Just mirror the layout and pick a different color, and noone will ever know.

If this post is legit, I'll gladly do the design of your dream home for $4.99M total. I know some Bulgarians who have the dolphin market cornered. 

are you soliciting proposals?

for that kind of budget I think you'd be able to get someone to design something that uses similar finishes and has a similar feel, but I predict that once you get into the process you'll realize that you will want something a little different based on your needs and the restrictions of the property you purchased.

<spam real estate post>

To treat this seriously: voyager, according to US copyright law, the design of a building is considered copyrighted upon its publication in any media.  So as soon as that house design was drawn by the architect (media) and showed to the client (published), it's a copyrighted design.

You can certainly hire an architect and show them designs you like and ask for something similar - my clients do this all the time - but they and you cannot build a duplicate.

1. call the real estate agents and ask them for the architects name.

2. call the architects!

3. hire them!!!!!!!

1. call the real estate agents and ask them for the architects name.

2. call the architects!

3. hire them!!!!!!!

Tried that, but they charge $15/hr for their time.  I need something more reasonable.  Since there is only a $2m budget for construction, I can't put more that $2,000 into architect fees.

Another reason architecture is a dead profession: $5 million clients are utterly devoid of both integrity and imagination.

if this is not a joke i'm going back for an mba

12% revised design

Also, to the suggestion of hiring the original architect: there was a case in California of a client suing the architect when they saw their exact house - which they thought was an original, one-of-a-kind design, in a neighboring city.

However, if you *do* go to the original architect of the house you like, s/he can tell you if the owner retains rights to the one-time use of that design, and s/he can also make a judgement as to how much they will need to tweak it to make it similar but not an outright duplicate.

So, voyager, you're willing to pay a fee of 0.1% of construction cost? I wish for you that you get what you pay for.

that was not the OP steven, just a joke.

That's what i get for reading it on my phone. I'm glad, because i was very cranky there for a while.