Up here in Nth Qld, plenty of the franchises have been going broke - unsure of the stand alone blokes whether they are as well.

We just had friends build a house with a franchise and in my opinion it is a useless house.  The kitchen is way to small, living/dining is OK but there are some design flaws in terms of bench positioning etc.  Main bedroom is too small and the garage is stupid - 5.5m x 5.5m.  All this stuff could have been easily changed with a stand alone builder, but the franchise would not allow hardly any changes to their few house designs.  What is the point of spending 300k on a house when you have a garage that can only just fit in a car (admitedly a 4x4 - but its not as though they are rare these days...), with no room to walk behind and only just enough to squeeze in front - and forget putting a work bench or shelves in there - let alone a few pinnies!  A garage should be at least 7m deep unless you will only ever own small cars and never intend to use the garage for storage or do any shed type work.  Also they really scab on things like fittings, paint schemes etc and make a big fuss if you want to deviate from the standard, whereas most stand alone blokes would be fine with that sort of thing.