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If you’re looking to build your own custom panelized prefab home, this episode breaks down exactly what it takes to turn your dream design into a reality. You will learn that true prefab building goes far beyond simply ordering a pre-cut kit; it involves navigating complex local building codes, optimizing for energy efficiency, and adapting your design to unique environmental factors like steep mountainsides or earthquake zones. By listening, you will discover the crucial steps of pre-planning, how to avoid common permitting pitfalls, and why having customized, direct support throughout the entire structural and architectural process is the absolute key to successfully building the exact home you want, exactly where you want it.Transcript:
Steve Tuma: That’s that’s the very important key. Is customer service knowing that Landmark is the best panelized home company they can work with anywhere in the country or around the world and and we provide the best service.
Host: Hello everybody and welcome to episode 86 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. And that is Mr. Steve Tuma. Steve, how are things buddy?
Steve Tuma: Yeah, things are going well. You know, as always, we’ve got some cool projects going on and interesting customers building houses all over the country. So it’s a pretty exciting time.
Host: I like status quo. That’s good.
Steve Tuma: Yeah, well, you know, it’s status quo in the sense that we’re busy, but all the different types of customers, where they’re building, the reasons they’re building, the different budgets, the different designs… that that’s always interesting because we’re able to get, um, help people get the houses that they want, you know, a custom design instead of just a a standard house someplace. It’s kind of cool.
Host: Good. So we had a theme going on a couple of episodes back where I was just asking you questions that um the the potential or even past uh Landmark Home and Land Company um customers had. Um, basically what’s on everybody’s lips for every potential homeowner builder across the land. So if you’re ready to start fielding some pretty basic questions, but ones that I think are important, uh, let’s do that.
Steve Tuma: Yeah. Well, what do you have? Let’s see.
Host: Well first, first off, what is what is Landmark? I just want the president of the company to explain… what does Landmark include in their, in your packaging, in your design, in all of that work that you do? What do you have that other companies just don’t include in in their uh their basic uh customer plan?
Steve Tuma: Well, I think it’s kind of an interesting question because a lot of people want to say, “Well, we include this, or we include this” as far as a physical item. And that is part of the answer, but a lot of it is also just the attitude and understanding and desire to really help customers build the right home for them, make sure that the house gets designed right, make sure structurally it’s sound, mechanically it’s sound, energy efficiencies are taken care of, you know, sitting on the land properly, and taking care of the building department requirements. So it’s, I I would say Landmark in a sense is a is a desire to help people get the house that they want, whether it’s a little house, a big house, a medium house, an ADU, a vacation home, whatever it is. So in that, you know, in our desire to really help people get a cool house, we do a lot of things for them.
Um, the, you know, panelized homes, a lot of people think, “Well you just order it and a kit shows up.” Well in the case with us, we believe we’re the best panelized company on the planet and uh you know, we we work hard to do so, but it’s because we go beyond just the product. It’s making sure the product is designed right, listening to the customer to make sure that what they want we we end up putting on the plans properly, make sure it works with the codes, make sure it works with the the building site, make sure it works with the energy efficiencies. So it’s not like going to a lumber yard where like, “Hey give me a stack of wood, I’ll nail it together and make a house.” It’s it’s the pre-planning, all the work and support and experience that we have that gives people the ability to build the house that they want and know that it’s the best house that they can get for for what they want to do.
That I think is it. So I guess it’s basically caring and our our experience and our attitude to really do it. But beyond that, I think what people wanted to hear or thought they might hear is we got a great panelized system. Um, we we have different floor systems, dimensional wood like two by tens, two by twelves, um two by six exterior walls are always typical, roof truss or rafter systems. Um, we can do the complete structural design that matches the energy calculations that also matches the architectural design. So, um, I guess that’s the long way of answering the question, but bottom line is we we take the time to make to listen to a customer to find out what they need so that uh we can draw it up right and make sure that that ends up in the house that they’re moving into. We we have a philosophy: if someone’s gonna work as hard as we do to make a living, you better get the house you want. So we’re we’re here to help.
