Which is more economical? (house building)?

I'm currently drafting plans for a house I'm planning to have built but before I can move further, I need to make some decisions.


I'm trying to decide if it would be better to have a 3 storey house (2 above ground and a basement) or have a 2 storey house with both levels above ground and just have a larger footprint. Which would be cheaper to build?Which is more economical? (house building)?
Depends on lot, a walk out basement is a very nice feature. Basements also good for cold storage,spot for mech.room, is easier to service future plumbing,heating problems,you can insulate floors for sound. If you build on concrete slab, this is hard on legs and feet,floor doesn`flex like joist floor. If you build crawl space for lower mech, that`s half the cost of basement anyway! I`d look at lots of show homes get some ideas of what you like, adapt your plan from there.Which is more economical? (house building)?
Guess it depends on where you plan on building this house. Normally a 2 story with basement is cheaper, unless you are building on top of a rock pit, over an underground irrigation system, or in an area with an extremely high water table. In these situations, building a house w/ basement would be prohibitively expensive.
3 story house (includes basement).





My parents had that choice, and they went with the cheeper one.