Top 10 Questions About Building Your Own Panelized Home

Show Notes:

If you’re considering taking on the role of owner-builder, this episode breaks down the top internet-searched questions about the realities of building your own custom home. You will learn that it is entirely legal to build your own house without a contractor’s license, and discover the true cost differences between hiring a general contractor versus managing the project yourself. By listening, you will understand the distinct differences between panelized, modular, and stick-built homes, and why having a fully customized, pre-planned panelized package is the ultimate way to control your budget, streamline permitting, and ensure your home is built exactly the way you want it.

Top Q&A Highlights from Episode 88

Q: Can I legally build my own house without a contractor’s license? A: Yes. As long as it is your own personal home, building departments across the country will generally allow you to act as your own builder without a contractor’s license. You still need to submit proper plans, obtain permits, and pass inspections, but you have the right to manage the project yourself.

Q: How much money do you save building your own home versus hiring a builder? A: Exact savings vary based on location and design, but general contractors typically charge a 25% to 30% markup. By acting as an owner-builder, you retain that equity. You also gain the freedom to select your own high-quality materials rather than settling for standard “builder grade” finishes.

Q: What is the difference between panelized, modular, and stick-built homes? A: “Modular” homes are pre-fabricated in box-like sections (modules) and delivered to the site, offering limited customization. “Stick-built” is the traditional method of cutting and nailing raw lumber directly on the job site. “Panelized” (what Landmark provides) is a highly efficient hybrid where wall panels, roof trusses, and structural components are perfectly engineered and framed in a factory, then shipped to the site for rapid, high-quality assembly.

Q: Does it take longer to build a house as an owner-builder? A: In theory, a general contractor should be faster because it is their full-time business. However, in real-world custom home building, the time difference is often negligible. The true deciding factor for speed is not who manages the build, but how thoroughly the home was planned and designed before construction even started.

Q: How do I improve my chances of getting an owner-builder construction loan approved? A: The key is preparation. Banks want to minimize risk. You must present a highly organized, professional package that includes your architectural plans, a realistic budget, a coordinated timeline, and a clear understanding of the site conditions. The more organized you appear, the more confident the bank will be in approving the loan.

Transcript:

Steve Tuma: You control the design, you make sure the house is built right, you know, it’s built on the land that you want. There’s a huge value there as well, which I believe increases the family’s enjoyment of not only building the home but living in the home. So it’s a great question, but I don’t think that there’s a rock-solid answer.

Host: Hi everybody, welcome to episode 88 of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. With me today as always is 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. Mr. Steve Tuma. Steve, how are you doing, my friend?

Steve Tuma: Doing great. It’s a great day. It’s like I always say, I don’t want to sound too cliché, but it’s always a good day. We’ve always got interesting projects, helping people through different situations that pop up along the design and building processes, and it’s always exciting. Sometimes we actually get a curveball. It’s like you got to scratch your head and say, “How does this come up?” But then we always figure it out and help a customer through it. Life is all about curveballs.

Host: You know, today I thought we’d start sort of a new series for this podcast, a top 10 edition if you will, where each week we’re going to go over a different top 10 list surrounding panelized home building and its various issues and aspects. So we can start right off today with the topic for today: the top 10 questions people are searching for over the internet to find answers. So the top 10 internet questions when it comes to home building in general and panelized home building in specific. Are you good with that?

Steve Tuma: Yeah, this should be an interesting one. It’ll be interesting if this is an internet-driven thing to see how it relates to what people ask us.

Host: Well we’ve done the research, so that’s pretty much what it is. Let’s just get started and see how we get along. The single most common starting point search online regarding panelized homes is: Can I legally build my own house without a contractor’s license? And I think that’s an interesting question.

Steve Tuma: Yes you can. A lot of people wonder about that because they’re like, “Hey, a contractor has to be licensed. Do I, to build my own home?” And that’s the difference. When you hire someone, in a sense they should be licensed for certain jobs. But to build your own home, I haven’t run into a place that won’t allow you. Now, they might not let you build two homes a year or ten homes a year; they’re going to be like, “Hey, you’re a professional at that point.” But most places will let you build your own home.

Of all the projects we’ve been involved with in over three decades, we’ve never run into a situation where a building department wouldn’t allow someone to build their own home. I think it’s part of the American way that you can do your stuff yourself. I think a lot of people might get intimidated by that or say, “How do I do that? Or is the building department going to look at me differently?” But we’ve got a great set of plans, the details are there. I think they see when you’re organized and on top of it, they actually respect what you do and help through the process.

We’ve worked with building departments all over the country. Amazingly, some areas don’t have a building department. Others have a very simple building department, and then others have an extreme building department where they ask details on every single thing. It’s been a similar process. You get a list of what they want, you turn it in, they may issue permits or they may get a checklist of items of which we work on the answers until they get a permit.

So the actual building and coordination of it, as long as you follow the processes, get proper permits, get proper inspections, you’re just like a contractor. But you get the advantages of controlling your build instead of relying on someone else to build your house. So to answer your question, you can legally build your own house without a contractor’s license, if it’s truly your own home.

