Custom home or production builder: which argument are you actually in?

Central Florida is full of new houses. A lot of them are good at what they are: a known plan, a known lot width, a design center with a menu, and a price that works because the plan repeats. That is a production home. It is not a failure of character to buy one. It is a failure of fit to hire a custom builder and then ask him to behave like a production line — or the other way around.

What “custom” costs you, besides money

Custom means the plan starts with how you live. Where you enter with groceries. Who sleeps on the ground floor. How the house sits on a lake lot or a sloping Clermont street. It also means decisions, and decisions take calendar. You will choose more, earlier, than a buyer walking a model. The payoff is a house that is yours when it is done, including the unglamorous parts: storage, a real laundry, a roof that was detailed for this elevation.

What we will not pretend

We are not staffed to outbid a national builder on a 40-foot lot in a new subdivision with a required elevation. Our work runs from careful remodels through ground-up customs, including gulf-front houses Aaron managed before this company, in a range that has gone from a few hundred thousand dollars into multi-million projects. If your number and your wish list do not meet, we would rather redraw the list than sneak the difference into allowances.

If you already own the lot, or you are about to, call before you fall in love with a plan that ignores the drainage. The lot is the first drawing.