My bad if this has already been answered. What are the pros and cons of each house and how many Hearthfire homes can you build in one playthrough?

I built them all in one playthrough. My personal favorite is the one in the Pale

All the houses follow identical construction patterns with identical choices available to you. The only difference is locale and all of them are in locales that where never meant for houses. It simply comes down to personal choice, I'm afraid.

You can build all three homes in any playthrough. With mods you can very much alter the homes, if you are on PC.

My favorite is Heljarchen. It is the location on a hill with a commanding view out over the landscape and just up the road is the best market town in Skyrim, Whiterun. I love to see my nearby neighbours farm house just across from me, and if I recall correctly (haven't played in a while) you can see Whiterun from the house.

To me this house is the best of the bunch due to it's location.

Love Lakeview as well:

Stunning views over the lake and great location surrounded by woods. Just feels a bit remote to me with no neighbours in sight and a long trek to the nearest villages of Riverwood or Falkreath. It sits pretty much inbetween the two. I usually only build it when I need to test a mod I am making for it.

Winstad is great to:

I love the eerie location of this one in the freezing marshes, just on the shoreline. It does have a stunning view of Solitude. However it isn't a great family home and the adoptable children hate it. I do always build it, but mostly for myself, rather then for the family, so I only build one tower that looks out to sea and the main house.

But the best thing to do is to build all three and find which one suits your play style best.

I prefer Heljarchen Hall, due to how close it is to Whiterun and Dawnstar, but then all of the houses are pretty close to a town.

Personal favorite is Lakeview. It's nice and the lack of snow gives it a different feeling. There is no best house in HearthFire, though.

You can build three houses in HearthFire, each with one unique gathering spot, IF I'm correct.

For example, Lakeview Manor got its own

Lakeview has a nice lake view

the one in Hjaalmarch has a fish hatchery

the one in the pale (It looks like it's in whiterun hold) has a wheat thingy

My fave is Heljerchen Hall by far. I build them all BTW.

Heljerchen is centrally located which makes it the best in my book but you have to be level 20 or so to get it so I started this round with lakeview as always. Bad thing about Lakeview in my book is its location near Falkreath. I prefer adventuring around Whiterun to start out with and to do what needs to be done it almost forces me to FT from lakeview to Whiterun to grab all my stuff and transfer it which I don't like whereas it's just a short run up the road from Whiterun to Heljerchen Hall.

Note I have not even started the MQ on this character so do not own Breezehome, my PC has been living and storing his stuff in Jorrvaskr.

I once had Lake View Manor built in one playthrough. Nice house but it feels too much like you're living in Whiterun. Hearthfire would have been so much better if we could chose to build a farm in a village, or even a simple shack with the furniture we want in it. Hearthfire lacks flexibility and choices but I don't regret buying it; I like the idea of adopting children.

I like Lakeview for the scenery.

Lakeview has nice scenery but I think it has the highest enemy spawn

Hjaalmarch has good scenery, lack of constant enemies and it's perfect for an alchemist character but you're essentially stuck in a swamp

Pale's is good, nice view of the Tundra, a farm close by and so far I haven't seen many enemy spawns there.

Kinda like Lakeview the most though.

My favorite is also Heljarchen, though I tend to build each house for a different purpose. Windstad is obviously great for alchemy, but Heljarchen is usually my home with bedroom, kitchen and a tower on the north end just for scenery. Lakeview is my show house with trophy room and armory.

As has been stated, Heljarchen's close proximity to Whiterun and Dawnstar make it a great place for quick trips to town to unload loot or purchase supplies.

I usually opt for Lakeview Manor as I like sitting on the balcony enjoying the view. I have built all 3 at some point or another and think I'm going for the one in the Pale on my current playthrough by way of change. All 3 are good and I thought Hearthfire was a great addition to the game and as far as I'm concerned money well spent.

There are some features to houses not available to others, such as a fish pond.

For the question asked, when I build my houses, I change the floor plan and make them suit my needs.

My Lakeview Manor house is my primary residence, while my other two houses are used for making soups/food and storing my trophies.

You know, i saw in the achievement list there was one for building 3 houses, but I didn't actually know until reading this thread that there were multiple locations.

It's never too late...

Same here, and the view! My Talos, the view! A home on the lake is cool, but nothing beats the view of Heljarchen Hall. I have two other houses in progress, but I've essentially abandoned them and made this one my character's official home.

There is no "best house" because they are basically all the same except for the surroundings. I usually build all three but us the one with the fish hatchery as my "Tower of Power" home. This is the one where I usally build the alchemy lab, library and enchanting tower.

I built all three houses with every wing used as in three for each house.

All in all they are all the same but certain things are different. The one in Falkreath is more of a bee farm, the one in the pale (yes, the border of the pale is that close to the city of Whiterun) is more of a mill, and the one out by Morthal is more of a fishery.

Why they couldn't just add one to winterhold to give us nine houses I will never know. I would have loved that house to be right by the sightless pit too. Why the sightless pit? I would have a base of operations to stage raids on the dungeon every so often.