If you have plans and permits, you can engage them before you swing the first hammer and have them bid based on the specs of the plans.

That of course never happened but Wildwood did get a nice set of 4 tennis mostly paid for by Michael Montross.We still are not at the point where there is not a lot of spec building  and the development nearby - Via  Villaggio (right across the road from the Lake Wildwood dam/spillway is still undone with one house built.

Yes you can but like you said you need to get the manufacture specs.

Familiar in running numbers on Spec builds and getting the most value for clients in lot purchses and second home builds.

Realtor with over 150 multifamily units, subdivisions built and spec. homes.

In The Last 24 months I Have seen white in a tiny arabesque pattern on a kitchen backsplash in a 800k spec home.

I'm in a situation where the home I moved into (about 16 months ago) was a new construction in a very new/empty part of the neighborhood, and the appraisal pretty much matched the purchase price... but since then, the neighborhood has filled with new homes with similar or worse specs that are being listed and sold for more than $10-20k+ above that appraisal.So my question then is: when a lender looks at LTV, do they calculate this based on the fair market value as of today, or would they need to use my original appraisal figure?

Also, make sure these homes are very similar to your house in square footage and other specs. 

I agree with you that finding a property with those specs will be difficult.

This is cheap with battery-powered materials, if your local code allows it, significantly more expensive with hard-wired models if your local code doesn't allow them.