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Show Notes: Thinking about building your own house and skipping the general contractor? This episode explains how the owner‑builder approach really works: where you can save 20–40% by acting as your own GC, what responsibilities you actually take on (design decisions, scheduling, hiring subs, dealing with permits), and where a panelized kit company like Landmark steps in with plans, engineering, and ongoing support. Steve breaks down the pros (major cost savings, full control over quality, layout, and features tailored to your lifestyle and land) and the cons (time, stress, and a real learning curve), using real stories of customers who’ve built one home or many — sometimes even involving their kids in budgeting and planning. You’ll also hear how quick guidance can turn confusing building‑department demands into simple action steps, and how to decide if managing your own build is realistic for your skills, budget, and schedule.
Transcript:
Steve Tuma: Well, owner builders can be called self build. There’s a variety of different names for them, but the actual responsibility is to understand and design and build the home that you want.
Interviewer: Hello everyone, and welcome to Episode 73 of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show.
With me in the studio today, as usual, 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. And that man would be Mr. Steve Tuma.
Steve, how’s it going, amigo?
Steve Tuma: It’s going great today, as always. It’s a great day. There’s always a new, exciting project, new building site, new code condition that we’re helping our customers get through and get them a cool house.
Interviewer: Cool house is cool. It’s a good thing. That’s what it’s about — not just a house, a cool house, good house for your family.
I thought today we’d broach a subject that you and I have talked briefly about in the past — but very briefly — and I thought we would shine more of a spotlight on this. And that’s diving in and building your own home, a homeowner‑builder project, without a general contractor.
Is this something you advise very often, and do you think that it’s doable in the first place to build without a general contractor?
Steve Tuma: It’s definitely doable. That’s why we’re in business. We’re helping our customers be their own general contractor — or if they choose to hire one, they can. But our customer has control of their project to go do it, and a lot of our customers literally act as the general contractor. That’s the main person strategizing, coordinating the people to build the house.
The subcontractor might be someone that’s hired, and then they do a portion of it, like electric or plumbing. But a lot of people have been building homes without a general contractor for 100 years.
Way back, Sears did their home kits. There’s been a variety of other companies. Frank Lloyd Wright had some kit homes that could be built. So there’s a whole variety of people that do projects without general contractors.
A lot of people do their own maintenance around their house, or add‑ons, or whatever situation. So you don’t need a general contractor to do it. A lot of people can do it on their own now.
Now, way back, a general contractor might have also been the builder. But in today’s world, a lot of the general contractors are people that just coordinate subcontractors.
Now, within that, those general contractors provide a service where they add a markup. I’ve heard 20, 30, 40% to a project, and that is additional cost that then goes into some cuts from our customer’s budget, or it adds to their monthly payment.
So with that much of a financial incentive there, a lot of people choose to be their own general contractor, to coordinate it, and then do some of the work that they know how to do themselves.
There are a lot of families out there where the whole family is in the building trade, so they can literally help each other build their own home and just go through the family. And then there’s other people that have never built a home but they understand prioritization and the management of a project. We have a lot of people like that as well.
Sometimes we’ll get a call from someone saying, “I’ve never built a house before — can I do it? But I manage this, I manage that.” I’m like, it becomes a management situation.
So yeah, a lot of customers build their own homes without a general contractor. We’re in business because of that particular niche where customers want to build their own home — and customers can do it. We’ve been helping them for 33 years.
And from what I can tell, kit homes — they’ve been around for over 100 years in different forms. The way that we do it, with the complete custom plans, nationwide, build on your site, the design you want — we’re probably the only one that do it to the degree, with the level of customer support and knowledge that we do, on a nationwide and international basis.
So building without a general contractor happens every single day. And sometimes it’s financially driven. Sometimes people just want to know what their house looks like, they want to know what the quality is, they want to control it. They don’t want to be eaten up by change orders.
And even with a general contractor, you have to go to the site, check stuff out — there’s issues that come up. In our case, with our customers being their own general contractor, they can control the scope of the project, the budget, the schedule, and the features of the home.
That’s what’s really cool. It’s a control and understanding of your home, as well as a considerable financial savings.
Interviewer: And it’s got to feel really hands‑on.
Steve Tuma: Yeah, but a lot of people want to do it. I mean, there’s restaurants and every house has a kitchen. People want to do it. Some people want to maintain their own car. They work in their own yard.
The owner‑builder industry — there’s big box stores filled up for people to build their own home or do their own projects. So it’s very common. And so yes, people can build their own home. You don’t necessarily need a general contractor.
And they do it because they just want to — the money savings and the control of the features of the home and the quality of their home. They want to know what they’re getting for their money.
