I did not mean to imply that you should settle, or that I did. I paid for lots of upgrades. But they were expensive, a wash for me financially, and very lucrative for the builder. But short of being my own general contractor and building the house myself, I had no leverage to change that.
If I were building the house, I could say "I want dishwasher B instead of dishwasher A" and the price difference would be B-A. A typical homebuilder, on the other hand, can say "we include A with the build, and if you want B, it will cost $B". So maybe the better dishwasher is $600 instead of $500, but instead of paying $100 extra for my upgraded dishwasher, I pay more like $600 extra.
The only way to "win" financially is take the builder grade stuff, use it until it dies a natural death, and replace with better things as you go. Any other path to dishwasher B costs just as much as paying the price the builder demands for it.
Dishwashers aren't the best example, I agree, because they're easy to remove and install for any DIYer. But we ran into it on lots of things. Toto toilets instead of build grade? Full price. Better garage door opener? Full price. Etc. Things that are not nearly as easy for a DIYer to do (or, even if they are, like toilets, they have zero resale value).
The whole experience made me want to become a homebuilder :). Partly because I love houses, partly because it's such a lucrative business.
Even if it's slightly more, in every remodel that you're actually going to live in it makes sense to pony up an extra grand where it matters, like your appliances. "Builder grade" is only acceptable for people who don't have to live in it, and if you're hiring the builders then you need to make that clear...