A FREE Consumer Awareness Guide
BUILDING A HOME IN SCOTTSDALE?
Read this first.
For families building from $3 million, the gap between budget and reality routinely runs 20% to 40% — $600,000 to $2,000,000 on a home this size. This guide shows you the eight mistakes that open that gap, and how to close every one — before you break ground.
Most of the money is lost before the first shovel.
The costliest decisions in a custom build aren’t made on the job site. They’re made months earlier — in the order you hire your team, the way your plans get priced, the finishes nobody costed until it was too late to change them. By the time the gap shows up in your budget, the choices that created it are already behind you.
What's inside the guide
Eight mistakes that quietly add six and seven figures to a custom build — each one avoidable once you can see it coming.
The Wrong Order
There's a sequence for assembling your team that protects the budget. Most families get it backwards.
Plans You Can't Afford
Why so many custom designs get finished, priced, then quietly started over.
Allowance Trap
The line items that look like a budget but aren't — and where the real cost hides.
Code Minimum
What "built to code" really means for how your home lives, and what it leaves on the table.
Approving Blind
The drawings you'll be asked to sign off on, and the questions few know to ask first.
Salesperson or Builder
How to tell which one you're actually talking to, before you sign anything.
The Remote Build
Why out-of-area families lose control of the build, and what holding onto it takes.
Surprise Costs
The one rhythm that catches budget problems early — that most builds never set up.
MEET MIKE CHRISTENSEN
This Guide's author
— and the person you'll actually work with.
Mike Christensen has spent 24 years building luxury custom homes across North Scottsdale and Paradise Valley, and 20 years in the U.S. Army before that. He wrote this guide because he’s watched too many families make these mistakes with no one to warn them. He believes trust is earned before it’s asked for — which is why everything in here is yours to use, with any builder you choose.
Get the guide before you make the first decision.
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