Some other advice... Do online shopping. There are so many options and great deals available, especially for fixtures I would advise using online pricing to negotiate better prices at local supply houses and shops. It is rarely worth the trouble to return and/or get warranty service on items purchased online. An installation of a defective item can destroy all your savings from online shopping. Many supply houses will match or give you some discount to make them a better choice. For items that are easily replaced such, such as lights, online shopping can be great as a defective light will have little collateral damage. Talk to local stores for bargain, discontinued stock, deals, clearing sale, etc This is great advice, but you must be ready to purchase when the items are available and have a means to store the item. I purchase closeout items for my rental properties that I don't currently need in anticipation of needing them. I have replacement faucets, toilets, etc waiting for breakage or lease end. Talk to the builder and get builder-discounts at some stores This should be nearly automatic. I get my painter's discount, my plumber's discount, and my electrician's discount for projects they are working on even when I buy the stuff (supply houses will usually just give me the discount even if they are not doing the stuff). Use basic standard stuff and upgrade later, especially appliances This is incredibly common bad advice. This is essentially the same thing as put your money in the toilet, but wait a few years to flush. There is only a marginal cost of upgrading today. Why in the world would you want to not only ignore the reduced cost, but increase cost by buying stuff you don't want? If you can live with cheaper stuff indefinitely, then buy cheaper stuff. Don't make your financial situation worse by buying cheaper stuff that you don't want to live with so that you can buy more expensive stuff later. Current mortgage rates are barely above inflation rates, you are not going to be better off by having a lower mortgage and deferring costs. A wild suggestion from a co-worker: Use no -interest-for-2-years credit card to buy some of the stuff instead of charging it to construction loan. Once you finish the project, then you get some time to make the credit card payment. This is not really saving anything for me. Just a suggestion to defer the initial burden. This is actually solid advice. In fact, for the last 10 years I have been carrying a zero percent credit card balance. I just balance transfer it to a different promotional card before the interest period kicks in. Interest free money is great. Even ignoring my investments over that time, every dollar I financed at zero percent interest back then is only 83 cents of purchasing power to pay off today. However, that debt should be factored into your loan app when you apply for credit. You can get in trouble increasing your debt while working out a mortgage loan.

opaone- Not sure where you live, but those economics don't apply in most of the areas I'm familiar with. One of my daughters has seen the market value of her 1930's home increase by about $500K in the last 5 years. Another daughter just bought a 75 year old house -- that has not been remodeled --- for more than ten times it's original cost...and it was a bargain. My first house was a 1950's suburban rambler that I bought for $45K in 1974, did some remodeling to, and sold for over $700K 15 years ago; the buyer started an update, but decided to sell 5 years after that for $1.3 million, even though parts of the remodel were only half done. My neighbor across the fence paid about $400K for a 1960's split level 8 years ago. He has done nothing to it other than paint the exterior, and expects to be able to sell it soon for at least twice what he paid. Some people do want new houses, but many people prefer the charm and building material quality of older homes. As long as they have been maintained, older home values keep increasing over the long term. I have been through more than one market cycle where my home lost value on paper, but it's always more than recovered. In fact, I've always lived in the suburbs and have done much better with buying and selling homes than any other thing I've invested money in. I'm sure some suburbs decline, but, in areas with decent economies, suburban homes still increase in price as young people are priced out of the urban market. They seek out these homes as their longer commutes make them less expensive than a similar house close in. The lower suburban price doesn't mean the houses are falling apart. I agree with you on the trend for people to want things close by and not have to drive as much, but those types of communities and infrastructure are starting to be built where I live by savvy developers who have figured out where our aging demographics are taking us. And these types of projects, while they may not have all the amenities of living right downtown, do offer an alternative to the grittier aspects of big city urban life. In fact, we have good friends who just sold their beautiful downtown condo with spectacular views to get away from noise and panhandling, and move to a home in a nearby suburb where many things are no longer within waking distance, but the living environment is more pleasant.

@John Hrivnak, ArCH, AIA, MBA, NCARB, LEED AP - This is a problem with anecdotal evidence. You are not going to architect your way out of a bad builder. When we look at the advantages and disadvantages of design/build firms in aggregate it is pretty easy figure the trade-offs inherent in the model. This is not rocket surgery, it is a simple backward or forward vertical integration business combination and they have been happening a long time now. Somewhere deep in the past a wine maker said. "I think we would be more profitable if we grow the grapes." THE GOOD Every combination requires synergy, so the two parts being better together than they would be apart. In the case of the winery owning the grapes it is a change in the decisions around growing and harvesting grapes. Essentially you can tailor your wine to your grapes and your grapes to your wine. In design/build firms plans will be tailored to take advantage of builder proficiencies and enhanced communications. The designer will be able to anticipate areas where the builder may struggle and will design away from that when possible and communicate more clearly when not. Plans are more likely to hit cost targets as the design process is automatically designing to efficiency. There will also be more communication between the builder and designer during the design phase when they are in the same office. THE BAD Every combination has a sacrifice because of the exclusive nature of the combination. In the case of a winery, if you own the fields and have a grape harvest that is not particularly fantastic while a competing grower has a fantastic harvest, you are still required to use your grapes. If you sell your grapes and buy the others you have destroyed all of the value in the combination. In design/build firms that tailoring of plans to building efficiency will limit creativity. An architect for a design build firm is not going to design towards something the builder is not good at doing. They are going to design to strengths and away from weaknesses. Those strengths and weaknesses might not be shared by every builder. This is a tangible weakness and should be given serious consideration (e.g. If a builder has a preferred window supplier the designer is likely to find a way to incorporate those windows in the design even if a different window would be better). --- This entire thing assumes that quality is equal across the board, which it is not. I can assure you that the answer above is correct, yet it is also meaningless in your decision. Your decision is going to be based on your needs and your market. In your market you may well have several architect driven design/build firms (forward vertical integration), or you might have cost conscience builders providing design services (backward vertical integration). Do your due diligence and then pick the arrangement that you are most comfortable with. I would advise that you take pricing quotes with a grain of salt, the best value is not likely to depend on a quoted upfront price. Also I personally would not look at portability of plans from a design/build firm. This seems like the worst of all worlds... You limit design to strengths of one firm and then don't use that firm. Just my 2 cents... Good luck.

@Brittany Kesler. Have you figured out how much these extras will cost you in your monthly mortgage payment? Are you getting a 30 year mortgage? Will you still qualify if you get the wood stairs, the shower door and your other selections? Once you move in, you probably won’t want the mess and the risk of having your own contractor come in and make a mess in your new house. The shower guy you hire might crack a tile or not be able to cover up the hole that the screw from the framed shower leaves. Letting the builder add the shower (etc) now may cost you very little per month at today’s low interest rates. If you can afford these extra upgrades and still pay the rest of your bills and put a bit into savings each month for retirement and emergencies etc, do as much as you can before you move in if you plan to do them at all. I’m in the process of building now. It amazes me how sloppy some of the contractors are. They’ve left fingerprints and marks on the wall, cracked a tile, etc. Because the builder was overseeing it all, he‘s had things fixed and repainted. The builder has more clout to get a Contractor to fix things than you will because the builder hires the same companies over and over. If the subcontractor doesn’t fix the problem, he won’t get to work on the next job. If you hire a shower guy, and he scratches you walls or breaks a tile, good luck getting him to fix it. He might —- but he might just disappear.