How do I rate/sq ft cost of new construction?

back tomorrow when I am more awake..

in Delaware, construction and code enforcement is in the hands of the three counties. new Castle is quite engineering oriented and they have a no nonsense approach to enforcement and variances. Kent and Sussex are more like the rest of the Delmarva, more able to commit to design changes and more lofty design ideas. I believe in all cases that new construction needs to be either 1100 or 1500 sq ft. for a single dwelling unit.
Things you must contend with are codes that were promulgated under the old Coastal Zoning Act, in which you must handle sewage, water,on site, and must showthat youve considered hurricane stability using either slab-on-grade, or bulkhead type construction. I dont believe Coastal Zoning allows things like basements. (Its not unreasonable,
for most of Coastal Delaware lies only a few feet above water)

As for prices, we had built a vacation home in Sussex aalmost 20years ago and construction prices were quite high in that area, about50$ then( 75$/sq ft,today) so I started the Inter Coastal artisan exchange and managed to gather about 25 Amish workers who worked on a number of projects (including mine) for about 25$sq/ ft.
I had to license as the general and got involved with the parochial politics and "fees".
As far as I know , today the Amish workers have organized themselves into a mighty construction force. Their entire culture is slowly swinging into a self sustaining service economy centered around construction.
as they get more training in jointery and layout skills, they are quite acceptable (they werent very competent back then unless youd tell them to build a barn with wooden pegs and post and beam framing.
sussex govt is in georgetown Delaware, and Kent is in Dover, New Castle has its offices on capital Trail, Newark.
My only advice is have your plans fairly well tied down to all items in the bid documents so that "add-ons" dont creep into your budget because nothing held the contractors bid firmly to a stated cost.

i see, on rereading, Ive left you with only the typical a2k information packet which is(its about me me) sorry. i was trying to leave a small nugget that really needs some further development.
Get your plans completely done by someone who is comptetent and knowledgeable about the minimum requirements for sq footage in the county, and is conversant with coastal zoning.
take your plans into the county engineers office (schedule a meeting and show them your plans and lot location). Try to get a docket so that you can expect an approval or a modification that will lead to an approval .

Have developed, or develop yourself, a set of bid specifications (eg, what kind of pipes you want etc
) and provide the package to a number of contractors, including one that you trust from your home area . give them a reasonable amount of time and compare bids by talking to each one.

Today I prefer the approach wherein I have a general contractor and a good independent poject manager who is separate from any of the subs or general contractor. This saves you from spending months just tied up with contruction details that are not your areas of expertise.

whereabouts in Delaware do you wish to build?