The Affordable Custom Home Guide: Build Smart, Save Big

Show Notes: In Episode 69 of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show, Steve Tuma, president of Landmark Home and Land Company, dives into the world of affordable home design — breaking down cost-saving strategies without compromising quality, style, or structural integrity. From evaluating land conditions to tailoring rooflines, ceiling heights, and insulation types, Steve shares smart, experience-based tips to help owner-builders make wise design choices that match their budget. Whether it’s a $150K starter home or a multimillion-dollar custom build, Steve emphasizes that every home — regardless of price point — deserves personalization, energy efficiency, livability, and pride of ownership. Packed with stories from real customers and over 32 years of insights, this episode is a must-listen for anyone balancing dream-home ideals with smart financial decisions.

Transcript:

Steve Tuma: So it’s not just about building a house, it’s building an environment for the family. The effect that this has on people — whether it’s a couple hundred-thousand-dollar house or five-million-dollar house — is tremendous.

Interviewer: Hello everybody, and welcome to episode 69 of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. I’m joined today, as usual, by the president and founder of Landmark Home and Land Company — a company which has been helping people build their new homes, where they want, exactly as they want, nationwide and around the globe since 1993 — the always illuminating Mr. Steve Tuma. Steve, how are you, my friend?

Steve Tuma: It’s another great day. It’s interesting — every time you ask me that, I think of it and go, “Man, look at what we did today to help a customer get a house, or get through some issue with a building department, or whatever it is.”

So it’s always — our experience always helps. But then it’s also just the attitude to sit here and go, “Hey, let’s work on each custom home for each person, in their own building site, with their own building department, with their own financial needs.”

It’s kind of a neat combination we figured out to help people get a good house.

Interviewer: Customer connection — that’s what Landmark Home and Land Company is all about.

Steve Tuma: It’s also a little bit of passion and having fun and experience. And it’s just kind of cool when people call up and say, “You actually know what you’re talking about… You answered my question.”

It’s like, “I didn’t stump you!” It’s as simple as that. You answered the phone. Or hey — if they did leave a voicemail because I was helping someone else — we’d call them back right away. And the customers are like, “Wow, this is cool.” And it’s fun.

It’s rewarding for us as well.

Interviewer: After 32 years — if it wasn’t fun, you probably wouldn’t be doing it.

Steve Tuma: Yeah. Well, it’s invigorating when someone’s sitting here trying to figure out, “Hey, how do I build this house?” Whatever.

It’s a first home. It’s a retirement home. It’s a family’s growing home. It’s a home for the in-laws — whatever it may be.

It’s kind of a neat challenge. So even though we’ve been doing it for 32 years — since ‘93 — every project is an individual, cool challenge that we have to get taken care of.

We’re not doing cookie-cutter boxes for people. We’re doing the home that they want, on their land, with their particular needs. And it’s pretty cool.

Interviewer: Today’s episode — I wanted to get into the subject of affordable home design, if that works for you. Can we talk about that a bit?

Steve Tuma: Yeah. You know what’s interesting is — when you say “affordable home design,” I bet you most people think entry-level, cheap… $200,000, $100,000, $150,000. I don’t want to say “cheap,” that’s more “inexpensive.” It’s a quality home — it’s just less dollars.

But in a lot of places, an affordable home is two million or three million. So it’s not just how many zeros are involved in the number — it’s, for the budget someone chooses to have, what can be done?

Because we’ve worked with people in a lot of different economic classes and understanding what they want. And we’re finding that the people building a $150,000 or $200,000 home have the same problem as the two million- and three million- and five million-dollar homes. There’s still a limit on the money — but the dream or the idea is sometimes a little bigger than the wallet.

Interviewer: That’s pretty good.

Steve Tuma: Isn’t that odd in today’s world?

Interviewer: Right. So, let’s just talk about some of the design elements that would make a home more affordable. And how does Landmark help people make those decisions?

Steve Tuma: Well, what’s interesting about it is — a lot of times, people think, “Oh, it’s the house. How big are my ceilings? How steep is the roof? Do I have a two-car garage or a six-car garage?” And that’s part of it. And we’ll get into that.

But a big component of it is — where are you building?

So if you’re building on a flat piece of land — you know, whether it’s in Iowa or California or Florida or Montana or North Dakota or New York — in general, a flat piece of land is less expensive to build on.

So, if you’re building on the side of a hill — you know, a little knoll, that’s one thing. If you’re building on the side of the Rockies, the Cascades, the Sierras — you know, the Mountain Ranges and the Smokies — you know, you add a couple different elements on building a foundation that has to crawl down the side of a hill.