Host: Yeah, I think that’s something nowadays when people are sort of trying to save money, so they’re doing a lot of things themselves. I would imagine you can run into some problems both with the building departments and just all the legal stuff involved. So I think that’s a pretty good question.

Steve Tuma: Yeah, it is. But what’s interesting is we have customers that will build a house every two to three years. I’m not a tax guy, I’m not going to act like one, but apparently there’s something if you live in a home for two years you can sell it and not have capital gains. You’d have to check with your own tax people. But we have customers that do that. So what they do is they build it, they live in it, they gain the equity from the work they did, and then markets generally go up, and they make some money and roll it in and do the next one and do the next one.

So while they have their regular job, they’re building a house and they’re actually increasing their net worth considerably from what they tell me. It’s kind of an amazing process because as you go through and build it, a lot of people just really enjoy building their home. They enjoy the process. You could just go through a TV guide, flip this house, do this to your house, decorate your house. There’s a huge interest in it and I think we’re a springboard to help them get in position to actually build their home.

So yeah, building your own home isn’t a problem, and Landmark does a great job helping you to get in a better position so that you can apply for your permits. So you understand the right set of plans, so you understand scheduling and coordinating the process. So I think together with a customer that wants to build their own home, we’re a great team.

Host: That was painless.

Steve Tuma: Well that’s the interesting thing about a lot of these questions because I think people are asking thinking the big bad wolf’s going to come out and give them some bad news. It’s like, no, you can build your house, you can paint it, you can remodel it, you can do stuff. So it’s more what’s built up in their mind instead of just getting the simple question. I’m glad we’re able to ask it because as simple as the answer is, it is a big concern.

Host: I mean it’s the misinformation. I mean the internet being involved, it can be like diagnosing your own illness. The internet can be a double-edged sword. So yeah, I think that’s just it, people want to make sure they’re not going to make bonehead mistakes. And so they go online and a lot of times they’re getting misinformation. So I’m glad you were able to clear that up once and for all. And we have our next most searched question on the internet. And that’s simply: how much does it cost to build your own home versus hiring a builder? What would you say is the cost breakdown between being your own builder as opposed to hiring someone?

Steve Tuma: Well that’s an interesting situation because that implies that cost is the only element of the question. A lot of people build their own home because they want to build their own design, they want to control it, they want to know how it’s built, they want to know the quality, and they want to know what’s actually going into it. No corners cut type of a situation.

So, how much does it cost to build versus hiring a builder? That’s an interesting situation because our owner-builder customers probably build to a different degree than the typical builder-grade process that people go to. But from what I understand, and I was just working with a builder that we’re working with our product to help a few customers, he says he puts a 25 to 30% markup on everything.

Host: Wow.

Steve Tuma: Yeah, so you look at that, the theory is that 25 to 30% would be different. But then it’s also what is being put in. If you go to a typical supply house and they say this is builder grade, someone might think, oh it’s a special grade. It’s typically the lowest grade because it’s the price-pointed one. Now, if someone wants to do that, that’s fine, but a lot of our customers want to personalize their home. The reason they are building their own home is so that they can pick the cabinet from the source they want. They can pick the faucet from the source they want.

The reality of it is it’s exceptionally hard to give an exact amount to say, “Hey, you will save this or you will save that.” Because I can tell you that once we get involved with our customers and we’re able to work with them, as they go through and think it through, they start understanding, “Hey I want this type of faucet, I want this toilet, I want this garage door, I want this window with these features with these colors.” And sometimes when you’re working with a builder you don’t always get those choices. Sometimes you do, maybe on the higher end.

So the theory that’s there is if a general contractor is adding 25-30%, in theory that’s the savings. Someone could say, “Hey, is the contractor getting a better deal on cement or on windows?” Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. It’s hard to say, but I am very sure that each and every one of our customers are qualified people to be able to go through and comparison shop and understand what they’re buying.

So there is an advantage, and I can also tell you that some people go through, get refinanced, pull home equity loans out to go build another home to put their kids through college. And from what they’ve told me, there are big equity positions. So that tells me that there’s a big savings in what’s going on. I don’t want to be one of these things that says, “Hey, you are going to save…” It’s hard to really predict it because of different market conditions.

If you go build a house in a rural area with very little population, it’s going to have a cost there, but it’s also going to have a resale value that’s probably lower because of less demand. If you took that exact same house and put it in a hot neighborhood in one of these towns that’s really popping—Austin, Texas; Nashville; the beach communities in California or Florida—it’s going to cost more but it’s also going to have a higher appraised value.

So what I do want to tell people is, when you’re considering are you saving the money, our customers and their appraisals show it and when they sell it, it shows that it is. But it’s not just the money, it’s what are you getting for the money that you spend. The value provided.

Host: Well let me ask you this. What about the time factor? Does it take longer in general to build a house if you act as your own general contractor, or is bringing in an outside hired contractor—do you find in your experience that that goes faster?

