Do the materials used in building a house have any effect on the price of the house?

Actually, I have a cousin who owns a company which does rehabs. They do have a cabinet maker. They do use real tile (that they cut on-site to exact dimensions). They do use solid wood baseboard when they’re doing solid wood floors (as opposed to Pergo – but Pergo is considered longer lasting. They also do a lot of Bamboo flooring as it’s more eco-friendly.)
They try to use recovered materials when possible. His work is exquisite and they don’t cut corners. He rehabbed a house that he planned to sell and then instead his mom bought it. Not your typical “flip” type of operation.

That said, in our neighborhood we’ve seen 3 recent “flips” of homes that were repo’d and then sold at auction. Looks like the same group bought them all and in each case it took less than 3 weeks to flip them and put them on the market. They put in crappy windows, no repairs to roofs…and at least one of them I heard had no update to the mechanicals (furnace and water heater).

Your question is a tricky one because there are actually multiple factors in costs to houses:
Experience level of the contractors and crew (our across the street neighbor is considered to be the best at drywall/taping in a large geographic area—but you can be sure his labor doesn’t come cheap)..and permits and various inspections. These all differ by location.

It’s the big corporate home development companies (Lennar, M/I Homes, Pulte, Highland) that pre-fab and throw new homes up as fast as possible. That’s why buying into a development can be “cheaper”—but can also mean cheaper materials.

Too many factors. Permits, land costs (lot cost), inspections, labor, fuel cost changes, lumber prices are always fluctuating and whether they have a cookie cutter home floor plan (no additional fee for architect / blueprint)..all of these impact the house price.

Sure materials cost a cost difference – for example, tile vs. carpet or wood floor vs. carpet… but I labor and materials is only a piece of the equation.

Location is the number one reality in determining value.
That being said, a subdivision built by a builder known for quality workmanship and not cutting corners will probably get more $$ than a community where the builder cut every corner.
I lived in a community once where the developer only allowed approved builders to build custom homes within specified parameters. Still, some builders managed to find ways to cut corners and the homes built by the more reputable builders commanded a higher price at resale.

@geeky_mama Your question is a tricky one because there are actually multiple factors in costs to houses:
Experience level of the contractors and crew (our across the street neighbor is considered to be the best at drywall/taping in a large geographic area—but you can be sure his labor doesn’t come cheap)..and permits and various inspections. These all differ by location._*
Location can also overvalue a home too. Say labor and skill being equal, one house was built 50 years ago with solid materials, so it has ”good bones”, another home a few doors down was refurbished with pressed wood modular cabinetry with a laminate face, laminate flooring, hollow core doors, composite baseboard, shower kits instead of actual tile, fake marble counter tops and fake stone veneer for the fireplace, but has low-flow shower heads, modern H/AC, double pane windows, does it still make the home as valuable from a material or substance stance as the older home with better material simply because it is in the neighborhood with those older homes with more natural material?

It depends on the age, location, and real estate trends. Houses are becoming as easily disposed as clothing, furniture, appliances, and autos. Old school, long-lasting quality materials have little value in today’s disposable culture.

“Natural” wood products aren’t sustainable at an attractive price; it’s why processed wood products like plywood, particle board, fiberboard, and OSB have become the norm. Paint hides the new norm. Millennials don’t want to spend their weekends re-finishing natural wood products. It’s much easier to hire a painter to get in and out in a couple days.

The real draw of owning a house isn’t the house itself or what it’s made of. What you are actually paying for is the land and the prestige of saying, “I own this!”. In many cases, the house itself is utterly irrelevant. It has it’s roots from past centuries before this whole currency thing happened, back when wealth was measured by land owned/controlled instead of how many pieces of metal owned or how big a number some bank ledger somewhere has next to your name.

Simplifying the way you wish to makes the question impossible to answer. Here in Seattle, standards are a bit different, and some of the things that a Seattlite may desire are things that would make a New Englander walk away from the deal no matter how low you go on price. In NYC or San Francisco, square footage is rare enough that they don’t care if the place even has walls or a roof so long as the rent is only $2,000/month, so you can be sure that they have different ideas about this than those who come from areas where $75,000 is the purchase price of a large home as opposed to a down payment on a condo.

I come from a part of the country where all the “special materials” you list are standard equipment on houses. In many areas, “new construction” meant your grandparents may have actually been born before the place was built. Repair/rehab on them required solid wood, and don’t even think of using sheetrock. The sort of cost-cutting that may be okay in an Alabama tenement won’t fly in Yankee territory!

“Location can also overvalue a home too.”

In other words, you are refuting the merit of Capitalism, the validity of the laws of supply and demand, and the entire concept of “supply side economics”, at least as it pertains to housing.

Where it breaks down is your belief that the materials are cheaper; they are not.

A solid wood door is substantially more now than it was in the past. That is why there is are alternates such as hollow core masonite doors, that while less expensive than a solid one now, still costs more than a solid one used to.
Plywood, while still available is more expensive than the alternative OSB used by most builders because it costs less.
You can still get solid wood trim but it is used almost exclusively where it is going to be stained and the joints in the more common (now) finger joint trim would show. If it is going to be painted it is a pretty sure bet you are going to have finger joint. And again, the finger joint is still more expensive than the solid wood trim was back then while the cost nowadays is almost prohibitive except in smaller quantities.
Same with laminate floors or engineered wood floors as compared to solid wood floors.
If you want built in place cabinets you can still get them but, again, you are going to pay a premium. They will not be built out of particle board but probably plywood with solid wood doors and drawer fronts, which is more expensive. They are not put together in a factory and shipped out ready to be installed, but cut to fit the space you have. This is much more labor intensive.
Incidently, my partner and I did a study one time a few years back comparing the cost of an all brick exterior with that of a combination brick and siding exterior. We found that by the time you added up the extra cost tacked on by the framer for the siding and the additional charge to paint the siding as well as the fascia and soffit you ate up any savings that the siding provided over the higher priced brick even with the cost of installation. We did not even include what it cost you over the years to maintain and repaint the siding as opposed to the brick which basically requires nothing in the way of maintenance.

When we were looking at houses a few years back, my wife and I paid attention to the materials that were used. It seemed like the cheaper houses that used cheaper materials didn’t have a price savings to justify the cheaper materials. In the end we bought top of the line, which we ate up in all the compliments we received.