Maybe we just cannot ever afford this....

The final piece needed to green-light our project has come in - the builder's quote.
Except that it's over our budget.
About $250,000 over budget, to be precise.
We've come to the point where this is no longer upsetting... it's just pissing us off.
Sure, you hear that the building industry is replete with people who want to rip folk off by hyper-inflating prices. We entered into this with our eyes open, and expected there to be a slightly higher cost as we are building in Tasmania, and not on mainland Australia.
But this is just insulting.
In this Internet age, it's fairly easy to locate companies that will supply & install in the most remote of locations. So in the intervening time between receiving this and the previous quote, we've been making a few phone calls. This exercise was also partly a sanity check - we had begun to think that we must have such unrealistic expectations that it had completely clouded our perception of what the build would cost.
So, let's look at a couple of examples...

1. We've had a couple of quotes for a custom-made glasshouse manufactured to our specifications, and shipped to Tasmania. Approximate cost from our research was $12,000. Cost on quotation $26,934.51. That's about $14,000 difference.
2. We've had three quotes to supply and install (on the actual site address) a 7.5kW stand alone solar power system, with AGM batteries, a German inverter and back up generator. The average quote we received was approximately $34,000. Cost on quotation $66,340. That's a whopping $32,000 difference!

On those two items alone, the difference is about $50,000. And we don't have any trade discount or connections.
This makes us wonder, do the builders:
a) think we are really, really wealthy?
b) think we are really, really stupid?
c) not actually want to build the house after all? or
d) all of the above?
We really wanted to use them, because we admired the quality of the work that they had done on other builds. But we are very much feeling like we are being taken for a ride.
As the quote only came in on Friday afternoon, we are yet to discuss the detail with the architects. However, from our calculations, even if we replace all the subcontracted items with suppliers we source ourselves, there isn't going to be anything like $250,000 worth of savings.
And for what is a very small house (one bedroom, one bathroom, combined kitchen-diner) only a madman would consider the amount quoted is reasonable or viable.
We progressed with the build because the initial estimate we received (on this very design) last July was in the vicinity of $480,000. Which sits happily within our budget.
We are completely unable to fathom how it can now be priced at around $700,000 + fixtures / fittings + driveway for the same building. Either the builder's estimating tool is so erroneous as to be useless, or something else is going on.
Maybe, we just have to give the dream away.
V&A