Boy, there are a lot of good responses in this thread. Your mention about saving only a tiny bit on a larger build is really a good point. There seems to be an inflection point in build cost where a decent stick built provides advantages that no modular can match. Frankly, if I were building my ideal house, and had money (haha), I would have gone custom site-built, and found a exceptional builder and just plowed forward. The kicker here is what BugSTi just mentioned. Some of us want it all, but knowingly can't afford what our minds visualize. The scenario where an owner is holding two mortgages at the same time is where we are living now, but it might change shortly (just accepted an offer on house 1). This reality shaped how much we could afford, and narrowed our options down to one...we chose that one. Funny enough, our house was never the main goal of our retirement build; it was the view of our land from windows on whatever we ended up with. We chose right: turns out the million dollar view looks just a good through a $100 window as through a $1000 dollar one : )