Interviewer: It’s got to be, though, when you talk to a person about this, I’m sure you go through the pros and cons of being your own general contractor and just being an owner‑builder in general. It’s got to be a conversation that takes place quite often.
Steve Tuma: Oh yeah. Building a home — it’s a big commitment. It takes a lot of time. But there’s also the enjoyment of learning about it, knowing what you’re getting out of it.
So yes, if someone’s sitting there — I talked to someone today: “Well, should I have heated floors? Should I use mini‑splits? Should I use HVAC systems?” And what’s interesting is the customers will go back and say, “You know, I learned a little bit about this last night. It’s pretty cool. I want this type of system.”
So it’s not someone saying, “Hey, this makes sense for you.” It’s them going, “Now I know why it makes sense.”
So the con of that is: it takes time. You’ve got to be the type of person that wants to learn, that wants to sort it out, work through it. We’re always there to help someone. But it is a time and financial commitment to do it, and it can be stressful.
People generally have their own life, their own family, and then you’re building a house. So someone has to understand the time commitment.
But on the other side, it’s extremely rewarding. You look back and say, “Wow.”
To me, I’ve been helping 33 years, and it’s still amazing to me and exciting when a customer texts me a picture saying, “Hey Steve, here’s a kitchen,” or, “Hey, here’s the first wall panel going up.”
That, I think, is the amazing thing.
So the big benefit, or the pros: the financial savings, the understanding of the quality of the home, building the house you want, in the place that you want to build it, and having this all set up. It’s a rewarding thing.
One of my first customers in the early 90s said, “Steve”— it was a lady — she said, “Steve, you have to tell people that building a house is like having a baby.”
And I’m like, “OK, well let’s understand this story.”
So she goes on, she goes, “Making the baby — it’s the absolute fun. It’s the greatest thing on earth.” That’s kind of like planning the house, going, “Oh, what windows? What kitchen? You know, what’s the bathroom going to look like? What’s the garage?” That’s the fun part.
Then there’s the nine months of building it, which is like, “What am I doing? This is nuts. Hey, this is an incredible amount of work. What’s up with this?”
And then when the baby’s born, you look back and say it’s the most amazing thing on earth. And that, I think, is a sense of accomplishment when someone builds the house — that they look at it and they say, “Wow, look at what I did.”
So it’s not just the financial gain — if they’re financing, the lower payment and the savings on interest and banking fees, owning their home quicker, saving on financial costs. But it’s also the pride of:
“I know it was built right. The design is the way I want it to be. And that’s it.”
It’s amazing what the designs of houses we’re getting. We’re getting music studios. We’re getting family rooms. We’re getting recreation rooms. We’re getting people that are really into kitchens — having a very detailed kitchen. People with car collections, or they do their own work, or woodshops.
People are really designing these homes for their lifestyle. Even little home theaters that they’re getting to look like theaters nowadays. You can buy these hundred‑inch TVs, you know. And that’s the thing about it.
So if you can design the home to be just the way you want it to be, there’s a value to it. And it’s not just the features in the home — like a kitchen or a home theater or whatever. It’s the position of the home on the land that you want:
- A view of the lake
- A view of the city
- A view of a tree
- A view of a mountain range
You know, whatever it may be — that, I think, is it.
So the bang for the buck when someone is their own owner‑builder is the reward of: “I got the best house I can for the money. And I learned — I learned about it. I know it’s a good home.”
That, I think, a lot of people do it.
You know what’s really cool is we’ve had a couple of customers with younger kids — like 6, 7, 10, 12 years old — and the kids are actually involved in the budgeting, the planning, the understanding. It’s kind of a life experience, whether you’re a young kid, middle‑aged, retired — whatever it may be. It’s an absolutely amazing experience for people.
So that, I think, is the big pro. It’s like: “Look at what I got for the money. I learned something, and I know I got a great home, and I got the home I wanted.”
That’s why people do it.
Interviewer: Do you feel you have to — like you have a responsibility? Or do you just enjoy doing it — but to talk people through exactly what it is to be your own general contractor? I mean, that doesn’t seem like a small affair at all.
Steve Tuma: It isn’t. But the people that do it really enjoy it. They enjoy the management of it. They enjoy what they get out of it at the end:
- A well‑built home
- A well‑insulated home
- An energy‑efficient home
- A home that has the floor plan look that they want
That’s why they do it. So it’s the end result.
A lot of people like managing and understanding and going through the details:
- “What electric do I need here?”
- “What type of heating and air conditioning do I need?”
- “Do I need any special showers?”
- “Do I need any special toilets?”
- “What type of windows are there?”
- “What should I do with my roof system?”
- “What do I need for the garage?”
- “Do I need a basement?”