Steve Tuma: In theory, I would say that the general contractor should be able to get it done quicker. First of all, it’s their business. Hopefully they’re experienced, they’ve been doing it, they’ve coordinated things, they’re getting it taken care of. So in theory, it should be faster. But from what I see in some of our projects where we are working with a general contractor that’s using our product for their customers, or if we have a customer that chooses on their own to hire a general contractor even though they don’t need to, the time difference is negligible.

If you take similar design, similar conditions, weather, seasonality, different things like that, it isn’t there. But I would say in theory, if someone had a simpler home, a cookie-cutter home that that general contractor has built 50 times, they should be faster because they’ve done it. But the reality of doing a custom home with all the design, with all the details, I don’t think there’s that much of a difference. You also have to consider that we’re designing the home for you, you’re making sure it’s the right furnace, you’re making sure we help you understand the energy codes, the fitting on the land. So it’s the enjoyment of the home and making sure that the home is done right and limiting yourself to change orders.

Sometimes when you’re in the building phases with people, you can get cornered into change orders. Or if you want something changed, someone says it costs an abnormal amount. When you’re doing your own home, you have better control of that. First of all because you’re deeply involved with the design to minimize changes on site, but if there is to be a change on site, you understand it.

So again, it’s one of these balances. We don’t consider home building to be a race. We want to make sure that a customer understands the process and methodically builds a quality home. I’ve had people tell me, “My person said I could build this house in three months.” I’m like, “Really? So are you concerned about that compared to four or would you rather go four or five and know that it’s built right, you have the right windows, people aren’t rushing through, and corners aren’t cut?” So the quality of the home is there.

The people that are into the fast building, they’re buying trailers. “Hey, the trailer company said I could be in in 30 days.” Great. If you want to pay your 30-year mortgage off and get that type of a home because you move in a couple months quicker, if that’s your priority, fine, go for it. But understand what you’re doing.

Host: That seems to me like a confidence factor would be built into this as well. I personally don’t think I’d have the confidence to think I could actually build a house myself. I would want that professional help. Do you guys at Landmark run into that a lot where someone is adamant that they want to be their own contractor?

Steve Tuma: We get people that have never built homes. We get people that I’m sure have never built a birdhouse. The thing about it is, I understand what you’re saying where you could look at it and go, “Do I have to dig the hole? Do I have to connect the sewer? Do I have to run electric?” The modern-day general contractor is not like the builder of 50, 60 years ago. The builder of 50, 60 years ago probably did build. They were out there excavating, putting the foundation in, and his team, family, whatever, they would build the house. Now the general contractor is more of a white-collar manager.

Host: Got it. Yeah.

Steve Tuma: Managing the subcontractors. So in today’s world, it’s kind of an ability to understand, manage, and control the schedule. We’ve had people build complex homes and do a very good job. I remember one, he called me up, it was a customer that built a garage before or kind of understood stuff, he was in the Florida Keys. It ended up being the most expensive home built on that particular key. And he just built it on his own and coordinated the different people to do it.

So the idea, sometimes people think, “Oh, if I’m going to build my own home I have to understand how to use an excavator, I have to want to put a septic in.” No, it’s a management job. So a lot of people manage it in their own life, they’re managing their family, they’re managing their household, or they’re managing in their particular job. So a lot of it just really gets to be understand the process and do it.

We’ve had a lot of people that are not in the trades, their families are not in the trades, but they understand it. And I got to tell you, the homes are beautiful. And some of these people come from backgrounds where it isn’t exactly advantageous to them. So they’ve been able to navigate the understanding, the budgeting, the scheduling, and working with the right people. And that’s basically what a general contractor does.

So if you’ve got someone that’s rebuilding their life, needs a bigger home than their budget allows because the family’s bigger or the in-laws are moving in or mom and dad are moving in or whatever it is, they’re able to coordinate this and work to build a home and achieve a goal that they wouldn’t be able to achieve otherwise.

It’s kind of an amazing situation. If I were to look at the overall scope over three decades of us helping owner-builders at Landmark Home and Land Company, I would say that a huge portion—and I don’t have this mathematically calculated, I’m going to say 70 to 80% of our customers—have never built a house. But they understand the management, they understand learning about it, they understand working with the right people. They understand asking a question if they don’t know the answer.

To say, “Hey Steve, how do we do this? Or hey, can we design this? Is there a simpler way that we can do something?” So a lot of it is just a reality check of, “Hey, what are your weaknesses, what are your strengths?” and everyone has them, to figure out the best way to approach the project.

That’s an interesting question. It evolved from “How much longer does it take?” to “What can you do?” but we’ve had people, like I say, that have never built a home, and we’ve worked with people in all age ranges from the low 20s to the mid-80s building a house. And they’re successful. I get beautiful pictures of homes. It’s pretty cool. If you got a passion for anything you’re going to figure it out, you know.

It’s also a motivation. And to tie it into the first question, is the cost. If you’re getting a big equity position, like some of these people tell me it’s two to three years that they have gained four years of an income in equity of a home, it’s amazing how focused and excited people can be to see that gain personally for them, but also their family.