So sometimes it’s not just the actual house design — it’s where are you building it?

Because if you took a house, say in Tennessee — you wanted to do a very affordable, 1,000-square-foot, very boxy home in Tennessee — and you took that exact same home and put it on Key West, even though the house is the same, the nature of building in that site is completely different.

So one of it is site selection — and where. And not just flatland, but where. Is it flatland on the front of the ocean in Florida? Is it in Iowa? Is it in North Dakota? Is it somewhere along a beach? Is it in a flood zone? Is it in a protected area where animals are protected, or historic regulations?

So that’s a lot of concern — but I don’t want to overload people on that. Sometimes you can get an analysis paralysis, but people are going to build where they want.

It’s just — if someone’s sitting here saying, “Hey, I gotta shave every penny,” you might not want to do it in a hurricane zone if you have a choice of living somewhere else.

But that being said, we’ve helped people build in hurricane zones — and houses, for what they’re trying to do, are very affordable, because we’re able to work with them on the design before they commit to things, to understand the dollars, so that then they can go forward.

So let’s just say a budget comes up of $800,000 — that’s what they say they need to build at — but for some reason, it ends up being a million.

There’s different things that can be done to work through a design to work towards bringing the cost down.

So the affordability doesn’t just mean a simple boxy home on a flat piece of land. It’s also for people building $1 million, $2 million, $3 million and $5–10 million homes. It’s the same situation of: “How do we make this work?”

And it’s not just affordability of building — it’s affordability of energy efficiency, maintenance, and quality-of-life types of things.

So we’re able to look at it with customers and what their priorities are to help them — to help them through.

And we’ve worked with some people building very unique, high-end custom homes. It’s the same situation. They want to spend two million — not two and a half.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Tuma: Now some customers are like, “Hey, no big deal.” But you know, eventually there’s a point.

So in the affordability, what we do is we work with the customers just to look at the design, the building site conditions, the building department conditions, different details on what’s necessary in there — and then have general conversations where, once we draw the plans up, the customer can then work to verify their budget.

Since they’re the owner-builder, it’s their project. And then we can work with them. One thing we will do for people — if, you know, they get us a deposit, we’re moving forward — if we draw a house up, and in the preliminary plan stage they find out that, hey, it’s still coming in a little too high? We’ll do a big redraw, or even a new house, so that we can get them into a house that’s in budget.

And that’s something that is extremely important — is our teamwork effort to work with people. Because a lot of design places — design houses, architects, whoever it might be — you pay them to draw a plan. And if you just dream yourself, or they change your dream into a bigger home of, “Oh, it’s only another $10,000,” and you do that 20 times, you know… suddenly it gets expensive.

Or we’ll work with you to scale it back if for some reason the costs do end up being there.

Now that being said — on the ground, the land conditions, the building site — there’s also situations on the actual design of the home, and in general rules of thumb — and these are general rules of thumb — the less corners, the less expensive it’s going to be for everyone: the foundation, the siding, the drywall, our design — everything.

Also, generally, less corners means less ridges and rooflines — sorry — ridges and valleys in a roof system, and that generally makes it less expensive.

Also, taller ceilings cost more. Eight-foot, nine-foot are generally typical — some areas nine feet and ten feet — but getting into 15-, 20-, 25-foot-tall walls, getting walls with a lot of glass in them to take advantage of beautiful views or let light in — those things cost more.

Because you just need different engineering to hold a 20-foot wall for the forces coming down — like snow or whatever it may be — but also seismic concerns. And a lot of what people don’t think about — other than hurricanes — is the force of wind against a wall, where it can push against a wall and bow and crack drywall and just create other issues.

So if someone wanted to go as baseline as possible — keep it to 90-degree corners, a full roof pitch — and that’s about as inexpensive as you’re going to do it.

Stay with an eight-, nine-, possibly ten-foot ceiling if it’s customary for your area.

If you’re someone that’s building a million- or two-million- or three-million-dollar home and there’s a cost control element there — and every customer has it. We’ve only had two customers that have said, “If it goes over a million or two, it doesn’t matter.” But for most people, no matter what the price range is, we can work with them and model through different situations and different ways to design the roof, make the roof structure, work with them on insulation, carry load paths — different ways to minimize the higher costs of big beams and big expanses.

So that’s something that we do — and just the nature of the world — things get expensive.

We’re always monitoring better ways to design, different ways to do things to get the same effect. And a lot of these are just conversations with customers.

