Re: Allowances???
It depends from builder to builder in my experience, I've a friend who bought a couple of years and all the allowances (including tiling) came off the purchase price at the end but they paid the relevant suppliers upfront.
Whereas I'm buying a new house at the moment and we got a tiling allowance which was to be used at 2 particular stores, anything above the allowance we paid directly to the tile shop (hope that makes sense as have read it back twice and not sure it does!)