Part 2 - Floor Plan

Building a home with the intention of selling it for a profit is a major challenge in today's economy. Home builders are going out of business left and right and profit margins have shrunk dramatically over the past few years. The term "real estate investor" is a dirty word in the banking industry so getting financing can be a challenge. The one bright spot is that building materials are very inexpensive right now. Homes are selling for a lot less, but they also cost less to build. With of that in mind we set out to build a small home in hopes of minimizing our risk.

The decision of where to build was an easy one. My father will be the contractor so it needed to be close to his home in Northern Minnesota. My parents own 20 acres of land which we decided to subdivide for the project.

In order to keep the cost down we wanted the house to be ~1200 sq/ft. We wanted something that would make a nice starter home or possibly a vacation\retirement home.

We started with the floor plan of a home that my father built a few years back. We decided to keep the rooms large which meant that we could only have 2 bedrooms and 1 bath. One requirements was to lay it out in a way that it would be easy for the future home owner to add a master bedroom and 2nd bath at a later date.

After numerous revisions we finally settled on a plan. It's a 2 bedroom, 1 bath rambler with a side entry attached garage. The house is 28'x42' with a 24'x26' attached garage. The house ended up being 1204 finished sq/ft. I'll be outlining the interior\exterior details in later posts as the project progresses. Unfortunately the image below is very small, but it gives you a general idea of the layout of the home.