How do you start to price building a home?

[Nick Hawthorne]

Hi - I'm looking into different options to buy or build a luxury vacation home that can be used primarily as an STR to cover the costs and then be a getaway for my family several times per year. One idea we've been discussing is purchasing land by a lake and building a new home on it. How does one even start to calculate the cost of building a home? Talk to a builder and architect? And would a loan work fairly similar to a conventional mortgage, with a down payment and then conventional payback period? Thanks for any thoughts!