How to calculate building costs for a small apartment building

[Chris O'brien]

Hello all, I am new to the forum and have been reading all over BP trying to educate myself about real estate. I'm 27 years old and have saved up quite a bit of money($120k at the moment). I'm interested in building an apartment building, somewhere in the 8-12 unit range. There is a need for apartments in my small town and building is relatively cheap. I hate debt and would like to do this using cash only(Eventually, I'm saving up!).

I can buy the land for around 25-30k. But how would I go about calculating the cost to build? I would be building a very basic, no-frills apartment building. I would be using the cheapest labor I can find and I would be doing as much work(the unskilled work) and as long of hours as I could to save money. Any help would be great, thanks!