We initially had a friend bid out the plans for us in March 2012, but when the bid came back in May, it was way too high. At that point, we were unsure if we were going to be able to build or not. I knew that houses were being built in our budget, so we decided to get bids from other builders in the area. We started this process in June and by August we had selected our builder. His bid was about $70k lower than our initial bid (I told you it was high!). We were very relieved, however we still had one last thing to accomplish before we could start- selling our house.