Host: Yeah, that makes sense. Let’s get back to our top 10 list though.

Steve Tuma: I guess we added one more item.

Host: That was good. Let’s talk about construction loans, and I know a lot of people go online to look and see if it’s more difficult to get a construction loan if you’re if you’re an owner-builder who’s actually acting as your own builder, and without bringing in an an outside contractor. And when I say outside contractor, that doesn’t mean that people aren’t going out and hiring their a lot of electricians and plumbers and stuff, but I mean just to be the general builder, if you will. And let’s say you don’t have a license. Can you get a construction loan as an owner-builder?

Steve Tuma: We have customers that do that, and different banks do different things. Just like different restaurants do different things, different car dealerships sell different types of cars and trucks, banks are similar in that they’ll they’ll have certain types of loans. So, some some banks don’t do construction loans, some banks do construction loans but you need a general contractor, and some banks do construction loans for owner-builders. It’s kind of you got to go to your own own lender and find out.

Sometimes these are local credit unions. Customers love the credit unions. There’s also the GreenTrees and others that are part of the USDA for rural areas where they’ll they’ll work with owner-builders. We have customers using that right now. And then also we found some of the local or regional banks are a little more tuned in to taking care of the market. So, um sometimes it’s the bank’s attitude, sometimes it’s the financial qualifications of our of the customer as to what what a bank will choose to do.

But there are more and more of them out there. Um I think you can turn the news on any night you hear about this word affordability, and the government’s trying to loosen it up, you know, to try to make it available, and I think some of the banks are trying to do that so that they can properly support their the communities that they’re in. So, I will say it’s a little bit harder depending on where you are geographically, and and just what what the bank’s attitude is is in your community.

But we have customers, a lot that are that are working with construction loans.

Host: Yeah, and one would hope that if you’re if you have a bank that you’ve been with for quite a while, and you have trust in the banker and vice versa, that they’d be able to lead you in the right direction. I’m sure that some banks would just shut you down and say, “No, we’re not going to help you find a construction loan elsewhere.” But I’m sure there are there are people out there in the banking industry who would help with that.

Steve Tuma: Yeah, it’s just like anything else, it’s, you know, some banks are a little more tuned into helping the customer, some banks have have more guidelines that they they want to stick to and and go to. So, my my opinion is, um and what’s kind of interesting is I typically end up talking to the bank and they’ll they’ll ask me questions like, “Hey, has this person done plans? Is this person organized a schedule with you?” And to me, that’s a question of saying, “Hey, are these people paying attention and doing it?”

So if you go in there and and say, “Hey, do you do owner-builder loans? I might build this house and I might buy this land and I might do this,” it’s kind of like, okay, that’s great, you’re not interested, you haven’t even set yourself up. But if you say, “Hey, we have this piece of land, we intend on buying, we own it, we’ve owned it forever, we’ve paid it off, we have this house, here’s my financial scenario,” I think that your that the people the bank will be more accommodating. Just like any business is. Every business wants an organized, on top of it, positive customer. Um there’s a better opportunity to do it because I I have um communicated with some banks where you could tell they’re kind of on a fence. Hey, is this person organized? If they are, then we’ll work with them. If they’re not organized, you know, maybe we’ll need to pass. So, the more on top of it and more organized they are, the the better chance that they have to to do it.

Because now even banks, um if you go with a GC, they may not work with your GC.

Host: Right.

Steve Tuma: They they want them qualified to know that they’re a good GC, that they’ve got an experience in a project. So, banking is a little tighter and a little more stringent, and, you know, hey, we we we want the banking world to protect itself so that our financial situations are solid, but on the other side, there’s the balance of they’re there to loan money to to help the community, so. My my opinion is if a person has a finances in line, they know what they’re going to build, they’re decisive, they have a great plan, not just plan for the house, but a plan on how to execute the building, how long it’s gonna take, their budgets in line, their contractors in line… it’s very enticing for a bank and way better chances to make it happen. So, yes, you can get construction loans as an owner-builder. Yes, you can build your own home as an owner-builder. So, it’s pretty cool.

Host: You know, this next question I almost left off the script because we’ve covered it before, um but since we’re here, I just decided to leave it on, and well, let’s do this again because it does fall into line with, you know, people are just real curious. And so, uh for our regular listeners who’ve heard this question before, um just kind of, um, you know, twiddle your thumbs while we go through this. But but if you listen, Steve might even have even more information than the last time. So, the question is: tell us all of the differences between panelized, modular, and stick-built homes. And if you’re…

Steve Tuma: All of the differences. So, we’ll be here a month and a half from now.

Host: That’s what it takes. I just want our listeners to have all the info and ammunition they can when they go out there and start.

Steve Tuma: Well basically, you said panelized, modular, and stick-built homes. What are the differences? And what I’m going to do is separate, I’m going to add one here to add to this conversation. There’s the HUD homes, which you might say are trailers, they’re the ones with the metal frame underneath it. Then there’s modular, which are generally all wood, they don’t have a metal frame under it. There’s stick-built homes, which is generally what people build where you just get a bunch of 2x6s, cut them up, make a wall and make it. And then there’s panelized, which is a more efficient system of stick-built. So in that broad overview, let me give you a simple breakdown of each one, and then I want to add the twist of how that helps an owner-builder.

