Is it Cheaper to Build a 1 or 2-Story House?

Our customers often ask us this question, so we decided to do anquick analysis on floor plan cost to build based onthe number of floors. We analyzed our library of one-story and two-story plans to compare costs and found that two story plans are 14% more affordable to build per square foot on average).Theory:Two-story houses make an efficient use of the foundation, and roof by covering up to twice as much square footage as a one-story home would.The downside is that much of that gain in value is lostbecause additional unusable floorspace that gets absorbedby staircases.Methodology:Here, our methodology is to take the cost / SF or our library of one story and two story houses, while subtracting out the average square footage taken up by the staircase (~85 SF / floor). All data is provided by our proprietary cost to build calculator found here. Note: the same standard material selections and construction variables were held constant across the entire dataset.Results:As you can see, our t...