Host: See, now that’s when you’re talking to the president of the company you’re going to expect, you know, the “let me blow my own horn for a while.” But I think when you… you, Steve Tuma, seem to take things back to to the customer satisfaction as opposed to just touting your own horn. And that’s… you know, and that goes back to my next question ’cause it said that Landmark Home and Land Company’s uh customer service is is the best there is. Now that’s a bold statement, my friend, but I’m sure you can back that up.
Steve Tuma: Well, the reason why is uh I work directly with every single customer. I’m a founder of the company and I work with every single customer, and I’ve done so for what we’re going on 33 years. So there’s a lot of experience, there’s a lot of knowledge, there’s a lot of understanding, and if if for some reason there’s a question a customer asks that I don’t have, I I have the availability of the people that might have, you know, deeper details on on extreme specifics. But I think that’s the case about is the passion and understanding to be able to listen to what a customer wants and make sure it gets taken care of instead of just, you know, some production line, you know, type of situation where you order something and something shows up.
It’s a situation of let’s make sure it’s taken care of because a lot of people may not realize initially, they’re like, hey I want this house, it’s it’s gonna go on this piece of land and it’s just gonna be great. Well, as you get deeper into the thought processes and the understanding of hey energy codes or how you want the house placed on the land or hey what type of window you want to look over the backyard to see the kids… your thought processes get a little deeper and it brings up more questions, and we’re here enabled to help. Uh, our customers with with answers, details, suggestions and how to how to put those details together.
It’s actually a lot of fun because we get to know our customers. We enjoy it, and I believe our customers enjoy it as well. Many come back and build another home or or uh recommend a friend, or some of them just become friends. You end up talking for decades later just seeing how they’re doing. So that’s that’s a key element to it is the the desire to really get into it, make it happen. Um, our panelized homes, there there’s a lot of work and thought that go into it. Not all plans are the same, not all panelized homes are the same, not all companies are the same, and customer service is definitely different. We we do our best… in fact, every customer I work with has my direct cell phone. They can call me at their convenience, and if I’m awake, I answer the phone. Yeah. I don’t think you see that anywhere.
Host: Well… anyone can have a business model, but it to to actually have a philosophy about building, that’s pretty unique.
Steve Tuma: It it’s very unique, and you know, I’m a consumer as well, and you know all of us have, you know, certain services in our home where they claim to have an award… you know, and then you call in, you’re on hold forever, you talk to someone that doesn’t know what they’re talking about, and it just becomes an annoyance, you know. And that that I think is what we model Landmark after, to be the best panelized company, not just in the product, but in the design work, the support, and the attitude of helping customers. That’s that’s the very important key. Is customer service. Knowing that Landmark is the best panelized home company they can work with anywhere in the country or around the world and and we provide the best service.
Host: See, you’re talking about the company being uh being an actual entity for nearly 33 years now, and do you think uh your return customers or the the customers who are are sent your way by word of mouth or or just, you know, their friends send them or they just see something online. How long did it take you to get that reputation, and and what do you think the secret of that reputation is aside from just being having great customer service?
Steve Tuma: It’s doing what you say… you know, get people taken care of in an ethical and the proper way. You know, treat people the way you want to be treated. It’s just one of those things that you that you do. And it it kind of hit right away when we started the company in ’93 and in the ’90s was that that people saw it so they they referred friends. And it just kind of snowballed from there. Um, it it it’s a lot of work to make sure that everyone’s taken care of properly. If someone calls at six o’clock on a Friday night and they need something, you answer the phone, you get them taken care of and you help them along. You know, if someone needs help during the business day, after business hours, weekends, whatever it is, uh, we do everything we can to help them because sometimes, you know, if a family’s meeting out on a lot on a Saturday afternoon and they’ve got a question that’s a minute or two of, hey what about this, can we do this with a walkout basement? Can we put a bigger window in to take advantage of a view? It just getting them a quick answer allows them to to move the project forward.