Host: And also also the similarities too. I don’t want to just talk about the differences, but a lot of people would find it helpful if you could tell us what the how they’re similar, and maybe we’ll probably just find that out through through your…

Steve Tuma: Well they’re similar in that they’re a home, they have a roof, they have a heating system, and they have windows. It’s how you go about and do it.

So when you have the HUD homes, it’s generally a price-pointed, more space for the dollars. I’ll let people go look at them themselves to see if they appreciate the quality, if there’s the quality they want, if there’s the features, if there’s the flexibility they want. Generally they’re long rectangle buildings, sometimes they cutesy up the front porch and do different things. Those are considered to be on the lower scale. Some communities won’t allow them, some financing sources won’t finance them. So they’re particular, and in some places you can put them in trailer parks. Um so sometimes there’s different financing. So that that’s more of a cost control situation, but you have to determine if the quality and the features of the home are what you want.

Modular in a sense, you might say is a certain step up, and then it’s made on a production line in modules that are put together. For simplicity purposes, a ranch might be two halves. A two-story might be four quarters, the first floor two pieces, the second floor two pieces. That’s a simplification, but in general they can’t really be highly customized. There might be some features here or there: add a dormer, add a garage, do this, do this. There are some companies, they generally work in a specific geographic area because of shipping, and generally you have to work with their contractors to get them built. So again, it’s kind of like a car, where you don’t go to your car company and say I want this made, you kind of have the parameters of what the production line is able to do. Again, there could be some financing issues with them, there could be some appraisal issues with them, because it is a modular building system. I’m not going to say that there’s necessarily for the people that want those that there’s anything wrong, but from what I understand in the financing world, they are looked at differently. So again, modular is generally a limitation on design, generally a limitation on changes, and banks look at them in a different light than a conventionally built home.

A stick-built home, which is where the general contractor will go out, get a bunch of sheathing, a bunch of 2x6s, 2x10s, roof trusses, cut the materials, make a wall panel, build it up, is the conventional building system in the United States for hundreds of years. You can generally build almost anything, a simple boxy home or an extreme custom home. So, that you have to go through the design phase, generally there’s a separate architect, generally there’s a separate structural person, and then a contractor, and they somehow on site mold those together and then end up building a house, with some potential adjustments and details on site if the plans aren’t clear. So that’s the conventional building method that I would say is kind of a standard for home building in the US for a couple hundred years.

But what we’ve done with panelization is added the efficiencies of the production line and the deeper design features. Because we are panelizing a stick-built home, so this is a stick-built panelized home, it’s built to the same codes, same engineering, and generally the same materials as a custom stick-built home, what we’re doing is making it more efficient and thinking through the processes of the designing, engineering, energy codes, site plan, so it’s easy for an owner-builder to understand their project, work with contractors, and also obtain permits, assemble the home package, and make it easier to go through the inspection processes. So in a sense, our panelized system is a more efficient, streamlined process of design and manufacturing and building the home. So our panelization is more towards stick-built.

Now, here’s the thing with owner-builder, and that’s the key thing of what can you do as an owner-builder. I believe most of the HUD homes, the more trailer with the steel frames underneath them, those you generally buy from a dealer and they get a foundation, they supply it, they match it together. It’s not necessarily something where an owner-builder is going to be able to go in there and really get in a lot of equity in it, because they have to pay someone to do it.

Modular is very similar, in that generally you have to go to a dealer, they’ll get the foundation, they’ll put the house together, match the pieces, finish the siding. And it’s not necessarily less expensive. We’re getting a lot of deals where people said, “Hey, I thought modular was less, but I could do it with Landmark, get the house I want, change the design the way I want, and be at a better cost.”

Owner-builders on stick-built, I would say that’s something someone could owner-build. That’s probably been going on for decades. But what we’re doing with our panelized system, and the way Landmark Home and Land Company looks at owner-builder panelized systems, is let’s help the customer with a broad range: architectural design, structural design, energy calculations, site plans, helping get the details for the building department, working through building department issues with them, supplying a panelized home package that matches the approved plans by the customer and the building department, so that the assembly and inspection is quicker. That’s what we’re branching, and I think that’s why we have an excellent process for the typical owner-builder.

Host: Well, since you threw HUD homes into that mix, I’m going to throw something at you too. And that’s just hoping you can clear up some of the the… what they call high-confusion search terms. So if you could just real briefly tell us, you know, people read kit homes or prefab homes when looking up Landmark, say. Can you just give us a quick overview of what those terms mean, and and how they fall into what you just talked about?

