Updated 11.21.25

So they’ll usually like the plan a lot, but they might not like the price a lot. As a home builder coach I see that most architects draw too steep of rough pitches.

 

And an extra steep roof pitch gets expensive. It’s a lot more lumber. It’s a lot more shingles.

 

And if they put gabled roofs on instead of hips, who can tell me the difference between a gable den roof and a hip roof?

 

Home builder coach know a gable roof has, Yeah, I don’t know. No, you’re describing it correctly against the hip. I know, yeah, a gable has a whole bunch of siding going up into the triangle in a hip. All you see is shingles coming from all sides.

 

So.

 

Are you talking like it would be pitched down over the front of the house a little bit, and then shingles to the gutter or.

 

Ooh. Okay. That makes sense. This is a hip roof. This is a gable roof. So see right here in this extra triangle of red right here I have to put in, I have to first of all, home builder coach has to build out more structure to get the roof to come all the way out. And then I have to put a whole bunch more siding on and that’s more expensive.

 

This might be a couple thousand dollars, a thousand and maybe $2,500 on a gable.

 

Right. So that makes sense. There is another image of it. So you can see the difference.

 

So those are things that cost more money when you build it that way. So gables more expensive expensive than hip. Correct. The cheapest houses you’ll see from the cheapest builders that are trying to get down low low low low low are always going to be hip roofs, not gables. So,

 

I’ll just show you, what’s the what are the. Just so I know the terminology. What’s the roof called? Like on our Mumford house, on our big Hickory Hills house?

 

Mono slope? Yeah. I mean, it’s a shed roof, but it’s technically people call it mono slope when it’s side to side, but it’s technically, architecturally, a shed roof. Shed roofs are used a lot on, like, dormers and stuff. But let me just zoom in here for a minute so home builder coach can show you this.

 

These are hips. So elevation A is the least expensive, right? This is the same floor plan, right? Elevation B I have a gable here. So elevation B is a little bit more expensive. Elevation C has two gables so it’s yet a little bit more expensive. Does that make sense? Yeah. So that’s, a difference between hips and gables.

 

Right. And then a mono slope can depending can be even more expensive. Other things is a architect drawn plan will often not be rectangular or square. Let me show you effective you know, square footage, very rectangular in shape.

 

Let me show you a plan. That is not value engineered. Well, I we’ll just go here. This is America’s most popular floor plan right now. Right here. This one.

 

Everybody is building this house right now. Every custom builder is building this house right now. But I’ll just show you on the floor plan. See how it’s not a rectangle or a square. So I’ve got, you know, jogs in the foundation where this comes over and jogs in, and then this comes over and jogs over and jogs out and jogs over and goes back and jogs out and goes over and jogs back in.

 

Right. I’ve got a lot of jiggy jogs in the foundation. When you have more jogs in the foundation, it’s a more expensive house to build than a rectangle. Is. Do you know why?

 

More foundations, like marketing is more dig out more. More of all of those things. But it also creates a very complicated, rough plan. Here’s a house with a lot of jogs in the foundation. See how complicated this is? Obviously a high end custom home, but that is a very, very, very complex roof and requires a lot of framing materials.

 

You’ve got a lot of valleys, you’ve got a lot of ridges. Right? Very complex roof structure. Let me show you simple roof plans.

 

These are oversimplified. That’s about as simple as it gets right there. Right. These are super simple, right? There’s not a bunch of jogs in the foundation. This is a very simple. Well, that’s actually slightly complex, honestly. But simple roofs are very rectangular. They don’t have a bunch of lines in the drawing of the roof. This is a pretty simple roof plan, right?

 

Compared to the one I just showed you. And home builder coach would assume that as as you get into more complex roof plans, you also have to have more complex drainage systems, correct? I mean, ultimately you’re you create more valleys in the roof, which means you’ve got a lot more turns in your gutters, right? And you’ve got more complex things coming off the second story, or the gables to the lower planes of the roof to catch water and keep it from spilling over.

 

So yes, it gets more complicated. Your your straight rectangle is a simple roof. Your straight square is a simple roof. Now, the more complicated a roof is, usually the prettier the home looks from the outside, right? So that’s why, like, you get in this steep roof pitches as opposed to flat roof pitches. And it looks prettier, but it’s more expensive.

 

You get into a bunch of different gables across the front of the home, right? I’ll go back to this example. Which one is more appealing to the eye? A, B or C the right C, but it’s more complex. The roof is more complex, so it’s not that much more complex, but it is more complex and it’s more expensive.

 

Other things, angles and curves in a floor plan. Right. Architects will draw like angled rooms sometimes.

 

It’s cool looking. It’s just more expensive. So it’s cool, but it costs more. It makes more jogs in the foundation, makes the walls more complex to frame. More expensive plans will often have more linear feet of cabinetry.

 

So if I have, an average kitchen for you guys will probably be in between. Well, for you, Brady might between, but be between 15 and 19 linear feet of cabinetry.

 

Right. For you, Ashley, it might be in 20 to 20 to 25 in a kitchen.

 

But if you have a plan that has 30 linear feet of cabinets in the kitchen, that’s a lot. And if they’re comparing you to a different builders plan and they have 12ft of linear cabinetry, which one is the customer going to like. And enjoy more on with more cabinets. Right. But they might not be. The consumer might not pay attention to how many linear feet are in the kitchen.

 

You know how many linear feet of cabinetry are in the kitchen right? So those are differences. Often in a, a, architect is going to put way beyond code on the electrical. So I have tons of switches everywhere. Do you know what three way switches are versus two way. You know, three and four way switches are versus two way.

 

You know.

 

Let’s look at this.

 

here’s a good example right here. So I’ve got these five recessed lights in this room, and I have one switch here and one switch here. That’s two different places I can turn on these five lights from just to make it super confusing. Confusing a two way switch is actually, if I only had this scenario where I have one switch to a light, a two way switch is actually one switch for the lights.

 

A three way switch is actually two switches to the lights. It’s one more than it sounds like, which is so confusing, but that’s how it is. A four way switch would be if home builder coach had one more switch over here. Also, turning these lights on because there would be three switches. So it’s called a four way switch.

 

I know it’s confusing, but that’s how it’s set up. So what a lot of architects will do is they put recessed lights everywhere, and they put three way and four way switches everywhere, where the room really only needs maybe like one chandelier or, you know, one light fixture that maybe has four bulbs on it. What’s what’s more cost effective?

 

One fixture with four bulbs or four recessed lights.

 

What’s the one texture, one fixture that has four bulbs on? It is more cost effective than for recessed lights. How many bulbs do each have? Isn’t it the same? Yes, but they’re same number of bulbs. Go ahead. Actually I was going to say but the for four different lights would have to be wired to four different lights versus wired to one.

 

Right. So it’s more expensive to do it this way. But the architect just draws what the customer asks for.

 

Right. So it’s like why are we calling, you know, why are we putting in a whole bunch of electrical when the customer didn’t ask for it? But architects do this all day long.