A spec home means the builder gets to choose the floor plan and all the finishes. Some builders who are building a spec will allow a buyer, who signs a contract early enough, to choose the colors of some finishes. The weirder your choices, the bigger the deposit!

I've know builders who will not sell a spec until it is 100% completely done, as they do not want to deal with buyers making any choices or changing their minds!

I don't know anything about this builder, but you are doing the right thing by asking for information upfront. Have you googled? Google the builder name plus the words reviews, complaints, law suits.

Ask for a copy of their contract. Ask for references from others that have built with them. If they have done any local builds, drive there and talk to homeowners.

I’ve bought 2 spec homes, got great deals on them because the builder was still building new homes. They both actually worked out perfectly because they were finishes we would have chosen anyway. One was an entry level starter home (our first house) and the second was a middle class suburban home. Perfectly happy with both.

Looking at their website a bit, it looks like they're trying to do semi-custom. Not all of their homes are spec (meaning, being built without a buyer). Some are, but you can also build yourself. If you decide to pick one that's in-progress, you may not have much say in interior finishes, but if you pick a lot and finance the build, the floorplan would probably be mostly fixed, but there may be opportunities to make changes to the interior (move non-load bearing walls, for example), and you could possibly have more choice with finishes. It probably won't be "choices" like you had doing a remodel where the world is your oyster, but they may be more flexible than a typical tract builder where you have only a few options for finishes, each with their own pricetag (usually in tract builds, these are priced into your contract as allowances - and many people find that they easily exceed allowances and their affordable home gets expensive quickly). But this is all conjecture - the sales rep will be able to tell you what their options are. If they have a design center where you pick finishes, ask to go look at it before you sign a contract to make sure you like your options. We just went through this with a higher-end tract builder in our area, and they had no issues with us visiting the design center.

Thank you, everyone! I've looked at reviews; haven't found any lawsuits but will keep on digging; and will meet with a rep (I don't know why, but this feels like a timeshare pitch to me!! ha), and will look at a completed house. There are a few in the neighborhood we like where they've broken ground but haven't started actual construction yet -- and they are willing to do some finishes tweaking in these cases. Our realtor thinks we might be able to get a better deal on one of these early-stage builds -- but he's a perennial optimist. ;)

I've had the impression, mostly from comments on this site, that spec houses are pretty equivalent to tract houses and are not as high quality as custom builds, but given that this really depends on the builder, obviously it's not a hard and fast rule. And also obviously.... pre-owned homes are of varying quality as well. So maybe I shouldn't dismiss spec homes in advance.

Our home is a spec home. But it was built by a custom builder as a teardown/rebuild on a city lot. The floorplan wasn't picked from a set of predesigned plans, it was designed for the lot. Many of the finishes in our house are better than we might get from a standard tract builder. Tract builders also have spec homes; once they start a development, they will continue building whether or not someone reserves a lot and picks a floorplan for it. "Spec" doesn't mean anything about the quality. All it means is that someone is speculating that they'll be able to sell it once it's finished and make money on it. The quality will vary with the builder, just like the quality varies in tract home builds as well.

If you want to step into a spec home that has just broken ground, you will probably have more say but not much. Their finishes and quality will 100% be a function of the builder though.

Just a suggestion for looking for past history of a builder or any other company find out who the principals are and look for any legal actions against them. A good place is your state's Secretary of State business area. Sometimes you can find the names by doing a regular search for the name of the business and the principals' names will be listed. It is fairly common in some types of businesses to simply change the name of the company but keep the same owners so in doing a search do not be surprised if you find multiple company's on the SOS site with the same principals. Think different name used for custom, spec, tract and remodeling areas.