Steve Tuma: Well, that’s really interesting because what’s interesting is people ask, “Hey, Steve, what are you doing?” And I say, “Oh, we do custom custom panelized homes.” They’re like, “Oh, the prefabs.” And I’m like, “Well, that’s to a certain degree.” But in a sense, almost everything is prefab. So prefab can be so broad that if you were to ask those people, “What do you mean by prefab?” they generally look at you with a blank face because they’re using a word but they know they don’t understand what prefab means.

So, the way I look at it is the prefab is very generic. You can have a prefabricated HUD home. It is, it’s prefabricated in a plant and brought out. You can have a prefabricated modular home. It’s prefabricated in a plant, driven out to your site, put on a foundation. But you could also have a custom stick-built home with prefabricated trusses.

So, in all range from the simplest, you know, HUD homes to the most complex stick-built homes, chances are there’s a prefabricated something in there. So, people don’t always understand the word prefab. So, I can’t relate it in the difference to saying, “Hey, let’s go get dinner,” compared to, “Let’s go to an Italian place from Southern Italy where they have the best linguini.” You know, so you’re you’re kind of defining it more. So, there’s a lot of words that are used, but I don’t know that there’s a high definition as to what those words are.

And then as you see different shows, and you see different people do things on search terms and other things, they’ll come up with words like kit homes. And some a banker called me once and said, “Oh, is this a kit home?” I said, “Well, it depends on what you mean, because kit home can mean a lot.” And I said, “What’s your definition of a kit home?” and she said, “I don’t know, it’s just a word that I have. Is this a kit home?” And because what I’ve noticed is some people say, “Hey, I want a panelized home kit, not a kit home.” And I’m like, “Okay, so what’s the difference?” And so, we have the kit to assemble the complete package, and then other people use the word kit home for the same thing.

So, I think there’s a lot of words that are interchangeable that people use for the understanding that they have. And what we try to do is is tell, you know, suggest how how we work with them. So, the Landmark Home and Land Company panelized homes can be kit homes, they can be home packages, they can be home kits, they’re they’re kind of the same thing.

Now, within that, we used to supply kitchen cabinets and windows and roofing and siding, which someone might say, “Hey, there’s more details in your kits,” but the reason we got away from that is um people wanted to personalize and customize their own home. Some people want very affordable white vinyl windows; they cost less, they perform well, they work. Other people say, “No, I want custom-sized wood with this type of exterior with this type of of window of hardware and, you know, grills of a certain way.” So, that’s why we just stay with the panelized process and then customers can customize, you know, the type of roof, what type of metal roof, what type of asphalt roof, what type of heating system, what type of cabinets, and different things like that.

So, you know, we’re able to give people the home package, the home kit, the panelized home package, whatever word someone chooses, that allows them to build the best home for the price that they want, for all the features that they want. And we think that’s the most important thing. So, that’s kind of a long answer as to, you know, the high confusion search terms. Um, I’ve been in the industry for over three decades and I’ve I’ve just learned that certain places people use the word kit home, other people use panelized home package, otherwise people say panel kit. It’s just kind of one of those things. It probably goes down to which TV show did you watch last and which website did you review. Um, but but in all, there isn’t a true definition as to what it is that I’ve seen like an industry term. It’s just more, you know, the common adaptiveness of of how people use it.

So, in my opinion, kit homes, home packages, panelized home kits are are very, very similar in in word. Prefab home can cover everything. In general, I think people um think prefab is more the trailers or the modulars, um but, you know, with a prefabricated roof truss on a custom home, you could say that’s prefab as well. Cabinets are prefab at a factory, windows are prefab at a factory.

Host: Whoever thought semantics would play such a role in home building?

Steve Tuma: Well, what’s interesting about it, because like I brought up that one banker saying, “Oh, is this one of those kit homes?” I was like, “Okay, so what’s this person getting at?” So, I figured the best thing to do is ask them what they think a kit home is. And they didn’t know. It was just a phrase they were using. So, I was trying to get at them to say, “Hey, are you thinking this is a trailer?” Because amazingly, a lot of people in the financing world use words but they’ve never built a house, maybe they’ve never been to a construction site. So, they’re just kind of passing words on. So, I want to make sure that when we’re working with our customers, they’re taken care of properly. So, if they are working with financing sources, it’s put under the right category.

Let’s jump back to the banking situation. Different banks will put different building systems in different programs. And those programs may have different considerations as to how a customer qualifies. So, my communication with the bank and understanding how to position this right of what they’re trying to do can affect a customer’s ability to get the loan properly and the right loan at the lower interest rate. That’s where three decades of experience is pretty valuable to people. So, we’re not just in the business of of getting them plans and a panelized home, we’re in the business of helping them, well, with their home-building project. Our customers like to understand, they like to know, they’re inquisitive, they want to learn, they want to get a good value for their dollar to make sure their house is the best for their family. It’s it’s really cool. That’s the rewarding part, when you’re able to help someone really get a home instead of the quote house.

Host: You know this next question I should have moved it way up more on the list because we had talked about, you know, what it entails to be an owner-builder, but this could clear up a lot of other things that we may have left on the table. And the question is: what can I do myself? The typical do-it-yourself DIY question, but what should I do or what can I do if I’m comfortable with it, and what should I hire a professional to do?

