My comments from your other post apply first and foremost. What part of the lot is buildable? Will this plan fit in that area? You may need a truly custom designed home to fit on the buildable part of your lot (keeping in mind the water itself, any adjacent "swampy" areas with high water table that would be impossible to build on, as well as easement from the road).

View: You'll have a choice here. Do you want the house to have a direct view out to the lake or do you want the house to step out onto a patio that then has the view? With this plan the patio has the view not the great room/breakfast. The view from in the house will be the BBQ and any seating/tables you have on the patio. In Florida people often want "Florida" rooms rather than open patios. What do you want?

As for this plan compared to the other one:
This one give you an open concept great room/kitchen that the other did not, and gives you more space for family eating and seating. Bedroom 4 might not be very usable for sleeping, working, or reading if the home theater room is in use with a booming subwoofer. Would you consider building without the master tub? You'll get a lot more functional space out of the master bath without it and corner tubs as depicted are not very user friendly.

Try placing furniture in the living room and you'll see how ridiculous this plan is.

The roof is unworkable for FL! (See my remarks in the other thread.) There is a reason most of the roofs in FL are not steeply pitched like this.

The kitchen like in the other house will be dark, as will the other rooms. (See my diagram in the other thread.)

And if anything, this house looks even less like it belongs in FL than the last one.

Let me repeat. A generic house will NOT work on your lot.

There is a public building across the street, and your dining room would face out to it. And the tower of windows, too. You have a very lovely lot with some unique aspects to consider, to take advantage of and to deal with, so your house must be unique, too!

And why would you have two stories of windows in a room that's supposed to be a theater?

It is a ridiculous and dysfunctional plan for almost any lot.

The plan warehouses aren't always very creative at designs but they do understand marketing trends. Many of their plans were drawn decades ago. Oh, a formal living room is no longer popular? Boom! Now it's a home theater. People want a command center? Oh let's just take away the coat closet and put in a desk with some shelves in its place next to the garage door. A grilling porch? We'll just make the font smaller so we can change patio to grilling porch on the label. Outdoor fireplace? Sure, let's just plop it down even though it looks totally like an afterthought (most people won't want to pay for that anyways). Now put up some photos showing shiplap and a barn door and all of the sudden the 1990s look fresh and modern!

Your lot appears to be virtually unbuildable, once setback lines, easements, high water lines and the like are applied. Are you sure you have room to build?

This plan is simply a waste of time. It's a plan factory plan and makes no sense at all. The interiors seem designed by a junior draftsperson. For example, why in the world would a double height space with extensive glazing be proposed as a "Home theater" room? The exteriors are ungainly and extremely bulky and unattractive.

If you are serious about this piece of property and a responsive house design you need to find a successful architect whose practice includes a major segment of single family homes.

You can do much, much better than this.

That thing is horrific.

Thank you. I picked the wrong plan. I just found a plan from Florida http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/4688366/a-third-time-is-a-charm-need-help-with-florida-waterfront-lot. This lot is over 4 acres, but unfortunately only half an acre is buildable (above the 100 year flood line) no no wet land.

You are not hearing us. No internet plan, even plans from FL are going to work for your lot. You need to work with an architect. Why are you resisting that idea?

We need to know what a rough plan would be like so we can meet with an architect and fine tune it.

No, you do don't have to do that. Make a list of how you live, what your needs are, and meet with an architect. To design YOUR home for YOUR family on YOUR lot in YOUR state.

NO you do not. First that Florida house is something that a tract builder in FL would do. You're building a CUSTOM house.

You need to go to an architect with your needs, your wishes and your wouldn't it be nice to haves. You need to start putting together idea books of styles of houses you like, rooms you like, etc. You need to let the architect know what rooms need to be near one another. That can be done by putting together a bubble diagram with paper and pencil.

A good architect doesn't need you to pick a generic plan to create something. As one of the architects says here, "You wouldn't bring a baloney sandwich to a 5 star restaurant?" Well the generic plans are like a baloney sandwich or a Mickey D meal vs dining in Le Cirq.

Here are some threads to get you started:

We fit an architect into our budget

Designing a custom home

Book suggestions

What makes a house have good design

Did you hire an architect?

Hiring an architect

House plan using bubbles

Questions on changing around a floor plan

Your lot is going to have challenges in order to have a home well sited, and able to take advantage of those gorgeous water views. Think of the views, think of how you live. What styles do you like? then - bring your wish list to an architect who can take the special parts of YOU and the special parts of the SITE and make something that makes your heart sing.

Anything you find online is going to be designed for a square or rectangle plot of land. You don't any anything close to that. Add in the views and the other limitations - and you NEED some creativity.

