I have never built, but will be in the next few years. I have looked at new houses for about 10 years dreaming about the day we could afford one so have walked through a lot. I have seen $750,000 houses that I would not buy due to design and construction flaws.

If you can, take a look at finished houses from the builder. If you can have an engineer who does housing inspections walk through a couple before you commit. They can help you spot significant issues. This is good advice for any house you buy. They can cost several hundred dollars, but kept us from buying a house that had significant water damage that could not have been detected without him.

I agree whole heartedly with Lil about fixing design problems in the design stage. Also, budget for at least 10% cost over runs. That way if you decied you are going to go with granite counter tops instead of the formica, you can afford it or you decide you don't like the plain light fixtures you can upgrade to nice ones.

Something that alot of people don't think about but I have found can be helpful is to have the Heating/AC, water heater, water softener etc, moved to a corner. It is easier and cheaper to have the HVAC in the center of the house, but you can end up with unusable space.

Even if you plan on using wireless, I would always recommend having a copper LAN installed. You may not use it, but it never hurts to have it in place.

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