As an intellectual property lawyer, I'm going to weigh in on the question about the plans. Without seeing the agreement between your builder and the architect, I can't say for sure but... When an architect creates a plan, he automatically has a "copyright interest" in those plans. Copyright is a valuable intellectual property right. The holder of the copyright has the complete right to determine who can and cannot make a copy of the copyrighted materials. Anyone who makes a copy of copyrighted material without permission from the copyright owner is guilty of copyright infringement and could be liable for damages if sued. Copyright infringement damages can be quite hefty. Building a house from a set of plans is considered to be making a "copy" of the plans. Next, typically architects do not "sell" their plans. What they do is LICENSE others to make copies (either additional paper copies or an actual house or both). The license may limit the licensee to a certain number of "copies" or it MAY give him the right to make an unlimited number of copies. The license MAY also give the licensee the right to sublicense the materials. But a licensee can only sublicense what he has licensed. So for example, if the licensee has a license that allows him to make 100 paper copies and 20 house and allows him to grant sublicense; and the builder builds 18 houses using 30 paper copies, he can still grant sublicenses to build 2 more houses and make 70 more paper copies. If the builder even attempts to sublicense 3 more houses instead of two, he has breached his license with the architect and would also be guilty of "inducing infringement." Further whoever got that extra unlicensed sub-license could also be held liable for infringement. Fortunately, if that person had a good faith reason to believe his license was valid, he would probably be assessed only nominal damages. All those online plan sites have licenses from the architects with include sublicensing rights. When someone "buys" an online plan, what they are really getting is a license (sublicense, really) allowing them to make ONE copy of the plans. That is, they can build one house. If they build more than one, they are infringing! But, since on-line plans are often licensed to numerous licensees who are each granted the right to sublicense an unlimited number of copies, the chances that anyone will ever catch the infringement if someone builds a second house is infintessimally small. However, when an architect licenses a plan to a local builder, the license typically does NOT include a sublicensing right. Without a sublicensing right, the builder CANNOT contract with the homeowner to allow some other builder to finish the house if the original builder goes bankrupt. If the original builder can't/won't finish the work, the homeowner has no choice but to work out a deal with the architect... and if the architect wants to play dirty at that point, he pretty much has the homeowner over a barrel. That is not the time to be "working something out with the architect." No language in any contract between the homeowner and the builder will help if the builder goes bankrupt because the architect is the ONLY ONE who can grant the homeowner a license to use his plans. The architect has to be a party to the agreement. The builder simply CANNOT contract away rights that the architect controls. If the architect and builder are working together and the homeowner decide he needs to fire the builder, the homeowner could easily find himself stuck with having to bring in a new architect to revise the home enough that it no longer infringes the original plans. That could get awfully expensive if a house is already half built! Before the building process starts, the homeowner needs a written agreement with the architect giving the homeowner a contingency license to complete the house using the original plans in the event that the original builder does not complete the house for any reason. Such a contingency license should be really cheap before homebuilding begins. It may cost a whole lot more if the homeowner waits to ask for it until they desperately need the license. (Simple law of supply and demand!) Before building, every homeowner should find out who OWNS the copyright and get a contingency license. The agreement doesn't have to be complex but it does needs to be between the homeowner and the whoever OWNS the copyright to the house plans. $100 for a contingency license up front could wind up saving the homeowner thousands and thousands down the road. I personally know of a case where a builder decided to build a house based on a floorplan licensed to another builder. The other builder didn't like the competition and told the architect about the infringement. The architect sued the unlicensed builder. The case settled with the infringing builder agreeing to pay $25,000 in damages to the architect! The builder probably could have licensed the plans for $2,000 originally! Now the legal disclaimer: The above is legal information. It is not legal advice and no attorney/client relationship is created by my posting of the information.

That may be a good option. Maybe they will agree to a reimbursement of any advertising fees and a small commission. I will have to reread the contract to make sure I understand all the legalese. We haven't received a call from this lady yet so this may all turn out to be nothing. Hopefully if she is truly interested she will call in the next few days. I really do want to do the right thing but I also really want to get my house sold. We have been paying two house payments for several months now and this is the first real lead we have had on the place. Having a realtor involved could potentially make this person look elsewhere. We are getting a little desperate as it isn't easy paying two mortgages. I suppose I might be stuck paying this realtor fees that he truly did not earn if he is not willing/able to be flexible. I am not trying to shaft the realtor, just trying to get my house sold. I will have to look at all the options if/when this lady even decides to do anything. Thanks for reading and all your comments. Any other advice you might have is greatly appreciated Kristen

Your lot is very similar to mine. I just built a 2870 square foot house on a 9100 square foot lot in SW FL. We have a large living/dining/kitchen area, master suite, study, and what would be 2 bedrooms and 2 1/2 baths. We are retired so built what works for us. No laundry room. Just a laundry closet. And a 2 car garage. My setbacks were less than yours but I was only allowed to have 35% under roof. It made sense for us to build up. We wound up putting in an elevator. Of course that would depend on your ages and demographics of your neighborhood. The average age where we built was retired so it made sense to put in the elevator. YMMV. One thing we did was create a U shaped house with the rear facing south and the front facing north. You obviously can't do that, but if there's anyway to have your main living areas facing south, that would be ideal. Think of creating an L shaped house with the "backyard" actually facing to the south. Doing that was the best thing I did because even in the heat of the summer last year before I had AC, my house was bearable with the windows open. Here's a [link to my house build[(https://www.houzz.com/discussions/absolute-final-plans-and-elevations-and-build-thread-dsvw-vd~4361032)

TThe decision on windows has a lot to do with the style of your home. IMO I like sliders and single/double hung windows. Casements are more expensive and you have to deal with the interior screen or retractable screen. The hurricane windows down here are so very expensive. My BIL just had one sliding door and one window installed in his condo and it was over $5k. I can't imagine what your bill for 35 windows will be.