OP - as the others say, you don't need to bring plans with you to the architect. When we were building on a difficult lot, we sat down with our architect to discuss a very basic list: 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, maximum use of space (we didn't want rooms that only got used on holidays or when guests were over), open plan living/dining area; clean, modern design; lots of windows. That was about it. He then got a topographical survey done of the building envelope, and came up with a design which took into account all our basic "must haves" plus orientation for views, airflow and sun. The house was unique, designed to fit our specific situation, and not something we could have envisaged ourselves. And , with a few plan revisions, just what we wanted.

Just have it very clear what it is you must have, and what your style is - and leave the architect to bring it to reality.

Thank you for all the suggestions. I am thinking ahead in five to ten years when I moved out of the house and put the house on the market. A custom home to me is just a regular home to another buyer in ten years. So does it make sense to spend extra money to get a custom home vs little less money to get a semi-custom home?

Yes, absolutely it makes sense to buy a house for a little more that is well designed and better built and suits your and your family's needs. Ten years is a long time to put up with a badly designed and dysfunctional home when you could have something better for not a lot more.

The whole point of a custom built home is that it is well designed, with good flow, takes maximum advantage of its location, and is highly functional. They are things the generic McMansions almost never offer. And that means, the custom house will always be marketable.

I don't think this plan takes advantage of the lake at all.

I would think that with a lake you would want the orientation of the most lived in parts of the house to view the lake. This doesn't do that. Plus it looks like the plan would have to be trapezoidal, a triangle with the apex cut off to fit on the lot. Narrow end facing front with garage fanning out toward the lake. Look at houses in the Los Angeles area on tight lots with a view that present a garage and door to the street and expand toward the back.

A well designed house that takes advantage of beautiful views and has good flow will always sell for more than a poorly designed house . So the answer is yes

And the truth is when you work with a person of design talent, there's a good chance they can actually save you money. For example, the plan above has a bloated roof that will require extra strapping etc to make it safe in our hurricane prone area. It also has lots of wasted space so that even if an architect makes the house slightly smaller, the use of space will be better and that too can save money

OK. No, I would not build an architect designed custom house if I was planning to move in 5-10 years. You'll need two of those years to build it. Unless homebuilding is a hobby for you and your spouse (I'm getting the sense it is NOT) I don't think the time and stress of building a custom home is what you are looking for.

How about this: talk to home builders in your area and see what plans they have built previously. They'll have plans that meet Florida construction and permit requirements. They will also have contacts with local home designers who will have more plans available for you to look at. Tell them you want such as 4 bedrooms (with the master separated); open concept living/kitchen; TV/play room; 3 car garage; mudroom; single level preferred (if that's the case); and oriented towards the back of the house for view.

There are a number of threads here on this forum with people who have built Mitch Ginn and Southern Living plans. They all seem very happy. Have you looked at those threads and those plans? Keep in mind those aren't waterfront Florida homes but what they do offer is a more modern floor plan than the one's you've posted. They are based in Georgia so its possible they have done Florida waterfront homes. You could call Mitch Ginn's offices and see what they recommend.

You won't get perfection but it sounds like you are looking for "good enough" not perfection. That's fine. The vast majority of Americans live very happily in less than perfect homes. Although your lot is on a lake which will be a definite plus at resale it appears to have buildings around it that are not single family homes and I can't tell if the road in front has traffic/high speed limit on it so the location is already not perfect.

One other thought is that you need to build a home that is above BFE (base flood elevation) and that has special concerns and needs. Also most likely you need to build with block construction and again, that changes the constraints. For example, how high off the ground do you need to have your first floor?

As an example, my BFE is 11'5". I had to build 2' off the ground because my ground is 9'4" above BFE to start.

Florida is very strict about what they do and don't allow for new builds. More so than most states and that too needs to be factored in. Any plan you get from the internet will need to be redrawn by an engineer or architect to meet the strict Florida codes. That will most likely eat up a lot of the "savings" from an internet plan.

I disagree with Stan in that 10 years is a long time to live in a house that is just ok. And who knows for sure if in 10 years you'll be moving. My first house I only planned on staying for 5 years. I stayed 8.

I do agree with Stan that at this stage you need to do lots and lots of research. Research persons of design talent, both architects and designers. Find out what your restrictions are. Start figuring out what you need in a house.

1st find out from the county what the required setbacks are from the road, the lot lines and the lake. You may find the remaining build eligible site is smaller than you think. Also, you may have to plan for well, septic, or utility easements. Those and an architect can get you a workable plan. Also, lake homes are very different - they need good curb appeal, but most of the views and living areas are in back.

