It's too low to get a good quality job with a comfortable profit for the builder. All of his overhead has to come out of that, and 15-20% on a moderate priced home is the more usual fee. Not always true. Ours is a quality custom home with a lot of special features and details. Our GC was a one man show. His office was his kitchen. He has no overhead. He usually is building one home at a time. He does crank up the next one as current one is being finished. He's been building custom homes for over 20 years and everyone only has nice things to say about him. We own commercial property and many of our regular subs know him. Another quality builder we received bid from had an office, an on site supervisor, a fleet of trucks, plus all the women in his office, etc. BIG overhead. In the end, we were more comfortable with the GC we selected. It wasn't all about the money. We were also allowed to do things during the build to help save on cost. We were able to use our own subs. I purchased whatever I wanted from wherever I wanted. DH's helper did all the clean up, they stained the beams before installation, etc. DH is knowledgeable and we were able to be very hands on.

Mightyanvil, Thank you for the contract breakdowns, I really appreciate that. That is definately part of what I was looking for, ways to create a win/win for us and our eventual builder. We have someone we are interested in using but have not talked specific contracts yet. There seems to be some perception that 1. I am not interested in quality and 2. that I don't realize the potential costs of quality and the unforseen. I appreciate that you are trying to warn me -thanks. I do understand these things and am trying to be prepared for them. What I was trying to get at is that somewhere out there there is a good contractor who will look at a project and take into account our site, our materials choices, our plan, etc. and come up with a bid or projected budget and a price to build our home based on all those things plus whatever he/she needs to make it work, do the job and continue to run a business successfully. Fine with that. There is also someone out there who will do all the same things and will take opportunities to increase the profit he/she takes from the job without offering any additional quality or service to the owners. My whole point is that from my point of view the second scenario is not okay with me and I was wondering what others had done and how they felt about their experiences. I would like to guard against scenario #2 if I possibly can. I know if I choose more expensive materials I will also have to increase the labor portion because it will take more skill from the tradesperson required to do the job. We do want a well built home and know that we will have to make choices and potentially sacrifices to get the things that matter most to us. When I was projecting our budget I took the averages from about 5 different sources of information and then depending on my ability to verify how that would apply to the home we are building I would either use the highest number if I didn't know or the amount that seemed to fit best with our project. There were some items that I was able to verify by actually going out and getting real numbers others by saying 'we are building a home next year it will be (description)if I am looking for 'x' and I budget 'y' is that reasonable? In the 'unknown' areas I spoke to a friend who owns his own concrete flatwork company, he has built several of his own homes. One of his sites was in our neighborhood and similar to ours, so in my basic labor and materials budget I took the amount he paid for excavation and tripled it for safety. I compared that to the prices others have paid in 'hairy situations' and my number was always the highest. We have already dug some on the property as we put in the septic and the excavator at that time did not feel we would have a problem *from what he could see and had experienced on our site* digging the hole for the house. I took the highest foundation cost and added 50%. We have city water, septic is in and we have electrical ready to go. This home will replace a manufactured home so our permits are inexpensive-about 1/3 of what it would be otherwise. When I got my budget together I looked at the overall total and added 10% to the entire thing. I did find that some numbers varied more than others and were harder to pin down. Other times the same number kept popping up so I felt I must be close and the 10% on top of that should cover it. I actually showed this budget and the plan to the builder we are considering and she gave me the feedback that most of my numbers are 'conservative'- in her terms which meant 'high' and we should be fine. Even if our budget goes over another 10% from that we are ok -including the fee amounts she quoted us for her services. At the time the plan we had been considering was built as a spec house nearby and we had gone through it several times. When I contacted the builder I explained that we really liked his house and were considering building that home ourselves. We shared with him information about our property and our time frame and we talked about the finishes in the house and the different things he was including. When he gave me the price for the home as built but on our site it was about 16% higher than our highest number and it did not include everything. Based on comments some have made, maybe it was still a 'fair' number but then again maybe not...in our county you can look up valuations on permits and the price he quoted for house only was $100k over that amount and it was $200k over what he told the county his cost was. In talking with my concrete contractor friend who has built his own homes he told me that builders usually underestimate their expenses for the county but that the county gets very close and they include approximately a 10% 'contractor markup' in their valuation. Enter builder #3, nice guy, only builds turnkey, fixed price. Not sure why he was interested in us as we were very up front that we did not think we would go that way. He was trying to convince us why we should I think. He was very helpful and actually wanted to see our site. He has just finished carving half a hillside out for a huge custom home which we toured so he knows about 'hairy excavation' and he looked at our site and said it was about average for our area and he didn't see a problem. Famous last words I know... anyway he ballparked a price about 10% less than the higher guy and about 9% above our 'cost plus' budget. This makes sense as he does need that 'coverage' in there, but...we had already added that to our numbers so...either we are still way off or...make of it all what you will. The highest number is out of our budget, the middle number is doable and the low number means new furniture, nice landscape etc. Guess which one I am planning on? Guess which one I am HOPING for?! :) So perhaps some will say this all bears no relevance to an actual project and maybe it doesn't. I am not trying to control every aspect, just educate myself and be prepard so that hopefully we make a good choice when we do finally sign that contract. I just wanted to know what everyone else was thinking about builders, pricing and contracts and how to best go about building a home for a 'fair' price. We are committed to building a house, it will be interesting to see what it will actually cost. Thanks all.

xoxosmom, generally speaking, the end user of a product pays the sales tax. In this case, that would either be you or your builder, *one* of you would likely own sales tax, the whole thing. Your contractor is likely paying sales tax on all of the other materials, there's no reason why appliances would be different. As weissman says, though, the rules are different everywhere. Here in Washington (state), for example, for new home construction, sales tax is paid on the entire price of the house (!) - on materials, the contractor's mark-up, everything - so you should feel lucky if you only have to pay it on the appliances. As far as contractor's discounts go, in building our house, I found them to be largely fictional - like a phony department store "sale", prices are marked up so they can be marked back down again. In the case of appliances, discounts from MSRP were marginal - say, 5-10%. We found the best strategy to find prices and then ask the dealer favored by the contractor to match them. So if Sears has exactly what you want, get a quote. Ask the independent dealer to match it. If they don't, take your business to Sears if you want but you'll need to balance price against possibly better service from the independent dealer.

As Sophie mentioned, some brands like Miele, Wolf/Subzero, and Gaggenau impose UMRP, Unilateral Manufacturers Retail Price. That means no discounting, and no matter where you buy it, the price will be the same, or perhaps you might find regional differences of $100. Some appliance retailers will give incentives when selling you UMRP brands by other means: e.g., by discounting other brand appliances you might be buying at the same time, or throwing in non-cash incentives like free delivery and installation. Or, you can find UMRP brand appliances at lower prices when they are returns, or a discontinued model, or scratched/dented. Jennair you mentioned is a Whirlpool brand and not UMRP. You can find all kinds of discounts, as well as Black Friday deals, Christmas deals, etc. on the several Whirlpool brands. Thermador is part of Bosch/Gaggenau, and I am not sure whether Thermador falls under UMRP or not. Thermador has well-advertised package discounts when you buy an entire suite of all-Thermador, but they are costly packages. Miele most definitely has UMRP. There's also no such thing really as "builders pricing", or the similarly-named "contractors discount". For non-UMRP brands, you almost always get better prices by going to stores and negotiating directly than you can by going through a contractor or builder. When you are at a store and the salesperson tells you the price is with a "builders discount", s/he just means, well, discount. Putting the word "builders" in front of the word "discount" makes the buyer feel the deal is more special.