Hello
Can you please tell me what are the best ways to create a website at an affordable price?
I prefer not to use website builders, instead I prefer to hire someone for that.

What do you consider affordable?

What was the cost of the obama care website? could we establish that that would be an unreasonable price? Yes when your question is so un qualified it is like fishing for price ideas.
There are too many open to speculation parts to this question. Needs to be framed with parameters.

The guy also has to let us know what kind of website he wants. Asking the price of a website is like asking the price of a house, or a car We need to know the variables here.

If you don't want to use a web builder what you could do is go to Upwork and hire someone there. But the reality is that a website is not just about the design, it's also about performance and SEO. It actually depends on the purpose of the website. Is it for lead generation, is it just a brochure?

If the project is small, you can look for someone on freelance platforms:)