New Plans

By setting high expectations and collective influence, our designers and architects continually strive to meet and exceed industry standards, assuring our customers the direct benefit of consistent results, real value, and the assurance of progressive design theory.

Our new house plans are constantly updated, representing varying price points, styles, and types of house plans.

Is it better to build or buy a house?

There are pros and cons to buying or building a home, and it’s up to you to decide which outweighs the other. When it comes to building a home, some of the benefits include:

• Total control over design customization. When you are building your home, you get to choose what each room in the house looks like, from the foundation to the faucets, so you’ll be sure to love every square inch of the home.
• Less initial maintenance. Since everything in the home is brand new, you won’t be stuck doing any repairs on construction or replacing older appliances.  
• Better energy efficiency. When building your new home, you can choose to make it more energy efficient, so you’re saving money and the environment in the long run.
• Healthier home materials. Long gone are the days of lead paint and asbestos being actively used in building materials, but that doesn’t mean they don’t still exist in homes. When you build a new home, you can be confident that all the new materials used are safe for you and your family.

On the other hand, the following should be considered when deciding whether to build or buy:

• Longer timeline. Unfortunately, homes don’t spring up fully formed, so there is a substantial amount of time that you’ll be waiting while new house plans are being built. This means staying in your current home or rental for a while and paying for the mortgage/rental on that property and the mortgage on the new property.
• More decisions and effort. With many new house plans, there are a lot of decisions to be made. The first is to narrow down thousands of house plans to one. More decisions will need to be made for all the finishes and furniture.
• Unforeseen costs and delays. The only thing you can expect on a construction site is the unexpected. Multiple variables can cause delays or even price increases, from changes in weather to labor and material shortages. Not only does this increase the cost and time to complete the home, but it also increases the stress on you.
• More complicated/expensive financing. Because there’s typically less in the way of collateral since there’s not a home on the property, land loans can be more difficult to get, require a higher down payment, and have a higher interest rate than traditional home loans. On top of that, you may need a construction loan to cover the cost of building the new home, followed by a traditional mortgage.

Can I design my own house plan?

Designing a custom home can be done and will require you to work closely with a home designer or architect. This option can run up to $10,000 or more, whereas purchasing a stock house plan is considerably cheaper. If you choose to purchase a stock house plan, you could customize the plans to meet your needs. At America's Best House Plans, we have a team of designers who will work with you to modify any of our tens of thousands of house plans to meet the exact specifications for the new home floor plan of you have been dreaming of.

Purchasing stock plans will require an additional architectural stamp to ensure they meet your local building codes before you begin building; however, this is still a cheaper option than designing a custom home.

Can I design my own floor plan?

Absolutely! You can design your own floor plan for your new home. As stated above, just be sure that a professional has approved the design to ensure it will meet all code requirements so the house will stand the test of time.

If you have an idea of what you want but aren’t 100% sure yet, we encourage you to browse our selection of over 19,000 house plans for inspiration and then if you want to make some changes, work with our modification services team to make some tweaks to the design.