Steve Tuma: This is my opinion on that. Um, do what you’re confident and you know how to do, and hire someone to do what you don’t know how to do. Okay? So, there’s a little bit of a gray area there because if you’ve never painted a house or maybe you painted something, you know, painting a room, you could probably do it. Is it going to be as nicely done, the corners cut right and everything? Probably not as much of a professional, but it’s not really going to affect the value of your home and your ability to enjoy it. So, you know, if you’re not a pro painter, you could probably still paint your house.

But if you’ve never installed a foundation and you don’t have a knowledge of excavation and footers and rebar and cement pouring, I would never suggest someone try something like that. Um, so, sometimes people get a little aggressive in what they think they can do or, you know, suddenly they think all these friends are going to come out of the woodwork and work for them for free every weekend and build their house so that they get a huge equity position. That’s not the way it works.

So what I have actually found is our customer base, because they research what they’re doing, they’re paying attention and they want to be successful, there aren’t really that many questions about what I should do. They know. It’s like, “Hey, I can coordinate, so I’m going to be the GC,” or they’re like, “Hey, my family’s in the cement business but we’re not framers, so I need to hire a framer.” And amazingly, it works pretty well because our customer base chooses to do this. It’s not a snap decision; it’s something that they’ve wanted to do for a while.

So, I if the question comes up and I’d say maybe 5% of our customers ask it, I would say, “Do what you’re comfortable doing.” You know, so that when you’re going in there you’re like, “Yeah, I got this,” instead of, “Uh oh, I don’t want to fall off my roof so, you know, maybe you should hire someone to do your roof if you’re not confident in it.” So, that’s the way I tell people because there’s also the other point of saving money, so on paper it looks like you save money, but then you installed it wrong, and then you get to do it twice, wasting time and money.

So the idea is to get a quality home out of this with good materials after we develop a great set of plans for you. So people have to be honest about this and this is one of those things, you got to kind of look in the mirror and say, “Hey, am I a good drywaller?” You know, that’s an art. You can’t just watch a bunch of YouTube videos and suddenly become a drywaller. That’s a very skilled job. So, I always tell people, you know, ask yourself, “Hey, can I drywall it?” If you even have to think about it, you got your answer. Don’t do it, hire someone. If you’re like, “Yeah, I’ve done it,” or “My dad’s a pro or my friend’s a pro at it and I’ll just be some of the labor behind,” go ahead and do it. But don’t go and try and get into a profession that you don’t understand. I would say the chances of you being successful in the long run are lower, and it’ll be a bigger headache to back out of it and fix it.

So, be honest with yourself on the budget, and that’s part of what the bank—all these questions are kind of intertangled here—but the banks also going to check. If you go in there and say, “Hey, I’m going to build a whole house,” they’re going to be like, “Really? You have a job and a family and you’re just going to be out there 20 hours a day building your house?” So you have to have a realistic budget. So, a lot of banks are saying, “Okay, if you’re choosing to put the roof on and frame the house, why?” And if people say, “Hey, I built houses, I’m on a crew,” they generally do it, but if if you say, “Hey, I’m a heart surgeon and I’m going to go do framing and roofing and plumb my house,” they’re probably going to be like, “Are you really sure about that?”

Host: Right.

Steve Tuma: You know, so there’s a lot of little checks and balances in here, and this is all a matter of being organized. And that’s our set of plans and our process will help you be organized, bring those questions up through the process so that you can shake this out and develop a plan so you’re successful in the build. Everyone wants you to be successful. We want you to, you and your family want to be at the building department, the contractors, the bank, your neighbors. So the more organized and understood the reality of your project, I think the more successful you’ll be.

And it’s just the pride. It’s when you look back after the house is done, you know, that’s where customers really appreciate that they were honest with themselves and spent the time to do it. Now, I don’t want to make this sound like a big deal. Like I say, only like 5% of the customers ask me about that. Most of them already know. It’s like, “Hey, I know how to do these three things, I need to hire people for these other things.” So it’s, it’s pretty cool. It’s an interesting time and people really enjoy it. It’s a desire to build a home, it’s like a life goal. Not just financially, but also personally.

Host: Let’s talk about proximity for a minute. Just is it even possible? I know people do it, but it just seems a bit daunting of a task. If I live in Nevada and I want to build my retirement home in Florida, how close do I have to be to the building site to actually make it work?

Steve Tuma: Well what’s interesting about that, in my experience, and we have customers doing it—one was New Jersey to Moab, Utah; right now we have one in Cape Cod building in Central Florida. We had one guy that lived in Napa building apartments outside of Oklahoma City, and then we were working with him on a home, his retirement home in the Canary Islands. So, I mean that’s a… so you can see the broad range.

And what’s interesting about this is, as we’ve spoken earlier, it’s the management, the understanding, working with the right people, being organized and doing it. So, what’s a distance? Because if someone lives a mile from their house and they never go there, it’s the same problem as if you live a thousand miles away. You know, if you have bad plans, bad contractors, you’re just not getting it taken care of, you’re going to have a problem if it’s on the land that you live on and you’re building a spare house in the back.

