Blog › Building your house · 09 September 2026 · Blackfire Real Estate & Builders
A 5 marla plot in Islamabad or Rawalpindi is usually 25 × 50 ft. Build on about 80% of it, put a first floor on top, add stairs and a mumty, and you have roughly 2,100 to 2,300 sq ft of covered area. Every cost figure you hear — "Rs 2,500 per sq ft", "Rs 1 crore complete" — is that number multiplied by a rate. So the first thing to fix is the covered area, not the rate.
What goes into the grey structure
The grey structure is the house before any finishing: foundations, walls, lintel band, roof slab, plaster, and the rough-in for plumbing, electrical and waterproofing. For a brick G+1 house of about 2,200 sq ft, the planning quantities we use are:
- Bricks: about 30 per sq ft of covered area — 65,000 to 70,000 bricks.
- Cement: about 0.32 bags per sq ft — 650 to 750 bags of 50 kg, including plaster and tile bedding.
- Steel (sariya): 1.3 to 1.5 kg per sq ft — around 3 tons for a double-storey, more with a basement or long spans.
- Sand and crush: roughly 1.5 and 0.9 cu ft per sq ft.
- Labour: quoted per sq ft of covered area by the contractor on labour rate; ask what it excludes.
These are planning factors for an ordinary brick house, and we calibrate them against our own completed projects. A house with an RCC frame, large openings or a basement needs its own bill of quantities from the structural drawing.
What finishing adds
Finishing is where two houses of the same size end up Rs 30 lakh apart: tiles, paint, doors and windows, sanitary, kitchen, wardrobes, electrical fittings, false ceilings and the front elevation. We estimate it per sq ft in three levels — economy, standard, premium — and the choice of tiles, kitchen and elevation moves the total more than anything in the grey structure.
The usual shape of a complete house budget is 55–60% grey structure and 40–45% finishing.
How to get a number you can defend
- Fix the covered area from the approved drawing, not the plot size.
- Phone two suppliers the same morning for cement, steel and bricks; rates change monthly.
- Get the grey-structure labour quote in writing with its exclusions (boundary wall, water and sewer connections, tank, termite treatment are usually extra).
- Decide the finishing level before you start — it changes the electrical and plumbing rough-in too.
- Keep 10% contingency.
Our construction cost by plot size tool does steps 1 and 5 for you and lets you type in your own supplier rates; the House Builder gives room-by-room tiles, paint, plaster and wire; the construction checklist tells you what to check at each stage before you pay.
Want an exact quotation? Send us your plot size, the drawing if you have one, and the finish you want — Blackfire Real Estate & Builders quotes labour rate or full contract for Islamabad and Rawalpindi.