It's more general than lot to lot, but still seems to take into account the general lay of the land, the city's codes and etc.
I'm around Kansas City. The biggest builders here will be in multiple subdivisions at once, with varying topography, and they may or may not have been the ones to plat out the lots.
They will absolutely sell you any house plan in their catalog to go on any lot, so long as it fits. You might get a walkout basement instead of a full in-ground basement, but that's about how much it varies.
The only variability is that smaller plans would be available in nicer subdivisions (that require bigger/expensive houses) and larger plans won't be available in subdivisions where they don't physically fit on the lots.
You are ignoring the tens of thousands of hours pre-built builders put into streamlining designs that can be put on almost any plot of land. Think of it as downloading a piece of software and saying "oh it just works everywhere" while ignoring the engineering time that went into testing and bug fixing on every platform.
Regardless of what you see as a casual outside observer, an architect and civil engineer are putting their stamps on each set of blueprints for each construction site.
Hard disagree on this wishful thinking. I've literally seen the submitted plans for my house - there was absolutely no architect or engineer stamp on them. The true mega-builders might do this, but smaller operations (say, 25 to a few hundred houses a year) don't.
In my subdivision (which will be a few hundred houses built by one company) the plans are all new to this subdivision, designed by the head guy, and there aren't enough houses of any plan to amortize "tens of thousands of hours" among them (they've built 4 copies of my house so far, for reference).
You don't need an engineer or architect involved in building a "normal" house or developing plans in large parts of the country. There's no calculations required, for the most part, either. The codes allow a prescriptive path to compliance, so if you fall the span charts in the codes, it's good to go.
The only real notable exception is in truss design - but that's never designed by an architect either. The builder sends the house design to a truss company along with required loads in the area, and the truss company sends back trusses that cover the space and hold the required loads.
Threads like this are peak HN - people who "know better" how the world should work (and hey, I wish I worked like that too) telling people who have actually experienced something their experience can't possibly be real. I actually have had a house built recently. I did a ton of research, and this builder was the best I could do in my area and at my price range (about $600k). The options get a LOT worse as you spend less on new constructions.
No they aren't. This thread was started by someone saying "The idea of planning a house without taking into account the site where it will sit will never produce a good house.".
Both of you (and everyone) is saying this isn't true.
