What about custom designs?

On a whim - we stopped in at an interesting display home that we saw while driving - Nu-Era homes.

The house was terribly small and pokey - but we spoke to the sales consultant and discovered that they mainly do custom designs.

Based on some estimate costings - she thought we could build a custom home for the same price as a project home. Interesting food for thought - even though we have found a design we like from the inside - the side of the house is just boring. And since it will be viewed from the golf course - we want something that will be 'wow'.

We'll definitely be thinking about this option now - our prior enquires with custom builders made us think it was out of our price range. Our next step is to estimate what we think we'd spend on carpets, light fixtures, tiles, kitchen upgrades etc on the basic shell price to see if it's worthwhile.