Using Architectural Salvage To Build from Scratch

We were interested to read in this month’s Architectural Salvage News of a development project in Alabama that will incorporate a significant amount of salvaged materials into the new homes. This is an idea we’ve been fantasizing about doing right here in New York for a while. Salvaged items–mostly floors and decorative elements such as iron grates, wooden gates as well as smaller pieces like doorknobs–will represent about a third of all the building materials. The Montgomery development is an ambitious effort to build 3,000 “traditional Southern” homes over the next 20 years; just 35 have been built so far. We wish the article had contained more information about the economics of this initiative, i.e. to what extent does using salvage in a project like this translate into a price premium on the back end? (The house shown is listed for $396,000.) We suspect it makes a lot of business sense.
The Homes [The Waters Alabama]