How much does it cost to demolish a house in Louisiana?
Published cost guides put house demolition at $5 to $10 per square foot, with a typical 1,500 square foot home at $7,500 to $15,000 (Fixr). Real Louisiana jobs tend to land below the national average. A Baton Rouge fourplex of 4,500 square feet came down for $18,000, about $4 per square foot, and a Slidell double-wide with two porches went for $3,750 (Hometown Demolition).
Those are market figures, not our prices. We price every teardown after looking at the property. Here is what sits behind the numbers.
What does house demolition cost per square foot?
Most guides agree on the shape of the range. Fixr lists $5 to $10 per square foot for machine demolition of a typical house, debris hauled off. The low end, about $3 per square foot, is an older home with no foundation work. The high end, about $12, is a newer home with a full basement.
That top number matters for south Louisiana, because it does not apply here. Houses across Acadiana sit on slabs or piers. There is no basement to break out and backfill, so the biggest single cost driver on the national charts is missing from most local jobs.
Per square foot math has a limit. A permit, the 811 locate, utility disconnects, and the mobilization of the machine cost about the same on a small house as a big one. Small houses land at a higher price per foot for that reason.
| Job type | Published range | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 sq ft house | $5,000 to $10,000 | Fixr size table |
| 1,500 sq ft house | $7,500 to $15,000 | Fixr size table |
| 2,000 sq ft house | $10,000 to $20,000 | Fixr size table |
| 2,500 sq ft house | $12,500 to $25,000 | Fixr size table |
| Single-wide mobile home | $3,000 to $5,000 | Hometown Demolition |
| Double-wide mobile home | $7,000 and up | Hometown Demolition |
| Concrete foundation or slab removal | $1,000 to $5,000 added | Hometown Demolition |
| Driveway removal | $1,500 to $2,500 and up | Hometown Demolition |
| Detached garage | $1,000 to $3,000 | Hometown Demolition |
| Hand deconstruction for salvage | 2 to 3 times machine demolition | Fixr, Hometown Demolition |
Hometown Demolition publishes actual quoted jobs, and two of them make the location point better than any average. The same 1,300 square foot house cost $4,200 in Lenoir, North Carolina and $10,000 in Livonia, Michigan. The gap is labor rates and dump fees, nothing else. Louisiana sits on the cheaper side of that spread.
What moves the price on a Louisiana teardown?
Five things decide where your job lands inside those ranges.
Size and what the house is made of. A wood-frame house comes down fast. Brick veneer, block, and heavy slab work take more machine time and more loads.
Whether the slab comes out. Breaking out a slab is its own job with its own loads of concrete. Some builders want the old slab gone. Some will build over a sound one. Ask before you pay to remove it. Concrete that goes to a recycler instead of a landfill avoids per-ton dump fees, per Hometown Demolition.
Hauling distance and disposal. Debris leaves in roll-off containers, and every load has a haul and a tipping fee. No Acadiana parish publishes a per-ton rate, so this line moves with where the debris goes. A demolition contractor in New Iberia prices the loads, not just the machine hours.
Access. A house on an open lot with room for the excavator and the containers is a short job. A tight in-town lot with the house next door a few feet away means smaller moves and more careful loading.
Asbestos rules. For most single houses this does not apply, which we cover next. When it does, it adds an inspection, a notice period, and a licensed abatement contractor before any machine arrives.
Does Louisiana require an asbestos inspection before demolition?
For a single house, a duplex, a triplex or a fourplex torn down on its own, no. Louisiana’s asbestos rule (LAC 33:III.5151) exempts residential buildings with four or fewer dwelling units. The exemption breaks if the teardown is part of a planned commercial or public project, if the house is one of a group of buildings on one site under one owner, or if the building will be burned.
Commercial buildings, public buildings, and residential buildings with five or more units are a different story. LDEQ requires a thorough asbestos inspection any time one of those is renovated, gutted or demolished. The notice goes to LDEQ at least 10 working days before work starts on Form AAC-2, and the fee for a non-emergency disposal verification is $73.
We do not test for asbestos and we do not remove it. When a regulated building needs abatement, that is a licensed abatement contractor’s job under the Louisiana State Licensing Board for Contractors. We schedule the teardown around it.
One more Louisiana rule that catches people: you cannot burn a house. LDEQ lists buildings and mobile homes among the materials that may never be open-burned. The structure comes down and leaves in containers.
What permits does a demolition need in New Iberia and Iberia Parish?
Inside New Iberia city limits, the city requires a demolition permit. The base fee is $35 per structure, and you state your means of disposing of the debris when the permit is issued. The Permit and Inspection Department is at 457 East Main Street, Room 412, open 7:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. weekdays, at (337) 369-2354.
Outside the city, the Iberia Parish permit office handles building permits at (337) 369-4438. The parish does not list a demolition permit on its website, so call before you schedule. Lafayette, Youngsville, Broussard and the other towns each run their own permit desk. We tell you what your address needs before work starts.
Two more steps apply everywhere in Louisiana. Louisiana 811 needs at least two business days of notice before any digging, and that includes pulling a slab or footings. And every utility gets disconnected and capped before the machine touches the house. Power, gas, water, and sewer each have their own shutoff process.
What does a mobile home demolition cost?
A mobile home is the cheapest structure to take down. Hometown Demolition puts a single-wide at $3,000 to $5,000 and a double-wide at $7,000 or more, roughly $4 to $6 per square foot including the haul-off. Fixr’s national range is $2,000 to $6,000. The Slidell double-wide with two porches that came down for $3,750 is a real Louisiana data point.
Demolition takes less than a day on most units. The alternative, moving the home instead, usually costs more than tearing it down. If a unit is leaving New Iberia intact, the city charges a mobile home moving permit of $75 per section.
Old mobile homes were built with materials that may hold asbestos in the flooring and wall panels. A single unit falls under the same four-or-fewer exemption as a house, so no inspection is required on its own. It still cannot be burned.
What happens to the debris?
Everything leaves the lot. Framing, roofing, siding and interior finishes get loaded into roll-off containers with the excavator and hauled to a landfill that takes construction debris. Concrete can go to a recycler when one is close enough to make sense.
That hauling is a real part of the bill, which is why we handle debris removal across Acadiana as part of the same job. The lot is left graded and clean, ready for the next thing. If a new slab or a gravel pad comes next, the dirt work follows on the same schedule.
Related reading: land clearing cost per acre in Louisiana if the teardown comes with an overgrown lot, and gravel driveway cost in Louisiana for what comes after.
Get a real number for your property
Every figure above is a published market range or a real job somewhere else. Your number depends on your house, your lot, and where the debris goes. We come look at the property, walk you through the permit your address needs, and give you a written estimate at no charge. Request a free demolition estimate or call (337) 201-0594.