You will be stuck with this unless, you feel comfortable replacing the finishes after the fact. I have worked with quite a few clients who have ended up under these same circumstances, and we have successfully replaced the contractor's most basic finishes with the same or better products than they had originally wanted at half the price.

The high markup that they charge is based on the fact that they know you have little or no choice but to go ahead and upgrade or be faced with tearing it out after you move in. The latter is the option they are banking you wish to avoid. Additionally, most people roll the upgrades into their mortgage, a benefit that costs even more in the long run, but many won't afford to pay cash for those when you complete.

The terms of your contract are important, as well. Some contractors will allow you to pull out a percentage or all of your allowance and purchase product on your own to provide. They will likely still charge profit and overhead, but this might help you get away with some upgrades. In spec home communities, this is likely not the case, but it would never hurt to ask or carefully review your contract to see if you can negotiate it.

Most people are shocked at the design center's upgrade prices. I agree with cpartist on priorities. I'd skip the mosaic (will go out of style). Look at their standard grade granites.

Welcome to the world of purchasing a developer/tract home. Put your money and or upgrade into the bones (windows, insulation, framing, plumbing, etc) of the home, things that are not easiy chnaged out down the road. Paint interior doors, trim, cabinets, tops are easily done later by anyone of your choosing.

Agree with everyone above. The builders make huge profits on upgrades. It is far better to spend whatever allowance for upgrades you have in your contract on the structural items or bones of the home as millworkman puts it. For the cosmetic items - take the standard. There are two excellent reasons to take the standard options:

1) the price charged by tract builders is outrageous for the upgrade, nowhere close to market charges but many times what the market charges.

2) you can choose from all available materials after you close - but the builder has a very small limited number of choices. Why limit your choices to just what the builder's design center has when you can open up your choices exponentially. Besides then you have time to live with the standard selections and when you do decide to upgrade you can make thoughtful upgrades/changes based on what you want to do.

If you don't have small children (I have 5 + 1 in-utero), then I would totally get the standard finishes for everything, and upgrade later.

We carefully selected our upgrades, strictly keeping to a comps-based budget, and identified our current priorities as well as future inconvenience.... So, we focused on the kitchen. We are a single income, homeschooling family of special needs, and having the kitchen torn up for remodeling was something that we weren't willing to do while the kids were so little.

We didn't get anything fancy like awesome accent tile or patterns. We probably would've been more tempted if they had anything I actually liked, lol, but I was pretty strict with the rules. My husband overrode some of the rules, but we still ended up below budget (and a bit below comps for the neighborhood).

We built for resale, though, so it was easier to stay detached.

Wow. I read these threads and realize how lucky I am to have a GC who is a custom builder who doesn't work on the "allowance" system. He may be slow, but I don't get charged for picking out tile, faucets, or lighting.

Agreed Art, makes 2 of us. "Design Center" equates to cash. Put your money where you can't see it. HVAC, windows, insulation, ALL LED fixtures etc. Thr one thing we did was pick out everything from fixtures to light switches. I gave our builder the total cost. Allowances are for the most part a joke. Triple them and you might be getting close.

Wow I am so sorry you are going through this. If it were me, if you are happy with the cabinets, the only upgrade I might consider is the counters, provided you are happy with the cabinets. Does that upgrade price include ALL the counters in the house? I'd also call and price it just to see how high he is upping the price for the upgrade. The reason I'd do the counters is that for me at least, it would drive me crazy to look at counters that i dont really like. Other than that, I wouldnt do the shower. I think the band around the shower will go out of style if it hasnt already. I bet you wont even notice it's not there down the road.