Um, and and we enjoy this. This is fun. You know, it’s cool even now at at about 33 years of helping customers all over the country and around the world, it’s it’s exciting to see a family get a house. It changes the the life, it changes their perspective of life, the way kids are raised, what they do in their free time, how they sleep, how they go to work, you know, the the holidays, family events and things like that. So it’s not just getting a house, it’s allowing for an atmosphere, an environment for a family to thrive. What what’s cooler than that? You know, so to to, so to take a little bit of time to to work with customers so that they understand what’s going on and how we can help them, and in times enhance their thoughts and their questions because of our experience, it’s it’s really, really valuable. So how long did that take? Well, we started at day one and it’s been compounding ever since. It’s it’s cool. It’s it’s one of the best parts of the business.
Host: When you love what you do, you never work a day of your life.
Steve Tuma: Yeah. Well, that’s true. It’s uh, you know, even days where there’s a lot going on it’s it’s still exciting. It can be challenging, but it’s it’s exciting when you see, you know, a someone framing a house and they’re sitting there as it’s getting framed texting you pictures going, “The first wall’s up! The last wall’s up, you know, the roof’s on!” Right. It’s it’s pretty cool. It’s it’s actually pretty amazing and it’s not just for the family, but you look at the economic impact… I read somewhere, and I don’t know if this is true, but um, someone said that each house that’s built is the equivalent of hiring a person for two and a half years. So you look at the economic impact of, okay, buying the wood, the excavator, the guy installing your windows, the local gas company connecting the gas line or the sewer connections or whatever it is, everyone’s got a job for a while. And it just feeds through the community. So in that sense, it’s pretty amazing. You’re not just helping the customer get a home, but we’re also helping the economy by keep keeping people busy, you know, those, you know, in your community type of jobs. It’s pretty amazing.
Host: Yeah. You know what I think is funny, and I’m not going to just let it go past, but you talked about earlier how a customer or potential customer can actually have your direct cell phone number, and that that sort of direct communication. Well, first of all, uh, a guy that’s owns a company and you know, you work with big factories across the country, all this all of this prep work you do to get the um to get the projects off the ground, and yet you’re people are able to call you directly and not have to go through middlemen or or middlewomen and and uh you know like you said get put on hold forever. How does that how’s that worked and how long you been doing that?
Steve Tuma: Since day one. I mean it’s just been a philosophy that we’ve had. By the way, my direct cell phone, I’m Steve Tuma, Landmark Home and Land Company is 708-205-2043. Um, yeah, it’s we we just did it because it made sense. And what you find, and I don’t like calling and there’s push this for this, push this for this, push this for this… it’s like hey, why can’t you just answer the phone? So that’s what we do. And it’s literally a direct cell phone that my family and friends call me on and that that’s the one that that we use to communicate with customers. And that’s extremely important because our customers are all busy people. They have their jobs, their lives, their family. So if someone could call up and just say hey what’s up with this or what’s going on with this or we can we can really help them right away. So it makes it more enjoyable. You just get to it.
Host: So at least acknowledge that that is pretty damn unique. You do know that right?
Steve Tuma: Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, it’s extremely unique. But but we like our customers. I mean it’s a lot of fun. You know, someone calls up and says, “Hey I’m doing this on the side of a hill in the Sierras. Hey I’m doing this in Iowa. Hey I’m doing our vacation home in Florida or hey I’m doing an heirloom project in uh in Utah. You know, whole family’s putting money in to build a house so we can get together on the holidays.” It’s uh why don’t… you know, just being part of that is just fun. Right. It’s exciting. It’s invigorating.
Host: Yeah. Well it has it would have to be to be to make yourself that accessible to your customers. It’s it’s a pretty amazing thing. So I just wanted to make sure you’d acknowledge it and you know that it is kind of amazing. Um, not everybody’s doing that. Let’s talk about Landmark’s extensive, you know, your real project experience. I mean, how many houses have you built in 33 years and and how you said it’s fun to do, I understand that’s how you keep the excitement up and how what gets you excited about getting on the phone and making these projects happen on a daily basis?
Steve Tuma: Well, it’s helping the families get through the situations they need to go from the end zone, the end result. So they start going hey we want to build this house… we’re at A, we need to get to point Z. What’s in between? And that’s that’s how we help them. I’ve never kept track as to how many houses we’ve built, a lot. Pretty much all the 48 states and you know, we built them in places that are below sea level, the highest populated city in the 48 I think is Leadville, Colorado, we’ve worked there. We’ve worked all the way up and down each coast, well, on the central coast and along the Great Lakes as well. Um, we built in cities, we built in rural communities, we built in places where I think some customers said they’re 50 miles to any other human. So so um that’s that’s the thing that comes together and by working with these people and and truly you remember things, you gather that knowledge base and experience so that we’re able to take care of customers.