People like going through that. Just — I don’t really watch the shows, but there’s a billion shows on TV about “Do this to your house” and “Do that to your house.”
Interviewer: Sure.
Steve Tuma: And it’s a growing segment. People enjoy it. They want to do it — with us, which is the cool thing, because they can actually experience it themselves.
And if someone looks at the financial gain of saving, say, $100,000 or $200,000 on a house — what that relates to on a monthly payment, and then the payment through the dollar amounts through a 30‑year mortgage — it could be hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars saved.
It’s kind of an incentive. It’s pretty cool.
Interviewer: I would say saving money is always an incentive.
Talk to us like we’re all third graders here. We’ve gone through, you know, being your own general contractor — which circles back to being an actual owner‑builder, that we talk about a lot.
What is an actual owner‑builder, and what is the responsibility of that owner‑builder?
Steve Tuma: Owner‑builders can be called self build. There’s a variety of different names for them. But the actual responsibility is to understand and design and build the home that you want.
So we’re able to plug in at points where maybe customers need help. So they may know the house they want, but they don’t know how to draw the plans or how to do structural engineering or mechanical engineering or site plans.
So that owner‑builder, in a sense, is guiding the project, saying, “Hey, I’ve got a home here in California” — or a piece of land in California, or Iowa, or New York, or Washington State, Italy — you know, wherever it may be. And they’re like, “OK, I want to put this house. I want to put a 3,000 square‑foot boxy two‑story with a three‑car garage on it with a full walkout basement.”
And so they kind of direct what it is. We just fill in the blanks to kind of formalize the plans, help them through processes so they can go through, figure out the floor plan, the exterior look, the materials, the finishes, and go through and get it put together.
So they’re kind of responsible for the complete project, but we’re here to support them at points where they need help.
And a lot of customers will literally build the whole home themselves with friends and family. Other people, on the other spectrum, just kind of coordinate the building and hire people to do it.
So as an owner‑builder, you’re responsible to make sure the house gets built. But that’s why there’s the financial savings — because you don’t have to hire a general contractor, and you can do the work that you want. Why pay someone to do work that you can do yourself?
And then, if you have an ability to understand different products, you can then go through and say, “Hey, I want this type of roof. I want this type of window. I want this type of furnace,” to really go through and design the home so that you get the value out of it that you want.
And again, it’s not that we expect everyone to know every detail of this. We can fill in the blanks if they need help with this or help with that. We can help guide them through the process.
So the owner‑builder just kind of figures, “Hey, I want to build my own house. I want to save the money. I want to control the quality. I want to control the schedule. I want to know what my house is built like, and I want to make sure it gets done right.”
Interviewer: Do people ever get overwhelmed and reach out to you and just say, “I may be over my head”? Or how do you talk them off the ledge?
Steve Tuma: Extremely rare. Extremely rare.
I’ll tell you why: People don’t just wake up Monday morning and say, “Hey, let me build a house.” They watch shows. It’s kind of a dream. If you talk to the people, a lot of the time it’s been in them since they were a little kid, or they’ve seen a show, or a friend did it, or they realize, “Hey, wait a second, it costs a lot more for me to hire someone to build a house that they want, compared to me saving the money and building a house that I want.”
So the reality is, our customer base is prepared.
They understand that when you buy land, you’ve got to get land that’s buildable. They understand that building a home is going to take some time, a commitment, and be a little bit of a curveball in your schedule.
So I think we do a pretty good job of letting customers know the reality of this. It’s not all roses. It’s a lot of work. There are a lot of details. Things will happen. But that’s the reality of life. You just have to get up, move on, and take care of it.
And we’re always here if someone needs help prioritizing something or understanding what’s going on.
And we always tell them: work with good people. Good people will take care of you. We’re a very good company. We can help people plan it right, understand what they’re doing.
But then, if they have subcontractors or other people involved in the project, work with good people that are there to take care of the job so that you have good guidance in whatever trade they’re helping you with.
We’ve had people come back and do 10 or 15 homes with us. We have people that have done an individual home and then said, “Hey, I want to start a contracting business.” We’ve had people that say, “Hey, I’m going to do one every two years for investment purposes.”
So you know, the reality is of anything — you’ve got to work at it. I’m not going to sugarcoat it and say, “Hey, it’s a walk in the park with unicorns and rainbows.” When you’re in the home, you’re like, “Wow, this is cool.” It might be like that. But the reality is, it takes a lot of work.
But I would say that if you talk to our customer base, people enjoy it. There’s a reward to say, “I got my house.” And then when their payment is less, or their bank account is still strong after building their own home, there’s a big financial savings that I think, in today’s world, is very rewarding to the customer base.
Interviewer: I can imagine. So — and you know, there are little frustrations that come up.
