contractor and do it that way to cut out the middle man. But it’s a lot to coordinate! I was wondering if you had some ideas about general costs for the basics. I was going to start calling around to local companies, but we don’t have land yet so it feels early to do that, however we are trying to gather general numbers for right now so we can know if we can even do this.

My questions are really about costs to set up the land, specifically:
Clearing the land
Laying a cement pad
Installing septic
Installing a well
Setting up electric

And do you know if we get a contractor if they handle coordinating all of that or if we have to set up each contractor on our own, which I’m prepared to do. Or if you have any contractors you guys work with that I can talk to, I’d be happy to do that too.

Let me know your thoughts.
Thank you!”

Thank you so much for reaching out to me, please feel free to ask me any questions.

Normally, you can expect to budget for fully engineered post frame homes and barndominiums, modest tastes, DIY, budget roughly $75-85 per sft (square foot) for conditioned spaces, $35 for all others. Does not include land, site prep, utilities, permits. Hiring a General Contractor (GC) to do everything, will typically double these costs. Acting as your own General Contractor, will put you about half-way between. These costs DO include any concrete slabs on grade.

You will notice four of your five areas are specifically excluded, why? They are all going to be specific to your site, its soil conditions, depth of potable ground water, distance from public road to actual building site. There is just no way to accurately (or even wild guess) these costs.

You are going to find a mountain of good information in this article: https://www.hansenpolebuildings.com/2021/02/a-shortlist-for-smooth-barndominium-sailing/