First Deal: Buy & Build New Construction - is that crazy!?

[Vanessa Hammonds]

Well, it's finally happening!  I dipped my toes in a project a few years back but I'm diving all in now :-)

In a nutshell I'm looking to...

-Purchase land (0.15+ acres)
-Build a new construction home (2100sf, 4bed, 3 ba, 1 story)

-I have a private lender on board to provide funds for land purchase, no payments/interest, lump sum due in a year
-I have a hard money lender willing to fund the project pending my application (just did LLC last night so not finished!)
-Most importantly I have a real estate investor that will serve as a mentor/consultant start to finish (20+ years w/ wide variety of homes)

I've ran comps for a billion times for the specific areas I'm interested in that would be similar to what I want to build - yet I've never truly done a fix n flip and obviously haven't built a house and that makes me nervous.  Has anyone just dived in like this or have any tips? I'm meeting with the private lender tomorrow to finalize paperwork, then the investor and should have application off to hard money lender by next week!  

I am a little nervous about acquiring a vacant lot and how long that could take.  Ideally I'd like to spend less than $50,000 (max $70k) for the land, and $160,000 for construction and sell around $375K-$420K - and according to recent sales in the areas of Dallas I'm looking in it really seems doable!!!

TIA

[Bruce Woodruff]

Where did you get the idea that you could build a brand new 2100SF house for $160k? That would be only $76 per SF. That is impossible. Nowadays you will be lucky to get it built for $250 per SF. Even if you could, that would be over $500k....

I must be missing something........