My update: Still stuck in an apartment as it has been impossible to find a house where I can build a metal building. A requirement is my wife must like the house and that takes us to the 600K realm which is of course preposterous. Any "affordable to us" home resides in HOA infested soil which means even the nails have to be made out of wood... Or brick... Oh! it must also be invisible! Those buildings are so awesome...
Anyway, in the last five months, here is what I have learnt:
1. Seems metal buildings are in the ~$10/SQFT for the building. When you add everything else (concrete, labor/assembly, insulation, plumbing, electricity), they go up to anywhere in between $25 to $30 per SQFT.
2. Apparently welded is about 20% less than bolt up.
3. Concrete works can be anywhere in between $5 to $10. An option we entertained was to build a house and let the builder take care of the metal building workshop. In this case you could maximize material/labor costs and get the concrete the cheapest possible (e.g. bulk pricing). Unfortunately this is completely useless information for anybody with an existing home.
Not a lot of information, as I have really not been able to move forward anyway. But hey! Maybe by 2020 I can come back to this thread and give some meaningful piece of information back to the community! Heck, I promise to come back to this thread on March 15, 2020 and give an update whatever it might be ;-)