My first house, in Boise, was new construction, and we had a sodded front lawn, and a hydro-seeded back lawn, which was apparently extremely common for those houses. And boy, I wish we'd just hydro-seeded the whole damn thing. It looked so much better. It looks ugly at first of course, but it really only took a year for it to just look fantastic. Meanwhile we had a ton of trouble with the sod not taking root well.