So, there is a difference in distance that if something goes on you can’t just whip by it at lunchtime and take a look at it. But we’ve had people do it. I have a customer right now he’s building a house out in Washington State and he lives in Baja California, Mexico. So, he’s got friends and family and a trusted contractor that he communicates with, and then every I don’t know, three, four weeks he pops up there, takes a look at it and works through, and we communicate with him. In that case there’s typically a little more communication with us, saying, “Hey, Steve, this happened here, this happened here, what can I do?” And then we help him through it.

So people have done it, but my suggestion if you’re going to do that is make sure that you have an organized plan. We’ll always supply you a great set of plans, but the plan as far as the right contractors, a schedule, knowing what you’re going to put into the house and make it happen. So, basically if you do your homework up front, the building process through the actual stages of building will be much smoother. But that’s even the case if you’re building right next door to the house. So if you can go through and make sure you have the right windows, the furnaces are all sorted out, it’s more of a coordination situation than it is a decision making and “Uh oh, you know, Friday, hey you didn’t pick your windows out, we need to know now.” Well, that’s a misplanning. That’s not a result of being at a distance.

So the better you plan it the better it will work. Get the best quality contractors you have and communicate. And work through. And people have done it. Is it a little harder? Yes, it’s a little harder. Is it a little more nerve-wracking? Probably. But on the other side, they achieve the goal that they needed to not have to move twice or to do this or to do that or get a retirement home in place.

So, there is an advantage to being closer to the building site, but I would say at any point 20% of our customers are building at distance. And what I mean by at distance is over 50 or 100 miles away from the building site. Some in the thousands of miles, you know, 1,000, 1,500 miles away. Some are in different countries. We’ve had that happen. You just have to plan better. And we’re fully capable of doing it, and we always suggest customers spend the time planning anyway. If you live next door, you don’t want to leave your window decision to the day that you’re installing windows. So, you want to do it.

And the issues that come up, which I have found, just to give people a hint, is dealing with land. You know, they excavate and there’s water table issues that weren’t researched. We always tell people to check it out, but sometimes there’s curveballs. “Hey, there’s something with the septic, it snowed, they couldn’t get the septic in when they thought.” You know, so it’s stuff like that. But once the house is buttoned in, the quote “dried in”, the frames up, it’s more of a controlled atmosphere, so it isn’t as big of a deal.

What’s interesting is the benefits of not living by the building site, you’re not going through the house every day thinking of changes that end up costing more, that end up delaying. “Hey, do we need to add an electric socket? Do we need to…” you know, more of the nervousness or the excitement of building where it’s like, “Oh, I got to get this right, do I need a switch here, do I need this?” So if you take the time upfront to do it, you minimize that and there could be advantages to it.

But bottom line is: can you build your own home if you don’t live by a building site? Yes you can, we have a lot of customers doing it. We suggest just better planning, make sure you have top notch subcontractors, and go by it every once in a while. You know, just to get a feel for it. Talk to the contractors, know what’s going on, and be prepared to communicate.

We had one customer built a home in Missouri and he was cruising the world in his mega yacht. He controlled it off a satellite phone. So, I mean people… it’s done. It’s just the coordination of it, the coordination, the communication, the quality of people, and make sure you make your decisions upfront and you’ll limit the issues.

Host: All makes sense. You know, there’s there’s quite a few questions left. I think we’re going to roll this over into a part two. I don’t want to take Steve’s whole afternoon away, but we do have quite a bit of these questions, these internet search questions. And I think that’s probably the best thing to do is to do a part two for this. If you’re up for that Steve, that’d be great. Before I let you go, Steve, as usual, let the listeners know how they can find out more about Landmark Home and Land Company and what you guys are doing over there.

Steve Tuma: Best thing to do is check out our website at lhlc.com. Again that’s lhlc.com. Kind of the initials of Landmark Home Land Company. There’s plans on there, there’s these podcasts, there’s videos, there’s details on what we supply, little discussions on different building in different states, and I think that’s a great place. And someone can go through and find a plan, send us an email and say, “Hey, I’m here, I’m building in this community, let’s talk about it, what’s the price, how do we get going?”

They can also just send a direct inquiry in, and then they can also just give us a call. They can call our website, give a give us a call, Michael will answer the phone, or get back with you right away. We do our best to answer phones at all times and get people taken care of. We’re very customer service oriented. And that phone number is 800-830-9788. Again, it’s 800-830-9788.

And if someone wanted to, if they wanted to call me direct and just say, “Hey, I got a couple questions, great podcast, but how does this work for me?” I’m Steve Tuma, president and founder, and my cell phone is 708-205-2043. Looking forward to talking to people. This is fun. It’s good stuff.

Host: And there you go. Thanks again Steve, and thanks to all of you for listening to the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. So for Landmark Home and Land Company President Steve Tuma and myself, have a great week and we will see you next time. Thanks as always, Steve.

Steve Tuma: Thanks.