They may find a plan on one of our websites, saying, “Hey, you know, I love this house,” and it happens to have 20 trapezoid windows. So sometimes we say, “Hey, do you see there’s 20 trapezoid windows?” They may say, “We don’t want those — make them square top, or get rid of three of them.”

You know — so what I see in a picture of a house may be different than the husband or wife and the kids see.

So sometimes we’ve gotta go through the details of the design to say, “Hey, what’s important to you?”

You know, sometimes they’ll pick a design and not realize it has a 20-foot ceiling. They’re like, “I don’t want a 20-foot ceiling. I don’t want to paint it, and I don’t want to heat it.”

But looking at the floor plan in a 2D version, it’s not always known.

So that’s what we can do to help people with different situations — to work with them. And the nice thing is, we’ll take the time upfront to work with people, to have an understanding of this, so that when they decide to move forward and work with us — you know, get us a deposit and sign a contract — we’re on gear to work on a project that makes sense for them.

Interviewer: Yeah. You know, human nature is always going to… I do it myself. People are going to say, “Well, if it’s more affordable, maybe it’s not as good.” You know, affordable homes gotta still be structurally sound, correct?

Steve Tuma: Oh, yeah. There’s a code that’s there — but also, in our case, it’s our reputation. We design a good home. We have good design plans. We have good structural design. We have good energy — I should say, great — processes to develop the plan set.

So we’re not here to say, “Hey, here’s the cheaper house, you know — go do it.” Our customers that are building $100K, $200K, $300K, $400K — they still want a good quality home. Their home is their castle.

We don’t like working with people that are like, “Just give me something.” I’m like, no — we want to give you a good house.

Because you know, getting over the budget is one very important thing — but being happy with your home two years, three years, four years, five years down the road — knowing it’s well built — is also extremely important.

So we’ve got ways of working with different situations to do our best to get it together. And even though it’s a customer’s home — it’s still kind of ours. You know, our name’s on the design and making sure it goes together, and the customer service.

So we’re going to give a person a very good quality home, because we have a lot of customers — whether they’ve built entry-level homes, super affordable homes, or super expensive — we like to know that they’ll call us if they build another, or if they have a friend.

And the way to do that is make sure that the job’s done right — through the design, the plans, and the panelized home package. We have a good reputation. We work extremely hard at it. And we want our customers to be happy — and help them where we can to get the best home possible.

So yeah, it’s not just structurally sound. It’s energy efficient. It’s a good-looking home. It’s a home the people want. You know — it’s a floor plan that works for them: windows in the right place, the garage in the right place, the kitchen laid out the way it is — you know, the bedrooms and bathrooms laid out the way they want it.

So that’s — that’s the key element. And that just takes a little bit of time, but it’s all part of our service. It doesn’t cost more to spend time to design the right house.

Interviewer: Right. You hit on energy efficiency. So I’m assuming that just like the structurally sound home, even though it’s sort of affordable, it’s still got to be a certain structural element to it, right?

Steve Tuma: Yes.

Interviewer: As well as energy efficiency?

Steve Tuma: Yeah. So, energy efficiency — that’s… buying an affordable home — or building an affordable home, I should say — it’s still… you’re still meeting certain standards, I would imagine. You want to keep it affordable in your monthly energy bills.

Interviewer: Sure.

Steve Tuma: Yeah, so that’s the thing. And that’s why we do the energy calculations, draw the different insulation in the home plan so people can go through there and see what insulation they have.

Some customers are like, “I’ll just call my insulation guy — give him the energy codes.” Others kind of microanalyze it to figure out, “Hey, where do I get the best air infiltration?” — this and that.

And one thing which people never think about is, some of these building departments — you want R48? You need a lot of space for that to fit in there. You’ve got to make sure your roof trusses, the roof design, and everything’s right so it’ll actually fit in there.

And that’s part of our architectural and structural design — to make sure that the members are there to properly accept the insulation for the insulation type that a customer wants to put in.

But there’s a lot of different insulations — there’s the batt insulation, then there’s different blown-in insulations, little recycled materials, open-cell, closed-cell — so there’s a whole variety of different situations.

And customers will typically have a preference as to what’s there. Sometimes the preference is, “Hey, whatever’s code and is cheapest.” Others, it’s like, “No, I want this open-cell here, I want this closed-cell here, I want this batt insulation here.”

And we have to make sure it fits. Because sometimes a structural engineer will say, “Hey, you can do this roof system under these loadings in a 2×8.” But the 2×8 doesn’t have enough space for the R48 insulation. So we have to make that a lot bigger.

