You would have to look at all of the cookie cutter homes. :)

Why?

I honestly don't think I would care. :) If you are building a custom home yourself and are still in a nice neighborhood with nice neighbors, I wouldn't mind at all.

Check on HOAs too. A lot of the time, those cookie cutter "custom" homes will have an HOA for required maintenance.

The main thing to consider is the price of your new house. If it will be the most expensive house in that neighborhood, then it will not be a good idea to buy there because you might have resale problems. In other words, it will not be a good business.

You would have to look at all of the cookie cutter homes. :)
Why?

It was a joke. The downside of building in a neighbourhood of cookie cutter homes is that when you look out of the window in your nice custom built home, you'd see cookie cutter homes instead of other nice custom built homes.

I agree with naf_naf. If the price of your custom home is still comparable w/ the cookie cutter homes in the neighborhood, than it doesn't matter. If you home would cost more than all the others, then you will have issues with resale whether the other homes were custom or cookie cutter, imo.

Thanks Greg yes it was a joke. My parents have a house in a quiet neighborhood of small ranches and story and a halfs built in the early '60s. It is a blue collar neighborhood and can see the different 'templates' the builders used.

I remember one time when one of my dad's best friends (who lives in a beautiful custom home on acreage just outside of the city) said to my dad "I could barely find your house because they all look alike." That has stuck with me so I was also being serious. We will build in a few years on a farm though, and I would think if you're going through the trouble you would want the area around your house perfect as can be.

Even though DH and I have been together for 14 years he still has trouble remembering which house is my parent's house. Although that may be for different reasons. ;)

I wouldn't want to have the only custom home in a brand new neighborhood. The big advantage to building in a new neighborhood is that everyone is new and looking to make friends. But if your house sets you apart as someone who thinks the rest of the neighborhood's choices weren't good enough for you, then that might make for some pretty uncomfortable block parties. If you've got jealous types on your block, you could easily end up the odd family out.

It all depends on how nice those cookie cutter homes are and what the lots are like. Big or small. Wooded land. Barren and no trees. Backyards with neighbors, Backyards with nature.

I probably would not - but not because of the cookie cutter homes. Mainly because areas like that are far away from a town center and require you to drive everywhere.

the reason we chose to buy a lot and build was because we could not find anything for sale in our neighborhood.

We did, but we wanted to live in town and that's the only option. We do have a custom plan that we designed but the exterior of our home had to follow the neighborhood guidelines. We like our lot and our home will be beautiful but the one really big negitive was having to use one of the two builders the developer allowed. We did not have the option to chose any builder and unfortunately the one we ended up using has been horrible. Cookie cutter neighbourhoods are part of living in the city nowadays.

We are one of three homes that were built 15 years later than the original homes, but the style is similar to the others.As a result, we are not part of the neighborhood covenants but are surrounded by those that are. We still join the community association and follow all the rules, but don't need to ask for permission to make exterior improvements or changes. It would be a pain to have to go through the architectural committee every time we wanted to change some trim paint color.