Given your unique and gorgeous site, I would probably have an architect design a custom plan even if it's not your forever home. That said, I would tell the architect that, too, as part of your process, so he or she can balance your family's unique needs with characteristics that will make it more universally appealing to future buyers. In some ways that's even more of an argument for an architect. Also, I really do think you'll get your money back out of a design that's perfectly suited to the site v. a generic plan that doesn't take maximum advantage of your beautiful views and lake access. We're going to be building but first looked at a lot of houses to see if we could buy what we wanted, and we pretty much vetoed anything that looked like a generic plan set on a lot, as they just weren't appealing.

gallery2000 can do much better than the two plans posted. But if they don't want to put blood sweat and tears into a truly custom home (they have 3 toddlers after all!) there's a happy medium that a local builder should be able to provide them assuming there's a buildable pad on the lot for a "typical" home. I do wonder why they'd plan to sell this home on a lake in 5-10 years though? Sometimes life happens and job transfers or family situations mean we have to move but if I owned this piece of property and was building on it I'd plan to stay there much longer.

Why was this hopefully zoned residential lot in a commercial or industrial location even bought? Especially if someone doesn't want to stay there long enough to make the construction of a home suited to the site constraints cost effective? Sell the lot and go buy something existing in a subdivision for the next 5 years. You will be many thousands and thousands of dollars ahead than attempting to put a truly gawdawful triangle peg in a weird parallelogram hole.

"Why was this hopefully zoned residential lot in a commercial or industrial location even bought?"

This is not a commercial or industrial location. Around this lake, there are about 20 houses. The park is right across the street, so I don't think that park counts as commercial.

I bought the lot without buying their already designed house (because it is over a million dollars, so I would rather get something smaller). Their original house (preconstruction and drew by a real architect) plan that is ready to build on this lot:

Well, yeah, it's over 1M. So will pretty much anything that you build there that meets the neighborhood's requirements. Including all of hose plans that you've posted. Plus lot development. You don't build a 200K 1000 sf tiny house in a 1M neighborhood ever. It would never get approved by anyone.

There is no HOA so I can build anything, even a log house. I wouldn't do that because I am thinking of building a $550k house so it would be around 2600 square foot house.

HOA's are just an added layer of requirements. The municipality still has to approve your plans as complying with the zoning and covenants. And the bank. And the impact to the wetlands also has to be satisfied. There is a whole host of approvals needed to build in a location like that. Even a simple 2600 foot plan is likely to be closer to 900K than it is to 550K, due to the site difficulty and added burdens of access and wetlands.

I hope it is not that expensive. The reason we bought that lot was to build an inexpensive home.

Have you talked to the bank that would be financing this build? Have you talked to the local codes office? What kind of due diligence did you actually do in purchasing the lot?

We don't plan on using the bank. We plan on building this ourselves. All I know is the lot is buildable and we got a good price for it. We can sell it if it is too expensive to build.

Go ahead and sell it now. You are completely out of your depth on a real world home build. Much less one on this lot, and in FL to boot.

What do you mean you plan on building it yourself?

Secondly, I would guess that plan is not by a real architect. If it is, the architect needs to go back to school since it looks like every other plan factory plan plopped onto the site.

Thirdly, that house looks smaller than the ones you are looking to build. What makes you think you'll be able to build for 1/2 the price?

Fourth, like Sophie said, Florida has extra conditions that need to be met. That drives the cost up and can't be fudged, unless you're willing to watch your house go bye-bye during the first major storm. If anything, a house in FL needs to be over engineered!

I do believe you can build a less expensive house on the lot but not the ones you've been looking at. A simple L shape or a simple rectangle, maybe about 1800 square feet might be doable for your budget. But not the things you are looking at. Every one of them even if they were worth putting on the site, would be close to or over a million as Sophie suggests.

The preconstructed house on the lot is about 4500 square foot. The house I am planning to build is about 2600, so the saving is there. 2600 sqft x $180 per sqft = $468k which is within my budget.

And what you're missing is that it won't be $180. It will be more. The 4500 square foot house if it truly is $1 million is coming to $222 a square foot so what makes you think you can build for $180?

A builder's estimate (say $180/sf) is worth exactly what you paid for it. No cost estimate is worth anything until it's part of the construction contract to build a specific house. CPA is exactly right: builder's estimates, more often than not, are simply come ons designed to get a consumer to sign an open-ended construction contract with a ton of allowances which are impossible to use or accept. The result is a finished construction budget of 2X or more of the initial "estimate".

Gallery2000 it appears that you are moving towards a huge and unpleasant surprise. Unless you have done this many times before, why are you not listening to those whose experience may be far greater than yours?

because I already bought the land so the $180 per square foot does not include the lot.

Neither does anyone else's estimates include land. 180 a square for the porches and garages, I can see. Not for the conditioned space on that lot.

Anyway, the seller had two options. Buy the lot for more than $200k or buy the lot and the house for $1MM.