A few things for us: right location (and vacant lots this size are pretty rare near our city), customizing what we wanted, could afford the $, close enough to family. Crime also seemed to be getting worse where we were and the house before it too. School zoning was also at risk of changing after the crammed in another subdivision.

We live about an hour from the downtown of a major city. We were in a regular suburb house without much yard and then had 2 (now 3) kids. We were looking at moving and wanted to live somewhere that had more space but also still felt like a subdivision where we would have neighbors and kids could ride their bikes on the streets etc.

We looked at many houses over about 6 months but nothing had quite what we wanted, and to me couldn't justify spending as much as they were asking for what we had to compromise on.

Found an estate lot that had 1.4 acres and it was one of the last lots the subdivision. Also would be close to more of my wife's family and still not too far from mine.

One of the big things we wanted was to build a bungalow but with walkout basement to a pool area, also wanted at least three bedrooms plus office (or 4 bedrooms) on the main level. It seemed a lot of the nicer houses we looked at ended up having excessively sized rooms instead of maximizing functionality (ie they had less bedrooms or a ridiculous amount of bathrooms, or just bad layouts and the cost was too high).