I'll tell you our first love was the Whispering Pine with a closed kitchen. However not wanting to build there was not a single spec on the market with a closed kitchen accept the model which would be far out of the price range when they release those to sell in the near future
Our choice came down to an Allamanda in Charlotte and a Wisteria in Sanibel. Wisteria won. The Allamanda had pluses but the way it was layed out seemed to eat up a lot of space...living room sunroom combination didn't seem to leave much space. Loved the coloring of the kitchen though. But rooms were smaller than the wisteria. And the funny thing was this house cost more than the wisteria only because it was cement / stucco whatever they use.
Again it comes down to what they do with a floorplan. A good floorplan can make a house feel larger than it is. The Wisteria is very open and roomy at 1603 sq ft. It was also a stretched Wisteria so the front bedroom has extra room and a bay! Now if you're married don't throw away that W/D room idea as taking up space. Its has really nice storage in there!! Its actually really nice. We've always had the laundry rooms going out to the garage and at times they are pain. Its nice to have that extra little space for that. Our new home is facing east - west so we get the morning sun in the kitchen and evening in the back till it drops behind the house back there. Figure we'll pick up solar shades for cooling later. Extremely well lit home, stays light through the day. Thats a major thing for us. Like a naturally lit house. They had the thermostat at 78 and it felt comfortable.
I will forwarn you...the costs you listed seem low to me. Maybe its because I'm thinking of prebuilts but I know we had a figure on paper for the whispering pine like you did and that got blown out of the water when numbers got punched really fast. That kinda killed the build idea. We felt we got ALOT of home for the money when we caught this one.
Just make sure you take your time with the models and have them show you some builds of your favorite model as well to get a feel of what they can do with it. Good luck and let the adventure begin