Interviewer: So at Landmark, you guys do a lot of consultation. I mean, that’s basically your thing — is the actual design of a house. And on the website, there’s such a gamut of designs to choose from — all of them customizable.

Steve Tuma: I think 6,000 — sorry for interrupting — but I think 6,000 plans. It says 1,600, but it’s kind of grown a little.

Interviewer: Right. But I’m sure that, you know, the actual — somebody buys the — I don’t want to say the lower end — but just the more affordable end of the design plans that you guys have available. But is the sort of lower end — is that — are those designs, are they customizable just like the more higher-end ones?

And how do you guys come to that — with the customer — come to that agreement that maybe this is better for your budget, but we can still give you exactly what you’re looking for?

Steve Tuma: Well, everything’s customizable. Even though the plans are on a website, we draw them up from scratch for each customer’s exact building site, their building department concerns, and their all needs.

Okay? Because there’ll be different structural things if you’re designing, say, a house with a big glass wall in it for South Florida than if you do in North Dakota.

So there’s just different things that we have to be concerned with, because there’s different forces — snow loads, winds, seismic — whatever it is.

And we’re a believer that whatever the budget of the house is — is that family’s castle. So if someone wanted to build a $100,000, $150,000, $200,000 house, we’re still going to take the time, make sure the windows are in the right place, make sure the garage is right, make sure the bathroom’s laid out the way they want, make sure the kitchen’s laid out the way they want — try to put that little extra something in there: the cathedral ceiling here, a tray ceiling there, different overhangs — give them a certain architectural look so that the house is something that people are happy and willing to put the time into when it’s rewarding.

You know the coolest thing is — when someone calls, like, two years later and goes, “Steve — thank you. This was a cool house.”

We actually got one about three months ago — we got an email like 2:30 on a Saturday afternoon from a customer and they said, “Steve, do you remember us?” And they went on in their email saying, “You helped us build 20 years ago. A friend just came by and we told them how happy we are with it. We told them all the design work and everything that we did. And we’re sitting in this house 20 years later and we just wanted to say thank you.”

“It’s an amazing house. It’s gone through three hurricanes, an F4 tornado, and a small seismic situation. Every outbuilding on the lot fell over, our neighbor’s house fell over, and I believe they told me the steeple of the community church was blown — well it was either two blocks or two miles away — and they said their problems were: three shingles blew off.”

And they said, just sitting back — realizing how amazing this was. First of all, for them to remember us 20 years later, reach out and tell us…

Of course I had to call them and say, “Hey, thanks!” and just, you know — we caught up again. But it’s just an absolutely amazing situation.

And that was a nice, modest home. Beautiful home. They finished it with the details they wanted — the colors, the interior and exterior finishes. It was their palace.

And to see that, 20 years later, they’re still proud of it, telling their friends — and then turn around, come up to us — is like the ultimate pat on the back.

Interviewer: That’s pretty cool.

Steve Tuma: Yeah. Yeah.

So the thing about it is — every home is a person’s castle. It’s where they’re going to raise their family. It’s where they’re going to — you know — birthdays are going to happen. Holidays are going to happen. You know, good times are going to happen — Fourth of July fests, different things like that.

So, to take the time to make sure that they have that extra something in their house that’s of value to them.

And sometimes that something is a garden window. Sometimes it’s a bigger garage. Sometimes it’s energy efficiency. Sometimes it’s a convertible room — just in case the kids come back for a weekend, or hey — mom’s got to move in.

Sometimes it’s that basement for the once a year where 20 family members come over and have, you know — watch a movie together or a championship pool game, or whatever… whatever they choose to do.

And that’s the thing about it. So it’s not just about building a house — it’s building an environment for the family. The effect that this has on people — whether it’s a couple hundred-thousand-dollar house or five-million-dollar house — is tremendous. It’s… it’s amazing.

Interviewer: So that, you know — just how do you explain how important a home is to people? You know, unless it’s your home, you just — you can’t really feel it, I would think.

Steve Tuma: But when someone gets to go through and say, “Hey, my wife and I like to cook.” Right? “You know, my kid likes to do this.”

We have some families with kids with special needs, so they want a different wing for that person. And sometimes it’s a special needs kid. Sometimes it’s an elderly or a family member that needs help — they still want their own spot.

So they have their own, like, little suite off to the side — you know, with their own little bathroom, their own little TV area — so that the people can maintain their own life and dignity and their whole life.

But then the family’s there, where they’re there — instead of shipping them off someplace where they’re not part of the family unit.

We had one family — this was a little while ago, in Prescott, Arizona — she was into baking pies. And the husband was into tinkering in the garage and helping the kids fix their bike — the flat tire, learn how to ride a bike, you know, do whatever.

