A couple of ways to bring the price down: use a stock home design, a pre-fab, or a really cool kit home such as the ones available from Viceroy homes. I helped coordinate a Viceroy build just two years ago and it went well, saving a load of time and money compared to the experience of using an architect.
Interesting. I'll have to look into Viceroy Homes. In my mind, I had never considered a
truly custom home, and have always assumed using a stock design. There are free home plans on the 'net, and, at least a few years ago, you could buy books or CDs with 100s of plans... I would assume you can still do the same (or pay a fee to get 'net-access to a boatload of plans). The library might even have such books or CDs.
There are specific things I want, but I'm sure there exists at least a few stock designs that meet my requirements.
Do-it-yourselfers (or finding an unusually cool contractor) can build custom houses for much less by doing most of their own design work and using reclaimed materials from the surplus building material store. It sounds chintzy, but actually you can often find really high-end materials there from commercial buildings, so you can still get a nice house.
I believe you, but you have to be careful... my wife found a place that deals in that kind of stuff, and we went there thinking we could find some
cheap but also unique items to use as gifts. A lot of it was very expensive. We saw a
doorknob for $600!
There's also a weird paradox with some of the advanced technologies like geothermal heating and spray-foam insulation. Depending on the climate and your solar gain, those can be unnecessary as well. For example, the best quote I could find for spray foam on the ceilings of one of my custom houses alone, was higher than the price of insulating the entire house with fiberglass batt insulation and blown cellulose ceiling cavities. ($5600). Yet even with the cheaper insulation, the house uses almost no energy to heat or cool, so there would be no savings from better insulation. The best thing you can do in a northern climate is huge South-facing windows that you cover at night. In a hot climate, it's big overhangs, very few Western windows, a reflective metal roof, and a HUGE amount of attic insulation.
I get the impression that your neck of Colorado has relatively mild weather. My long-term plan is central Illinois, where we have the privilege of both hot summers and frigid winters.
Many many years ago, I went to a home show, where they had a demonstration of that spray-in foam. It was basically three chambers, one each of standard "pink" insulation, cellulose, and spray foam. Additionally, there was significantly more pink insulation than cellulose, and more cellulose than spray foam. At the bottom there was a hair dryer blowing up into the three chambers, and at the top of each chamber was a thermometer. In decreasing temperature was the pink stuff, cellulose and spray foam. (The implication, obviously, is that that spray foam lets the least hot hair pass through.)
Anyway, just be sure to run the numbers before diving in - many custom house projects never get out of the architecture stage as people realize only then how expensive everything will be.
I definitely wouldn't start spending any money until I had run the numbers, no doubt about that. This is a long ways off, but something I find fun and interesting to think about.
Perhaps the smart move is "retire" into the construction business (like you (MMM) basically have). Spend some years working with local contractors, carpenters, roofers, painters, HVAC guys, etc, until I have enough experience to DIY.
