What does the winner get? -Stooxie

Questioning the 20 months won't seem as appropriate once you start building :) There are soooooooo many variables, the county, inspectors, timing (lining up the crews), shipping, screw-ups, weather, materials, personalities, site (level, sloped, soggy, etc...), things you weren't expecting and decide you don't like, things you hadn't thought about and you want, labor, transportation (I'm very rural and don't know how many times I heard "they're having some trouble with they're truck/s), deliveries, you can probably think of a dozen more things that may or may not go as planned. Unless you have a contract that SPECIFICALLY states a completion date (not, it will take 6 months) there's nothing that says they have to have it done when they 'think' it'll be done. Only way to hold them accountable is to put some delinquency clause in the contract that states if they go beyond a specified date there will be a X% per week penalty (or whatever). I doubt you could get a builder to sign something like that w/out a LOT of padding.

I started a year before because there were repairs we knew had to be done. Of course, like a 'house of cards' one repair turned into 100! We needed to replace two sliding doors which had fogged up, doing this led to tearing out a sun-room (Carpenter ants were discovered and beams were eaten)...which led to rebuilding that room, which led to replacing the entire roof (we had no plans to do), which then led to repainting, flooring, etc. In my foyer, we had 3 lose tiles. I used a handiman to cement the tiles which led to tearing up the entire foyer floor and replacing with new tile one week before we went on the market. We refinished all our wood floors in January which was the biggest mistake of all. Even though they said they were 'dustless' the whole house was full of fine saw dust. We rented a storage unit and filled it to the brim eventually. It was difficult because we had the holidays and didn't want to remove our holiday things and waited until February to finally clear it all out. We replaced some bathroom counter tops which led to replacing a sink and vanity. I refinished a tub. Long and short, I am glad we started early as we ran into unexpected problems which took time. When we finally listed, the house looked new and spotless. Never looked as good all the years we lived there. I didn't want to move! We listed June 15, 2010 and went to contract Oct 15, 2010. It is never too early to start. Good luck, Jane

Where is your market? Is it a buyer market, seller market or neutral? What are the current DOM for your price range? Are you a high, low or medium price range for your area? Do you have a selling season? Are you mostly looking to sell to corporate relocations? Answering those questions will possibly allow people to give you a more informed answer - for instance you are a high end home with average DOM of 180 would be "that's the market", or medium priced but we are $30K above our nearest competitor is going to have people tell you, "drop the price now". Are you panicking? Or do you truly feel you are priced too high? Is anything moving in your price range in your area now?