And so we worked on a special design that flowed with her for the kitchen, so she could build her pies and have an unobstructed view of the two-acre backyard — so that when the grandfather’s out there playing with the kids, running around with the dog, fixing a bike — whatever — she could still be part of it.

And then the kids could come in and do it. And then he had a special garage where he had his little workbench, so he could do different things.

So, in that particular case, it was a garage workbench, the kitchen to bake pies, and a view of the yard that made the whole house. Everything else could be — you know, we took our time to design — but those three components were what it took to really set this house off. It was a very modest, nice retirement home — and the people loved it.

We spent time, and it’s an amazing feeling to see someone work on that — but them also know that they have a source like us, where we’ll take the time to do it.

Sometimes the people thank us saying, “Hey Steve, sorry, sorry, sorry, I’ve redesigned the kitchen eight times.” And I’m like, “Hey — you’re going to live in this house for 20 years. Let’s take the time to make sure it’s right. It’s going to make that 20 years more enjoyable.”

Interviewer: Sure.

Steve Tuma: So…

Interviewer: Well, that’s about going to do it for us today. But before we let you go, Steve, let our listeners know how to find out more about Landmark Home and Land Company.

Steve Tuma: The best thing to do is check out our website at LHLC.com — LHLC.com, like the initials Landmark Home and Land Company.

I guess the “A” isn’t in the LHLC.com — but there it is.

Interviewer: They’ll figure it out.

Steve Tuma: Yeah.

And on there, we’ve got — these podcasts are on there. There’s different videos. There’s different write-ups on what we supply. There are options for plans — those 6,000 plans we talked about.

Yeah, hopefully that’s enough. Hopefully you can find something in there! But, you know, it’s amazing — in all the time, we’ve only had one person build the plan exactly to the design online.

In 32 years — everyone has done changes. Right. And that’s — that’s pretty cool. It’s pretty cool that our customers get into it, they want to do that.

So yeah — I’m sidetracking — but yeah: LHLC.com, or you could give a call — 800-830-9788. Again, that’s 800-830-9788.

Mike will take the call, walk you through the process, help you out. And then at a certain point, when you’re ready to go, he’ll transfer you over to me.

We’ll have a conversation, figure out what it is that you need for your project, and get you taken care of.

We’re here to work with you at your pace. If you want to move fast — that’s fine. If your project is a year out, two years, three years, five years out — we’re still here to help you through the process.

We want to work with good people that enjoy the process, pay attention, and want to build a good quality home, understand their budget, and — you know — get a cool house.

You know, we need more people like that email 20 years ago — or know that we just got from someone we helped 20 years.

By the way — we constantly have people that call us back to rebuild. Some of them — 20, 25 years ago — they call us up and say, “Hey, we’re retiring, can you help us?” Or — “Hey, we had a kid, the kid’s getting married now, they need a house.”

So whatever we can do to help someone — we’re here to help people along and have a good time building homes.

Interviewer: Every time I talk to you, the thing that comes through the most is your passion for doing this. It’s pretty — it’s pretty impressive, I gotta tell you.

Steve Tuma: Well, it’s — when you sit here, the fuel is the customer. The customer’s sitting here going, “Steve, I’m trying to figure out how to build this house, in a budget that works for me. And I can do this. My dad can do this.” Or, “Hey, I can do this.”

Or some people say, “Hey, it’s going to take me three years. I got this much money now, I’ll get a little more next year, I’ll get a little more in the next year, and finish it.” Other people are like, “Hey, I have the cash. I just sold my other house. I’m ready to go.”

And we work hard to get customers that are looking to really do it right. Take the time to think it through. Work with us. Exchange ideas to get a set of plans that turns into a house that they’ll be proud of.

We don’t look at it as a race. If someone wants to move fast — that’s fine. But the design time that you take up front to pay attention will make it a lot easier to get permits, and make it a lot easier to build, and it’ll make the whole process more enjoyable — so that when the house is done, you look back and go, “That was cool.”

And that’s when I say — “Hey, you wanna do another one?”

Interviewer: So awesome. Yeah, it’s fun.

And there we are — another informative chat with the Landmark Home and Land Company president Steve Tuma.

And we want to thank you all for taking the time to listen to the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show, and we hope that we’ve been able to help you feel a little more confident on your path to becoming a kit home owner-builder.

So, for Steve Tuma and myself — have a great week ahead, and we will see you next time. And thanks, as always Steve.

Steve Tuma: Yeah — thank you. This was fun. A lot of fun. Cool stuff.