Op, First sorry you have to deal with Seattle, and good for you for get out of there. Too bad it still sound like you have to deal with some crazy stuff, Where we live now, we have tree police, you can not cut anything down without their permission, there is no law behind them but the township will make your life miserable. When we moved in to our current home, I decide to cut down 5 trees which were mostly dead or dangerous to our house or people, never got permission and the tree police never found out. They even prevent the electric company from cutting back trees, we we have all these trees with hole cut in them verse being remove. Recently the electric company started just cutting them down since we had so many storm outages.
The Wife and I are right in middle of same project. Little over a year ago we bought 7.5 acres. In our case we were not able to do our 90 days due diligent since we got into a small bidding war on the property. Another offer came in without contingencies so we have to match. We got a good deal on the property, it was less then half the cost/acre in our area for similar properties which were approved to be built on. We only use a real state agent to process the land sale, beyond this they did not need their involvement, why pay commission on the building of the house. Its easy to find the people to do the building and design. We had the cash to buy the land out right, but chose a HELOC, our bank gave us fixed 2.6% for a year and going rate there after, so it is just under 4%. at the time they would lock us at 4.75% for anything more than 1 yr so we bet rates would come down so we did the one year lock and our bet was right.
However, prior to making the offer, I did a bunch of investigations on the property and knew most of history of land back to 1969 when the current owner bought it and never put a house on the property. There is lots on online resource to research the land, like the USGS and state websites about flood plains, soil composition, mineral rights. The main issue was septic, I knew the property was under contract a couple of times last couples of years and fell through since they could not do the perk test on the land for septic. I know there were attempts but all the attempt we done after long period of rain, spoke with the guy who was contracted to do the test. Also, I knew the soil was poor and would require a more expensive septic system, and property around ours had gotten approval for the type of system which was required. Our plan no mater what the soil test showed was to go with the much better septic systems verse the older style which can become problematic over time. Lastly the owners have been trying to sell the land on and off for the last 5 yrs and significantly dropped their selling price.
Our original plan prior to the second offer coming was full price offer knowing full well their was the septic challenge and when that came back, we would counter offer less the cost of the more expensive septic system.
We put the project on hold due to Covid, however, we picked it up again last Dec. However, our approach from the beginning was different than yours. Before we bought land we meet with a number of builders in our area. Most of them do not have Architect, if they do it is mostly to work on modifying plans to meet building codes. Every builder we meet with, said one thing, please do not walk in with a set of plans and ask us to build it especially if you are in love with the plans. More times than not they said they have to be the bad guy to tell you either it is going to cost more than your budget or the design as drawn is not easily built and require changes or increase costs.
Most Architect do not have actual construction experience and just because it can be drawn does not mean it is easily built with standard construction methods. In our case we selected the builder first based on what they have built in the past and based on recommendation of others who they built for. We also look at builders who are only doing 10 to 20 project a year verse the bigger builders, since it hard to stay on their radar. These are the people who know the most about building a home and they have all the connections with the site engineers you have to consult with and have close ties with the town code enforcement people (more personal relationship if you get my drift). Once we selected this person they help us select an Architect who they worked with in the past and who could design what we wanted. The builder is the person who is going to cost the actual home for you since they have to work with all the subcontractors for the various things like HVAC, Electrical and Plumbing.
Since we were working directly with the Site Engineer who handle the land surveys and land prep as well as dealing with the land regulations like the EPA and such if that is required. This person recommended the septic design engineer who actually did our soil test and works with the County on get the property approved to put septic system. This guy soil engineer use to work for the country as septic health engineer for 30 yrs, he new the system and how to work, the county employee who approve land for septic use to work for the septic companies soil engineer. This person had no issue getting the land approved, and that happen in January. The Septic engineer said sometime it better to do it when the ground was frozen which turn out to be right and he knew by just looking at the land where the best spots would be.
Just yesterday we select our Architect, we sat down with him and showed him a similar house we like and gave him our list of wants and desires in the house. Prior to this we meet with the builder to share the same thing and we talked budgets. Turns out our budget was too low for what we wanted, so we made some modification on the wants list. He also steer us away from doing things which would become very costly to do. One of those things we did not want a basement, only a craw space, turns out a full basement is fractionally more costly than craw space. The real cost come in with all the mechanicals and where they go, easier and less costly to have everything a basement since our design does not lend itself to have artic space. These are things Architects do not always tell you up front. The reason we pick this architect he made suggestions about how to void unnecessary costs since we did not have the unlimited budget. One suggestion was windows, we want large window those can be $$$ but he said there are ways to achieve the same thing with standard window offering from Anderson or similar.
The builder will also help with picking out all the building material, they have good idea what things cost and whether a specific building material is worth the extra costs. Architects are sometimes more worries about the look then it function and costs.
Not saying this will happen with your project, however, Architect charge for their time, and every change you want to make after the drawings are done or are required by code or construction challenges they will charge for all those changes. They control the drawings thus have to update drawings so they can be resubmitted for building approval. I think Architect knowingly design something which is a challenge to build knowing they will make more money on the change orders. This is why our builder said we should get an all in costs, which include changes required to meet code or standard construction methods.
All the people we selected have work together for many years they all know each other and know what each other requires, so no finger pointing later if something goes wrong.
Here is the house style we are looking to build, one of the modification is putting a 3 & 4 garage where the 2nd and 3rd bedrooms are and moving one of the bedrooms to the second floor, and eliminating the 3rd garage from the main 2 garages.
https://markstewart.com/house-plans/...lans/taliesen/
We are also doing a building loan, already talk to Univest, originally spoke with small local banks and our major bank who has our mortgage and checking and they not longer do building loans. Turn our the smaller banks have been swapped with refi and had high interest for building loans. Univest has the best deal, there are restriction on using a FANNY MAC back building loan, first limited to $485K and higher interest rate, however, Univest will self finance building loans above $485 at lower interest rate. The best part of their build loan it will automatically convert to a conventional mortgage at completions at the same or lower rate at the time of home completion. No requirement to get a new mortgage at completion. Also since we own the land it make the building loan easier. The Univest loan since it is internal and if we have to extend build time or increase the amount it handled internally and usually approved in a few days.