What Will It Cost to Build This House?
Your house, costed in three parts
Start with the area. Then either drop in the one per-square-foot rate your contractor gave you, or go through the material list item by item — bricks, cement, steel, sand, crush — with today's rates in your own hand. Either way the answer comes back split into what you buy, what you pay people to do, and what the departments take.
Grey structure is the bare building — foundation, columns, walls, roof. Finishing is everything after that, up to the day you can move in.
The fast way: a contractor has given you one rate per square foot. We split it into material and labour for you.
1 · The area you are building
Total covered area: 3,150 sq ft · 14 marla of built area
2 · Your contractor’s rate
We do not print building rates — steel and cement move week to week, and a stale number costs you real money. Ask two or three contractors today and put their figure in.
Approvals, connections and papers
This is the part people forget, and it is the part that stops the work. Every figure here belongs to DHA, LESCO or SNGPL — we print none of them, because they change and a wrong number here is your loss. Ask, then write it in. Leave a row empty if it does not apply to you.
| What | Amount | Counted |
|---|---|---|
| DHA building plan approvalscrutiny and approval fee — ask DHA for your own category | — | |
| Architect and structural drawingsoften quoted per square foot of covered area | — | |
| Completion certificateat the end — without it the file stays open | — | |
| Electricity connection and meterthe LESCO demand notice and the wiring test | — | |
| Gas connectionSNGPL — new connections are not always open | — | |
| Water and sewerage connectionDHA’s own water and drainage charges | — | |
| Anything elsesite office, temporary connection, NOCs | — | |
| Refundable securitythe demolition / mobilisation deposit — you must arrange it, but it comes back | not in the total |
A margin for the unexpected
We do not publish building rates. Steel, cement and bricks move week to week, and DHA’s own fees change without notice. A number we printed six months ago would look confident and be wrong, and you would be the one paying for it. So every rate box on this page stays empty until you fill it. What we do give you is the quantity — how many bricks, how many bags, how many kilos a square foot of an ordinary Lahore house takes — and even that you are free to change.
What this does not count. The plot itself and its transfer tax; furniture, curtains and appliances; solar panels, a generator or a UPS; a lift; landscaping and the lawn; and the rent you keep paying while the house is going up. Add those yourself before you decide you can afford it.
The order things actually happen in
- Drawings first, then approval. An architect and a structural engineer prepare the plan; DHA approves it. Building before the approval is how people end up paying to demolish their own work.
- Know your limit before you design.The setbacks and the coverage percentage are DHA's, and they differ by phase and plot category. Our how much you may build calculator takes the setbacks off first and shows what ground is actually left.
- Grey structure. Foundation and plinth, then the ground floor, then the upper floor, then the roof, stairs and boundary. Material and labour run side by side the whole way.
- Finishing. Plaster and the rough electrical and plumbing first, then flooring, then doors and woodwork, then kitchen and bathrooms, and paint and elevation last.
- Connections and the completion certificate. Electricity, gas, water and sewerage, and then the paperwork that closes the file. Budget for these on day one, not on the day you need them.
Why there are no rates on this page.We could have printed a per-square-foot figure and this page would look more helpful. It would also be wrong within a month, and the person acting on it would be the one out of pocket — not us. So the quantities are ours and the rates are yours. If a contractor's quote comes in far away from what your own material list adds up to, that gap is the conversation worth having.
Common questions
How much does it cost to build a house in DHA Lahore?
There is no single answer, and anybody who gives you one without asking your covered area and your finishing standard is guessing. Use the tool on this page: put in your plot size, how much of it you are covering and how many floors, then either one per-square-foot rate from your contractor or the material list one item at a time. We deliberately publish no building rates — steel, cement and brick prices move week to week and a stale figure would cost you real money.
What is grey structure and what is finishing?
Grey structure is the bare building: excavation, foundation, plinth, columns, beams, brickwork, the roof slab and the stairs. Nothing you can live with yet. Finishing is everything after that — plaster, paint, flooring, doors and windows, wiring and fittings, plumbing and sanitary, kitchen, woodwork, elevation. On most houses in Lahore the two come to roughly the same money, but finishing is where your own choices swing the figure the most.
How many bricks, cement bags and how much steel does a square foot need?
As a rule of thumb for an ordinary RCC house in Lahore: around 13 bricks, a little under one 50 kg bag of cement, about 4 kg of steel, roughly 1.5 cft of sand and about 1.1 cft of crush for every square foot of covered area. These are starting figures, not a specification — the tool lets you change every one of them, and your structural engineer's drawings override all of it.
What approvals do I need before I start building in DHA?
The building plan has to be approved by DHA before a single brick is laid, and that means architectural and structural drawings prepared by a registered professional. Then there are the connections — electricity from LESCO, gas from SNGPL where it is available, water and sewerage from DHA — and a completion certificate at the end. There is usually a refundable security to deposit as well. We do not print any of these amounts because DHA revises them; ask DHA for your own plot category and put the figures into the tool.
Why does the tool separate material from labour?
Because they behave differently, and because most people are quoted only one number. Material is a market price you can shop around for and buy in advance when a rate is good. Labour is a contract you negotiate once. When a contractor gives you one lump per-square-foot rate, you cannot tell which half he has padded. Splitting them is the first step to checking a quote instead of accepting it.
How much should I keep aside for the unexpected?
The tool starts you at 7% of the build cost and lets you change it. A house takes a year or more to build; in that time material rates rise, designs change and things break. The people who end up with a half-finished grey structure standing for years are almost always the ones who budgeted to the last rupee before they started.
Building on a DHA plot? The dealers and agencies listed on this site deal with these plots every day — open a listing in your phase and put your question to them directly.
Every phase and every size has its own price page
About this data:figures come from live dealer asking demands (DHA Lahore dealer groups and public portals), imported and refreshed daily. A price is counted only when it works out to a sane per-marla rate for its own size (2–150 lakh/marla). Plot numbers are matched against DHA's official map record — where a dealer's claim clashes with the record, the record wins. These are asking prices, not closed transactions.