Building costs. Jan 2023

We're just starting to build now - not a great time but it's impossible to know how things will play out in the short/medium term and our kids are 6 & 8 so we can't really afford to hand about much longer.

If you have no kids or much younger kids, you might consider holding off but you'd want to be prepared to wait 5 years or more for a significant decrease and also be aware that it may never actually come.

It depends on the trade from my experience, wet trades like plastering and blocklaying the labour makes up a significant proportion of the cost and the rates are far higher than they once were. Roofing, foundations etc would have materials costs much higher than the labour.

The biggest single item that has really been far far more expensive than expected (so far) was windows and external doors, now ours is driven up by having a large aluminium slider and aluminium front door but still leaving these as PVC would still have us at about twice the cost of a relation who built about 6 years ago and they had a bigger house.

The majority of builds and extensions will be paid for with added interest rates right now its expensive to get a loan or mortgage and it will be the same for the next 12 months I can see rates dropping in 2024 at some stage it may be late. if people can hold off I can see raw materials dropping and a recession this year will help construction workers come to terms with the reality that the majority of people wanting work done cant afford to get it done. the math cant lie. 30/40% increase in costs for an extension and over half the working population not getting a pay increase in 2022. See what 2023 brings.

And me as well please .

Has anyone any ideas on what it would cost for an architect or engineer for a 1 room extension or renovation ?

Sorry, only saw your messages today.

Size is 3m, cost I am not sure exactly as I don't have a breakdown of cost per window and door from the supplier we went ahead with but based on a quote from a different provider that did break down costs I'd estimate in the region of 6 to 7k.

We briefly considered folding doors but one factor that immediately put us off them was we have young kids and any of the window suppliers we spoke with advised us to stay away from them as they are a major hazard for little fingers. Aside from that overall the slider looks better and has much more clear glass/less frame area especially as you need to go to 4 folds at our size. Folding is great open as it give you a bigger opening but looks busy closed and lets face it in Ireland it will be closed most of the time. I will PM the supplier we went with as I would prefer not to mention on the thread.

I'm reading this tread with interest, I agree with you 100% I recall when the Celtic Tiger was all the rage, prices were mad, builders dreaming up a number for a job and then doubling it - take it or leave it, banks were shoveling out 120% mortgage. We were on a roll, the good times were predicted to last forever and then suddenly and without warning we woke one morning ......to find the Tiger dead and all it's consequences that we're still paying for.

All materials have come down with the exception of insulation. If the sh1tshow that we are currently living in continues on its current trajectory you can be sure that prices for an extension will be at a lower price point in 12 months time then today.

A lot of people cannot afford the prices so what do they do ? They get a loan and what has happened to interest rates so now loans are unaffordable, if was just the interest rates going up in a vacuum more people could afford but petrol ,heating oil, insurance, food, electricity - ye know the basics to live have flown up and construction costs were first out of the block to go up and the rest of the prices for everything were playing catch up. Now we also have the mess that the banking sector is in and there will be contagion all over the globe so builders not willing to cut the margins will have to look at the big banks hitting the wall if these behemoths can hit the wall so can any construction company or contractor in this country. Throw in the current turmoil of the tech sector that's 2 sectors - tech and banking which Ireland will have a lot of people working within those 2 and there is no way they will be forking out 70/80k for a small extension

I'm not sure how accurate it is to say cost of materials have gone down since September 2022. Cost of insulation and other products went up in Jan/Feb, for instance.

Yeah, single contractor

I'd say 100k

Yeah, I'd say so

We're hoping it'll come in a small bit less than that tbf but that's what we're budgeting for; kitchen, flooring, painting, bathrooms, built in wardrobes & shelving - it won't be long adding up

We only started 2 months ago so those prices are fairly current. When we started on PP 2 years ago though, we were planning for ~100k less than that 😢

Lots of insulation products: https://www.insulation-online.com/notifications.html#:~:text=Kingspan%20Insulation-,All%20Kingspan%20PIR%20Ranges%20%2D%20including%20TP10%2C%20TF70%2C%20TW55%2C,120mm%3A%20Increasing%20by%208%25.

No, not for us