Our house hunt took about six months. We didn't know if we wanted to buy a pre-existing structure or build (after some of the horror stories I had heard about building).
So we bought a lot and found a couple of builders to consider. In the meantime, we continued to look at what existing homes were available in our price range.
This would be our second home, and after remodeling the crap out of our first one, we concluded that building a custom home was the way to go. The existing homes always had one less room, or one less amenity that we would have wanted.
If you choose to build, you will learn more about home construction than you care to!