We had one today. Someone said, “Hey, this building department sent me this list. What does it mean?” I looked at the list. We talked about it for 20 minutes, got it all taken care of. Said, “Hey, we can do these things. This is what you need to do.”
And suddenly it became an exciting situation instead of, “Oh, this building department sent me this weird list. What is this? What’s a geotechnical report?” You know, that type of stuff — where we can help them understand and frame it for their building situation.
So there’s a lot of support there. It is a lot of work. It’s hard. It’s time‑consuming. It’s demanding. But at the end, it’s rewarding.
Steve Tuma: I can imagine, yeah.
Interviewer: Are you able to see, early on in a project, when it actually makes sense for a customer to hire someone else — when that makes sense? You know, when hiring people, when you look at the overall, it makes sense to hire a general contractor? Can you see that pretty early on in the process?
Steve Tuma: Yeah. Generally, the people that want to hire a general contractor made that decision themselves, because this isn’t something, like I say, where you wake up Monday morning at eight o’clock and call us at 8:05 and say, “Hey, I just decided out of nowhere to build a house.”
It’s something that people have been thinking about. They’ve been searching for land. So what’s really cool about our customer base is our customers are in touch with reality. They know their time commitment. They know their level of knowledge. They know their desire to do it.
So people generally say, “Hey, because of this and that, I’ve got to get a general contractor.” Other people are like, “Hey, because of my budget, because I know how to do this, why do I want to pay someone to do what I know how to do myself?” They’re going to go manage the project themselves.
So that decision is typically made up by a customer.
Now, I always have a nice little heart‑to‑heart talk with them, saying, “Hey, don’t become a YouTube PhD and go learn how to do drywall on Friday night with your family, and start doing drywall Saturday. Do what you know how to do. Hire people to do what you’re not as strong at. It just makes for a better project.”
I understand that there are situations where someone’s like, “Hey, the budget’s tight. We’d like to do this. Should we do it?” And I’m like, “Well, there’s always a way to reformat your project, to figure out a way to pull money from here to there, or just sort things out so that you get the house taken care of properly.”
But it’s pretty cool that we’ve got a great customer base that is very realistic on what they’re choosing to do.
And we’re there for support, and we’re also direct and honest. If someone’s doing something that just doesn’t sound right, I don’t have a problem saying, “Hey, Mr. Customer, do you really want to go and excavate for your foundation on the side of a hill in the Rockies when you’ve never used excavation equipment before?” I would tell them straight out: don’t do it.
Interviewer: Right. Of course.
Steve Tuma: Now, no one’s ever tried that — that’s an extreme example. But the point is, we do want to work with them to give them a knowledge base so that they can make good decisions for their project.
They are ultimately the general contractor and responsible for the project. But yeah, if I sense something that’s weird, I don’t have a problem having a talk with the person to say it.
It’s interesting — it’s their house, but we kind of still consider it to be ours. We want our customer base, and the owner‑builder community, to be successful. It’s a very cool industry. It’s a big part of the world.
And people have been building their own homes — well, in a sense, cavemen were building their own homes, weren’t they? They’re going out, “Hey, look at this hole. I’m going to clean it out. If I live here, now I’ve got my own home.” We’ve just evolved a little more. So that’s pretty good.
Interviewer: Yeah. Well, there you go. That’s going to do it for today’s episode.
And Steve, thanks. Another really informative episode there. It just seems like every one just gets better and better. And if I were a Landmark customer, I’d be really happy to hear some of the things you bring to the table here at the podcast.
But before we go, let the listeners know how to find out more about Landmark Home and Land Company — how to get a hold of you guys, where they can find out more information, and all that good stuff.
Steve Tuma: Yeah. Hey, just to finish that thought you just said — it’s the support through the project that’s very important, because every project is different. If someone built the same house — one this year, one next year — there’s going to be a different set of issues. Different land is different things. Different times bring up different issues. So we’re always there to help.
The best way to reach us is: take a look at our website. It’s always available. It’s at LHLC.com, kind of like the initials of Landmark Home Land Company — LHLC.com.
You can look at floor plans, listen to the podcasts, listen to videos, see different conversations on what we supply and how we do it.
You can also call 800‑830‑9788. Again, it’s 800‑830‑9788. Mike will answer the phone. You can go through, have discussions with him on what’s necessary. And then when it gets to a point where your project’s moving along, I’ll pick up the project and work with the customer completely through the whole project.
If someone wants to call me directly, just talk about ideas — my direct cell phone is 708‑205‑2043. We’re always available to help.
Interviewer: And there we go. Thank you 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 again, Steve.
Steve Tuma: Yeah, thanks. This was a very interesting one. Cool one.