So if a customer calls up and they say hey what’s going on with this this and this, chances are I could give them a very solid answer of how it pertains to their project, their house, their land, their building department so that, you know, we we could keep them rolling. It’s not it’s not something where we have big committee meetings every other week and you got to wait for answers. We’ll we’ll get on it right away. Right. And and I think that’s the key thing because as building departments become bigger sticklers, codes tighten, budgets get tighter, different things happen, it’s good to have that long range experience and understanding of of what goes on. But that, but also direct access to all the architectural designers, the structural engineering, the energy codes to see that when a customer asks me or anyone at Landmark a specific question, we can give them an answer for the overall project, not just a component of the project.
Host: Sure.
Steve Tuma: So so what I mean by that is, let’s just say you happen to be building a house in uh Southern California in an earthquake zone. And someone said, “Hey I want to make my living room window bigger because I want to look south and just overlook some range or something like that.” So a lot of people say, “Well just make the opening for the window bigger.” It’s like yeah, but there could be shear wall situations depending on how how many openings are in that wall, the strength of the wall, and there could definitely be um energy calculation concerns.
Host: Mm-hmm.
Steve Tuma: So in a sense where instead of just saying, “Hey let’s make the window bigger, customer’s happy,” we could review the whole situation on a structural and an energy code thing to give a complete answer for their exact project. People may not realize they need that help, and that is where we really shine is looking at hey, what’s the real situation, that that we’re helping you through. And that I think is where customers really realize it. What’s interesting and a big percentage of customers tell me this, it’s like Steve, we came to Landmark Home and Land Company to buy a panelized home, but it’s the support, the knowledge, for the project that makes it important. One of them actually said, “You’re like the engine of the project. You drive it, you get it taken care of, and move on.” And I think that’s what customers appreciate because there’s really a real and a knowledgeable support system that we provide.
Host: Mm-hmm.
Steve Tuma: It’s just part of our service. It’s part of our desire to help.
Host: Right. Well I mean…
Steve Tuma: So that that’s the key thing compared to going somewhere going, “Hey let’s go buy you know a hundred two by fours and put a wall together and see what happens.” You know, so we’re we’re able to make sure that budgets are used right, um plans are done right, so it’s easier for permitting and installation and inspections.
Host: Does it ever get overwhelming to be you? You guys do a lot of projects and they’re spread out and you’ve got every state, every county, every city has their own codes and you deal with all of that. You don’t just say, “Okay here’s your here’s your kit home, deliver it on a truck, good luck to you.” You you stay with the project for a long time. Does it ever get…?
Steve Tuma: Right. Right. We’re we’re not like those plan services where you go online and you buy a set of plans for a thousand or two thousand then you find out your building department won’t accept them and there’s disclaimers all over it that say get it checked by someone that knows what they’re talking about. They don’t use those words, but it’s essentially on there. You know, we we go through and and make sure. So um, it it’s a lot of work, but we’re committed to it and we improve every day. And we’ve been doing it 33 years, so we’ve got a solid channel to to get things taken care of properly, the way we work with customers, the way we listen to customers, the way we find out what they need, we’re able to mold our processes around to get it taken care of.
And it all starts with making sure the preliminary plans are drawn right for the site, the building department, the customer’s desire, any grade situations, any homeowners associations, architectural review boards, it starts at that way beginning point and then then we just push it through and fine tune it till the plans are there. So um, it’s a lot of work and we we have customers doing simple ADUs and we’ve got people doing very complex mansions, you know, all over the country. So it all kind of feeds into it. It’s kind of like working out. You might be working out or going on a big hike going “Man this is a lot of work” but it feels so good. That’s why… so it’s it’s kind of cool.
Host: Let’s talk about that just real quickly… the research that you that Landmark does for each and every home. You’ve got… there’s a lot, like you said, what are the what are the community codes, what are the state codes, um what are the environmental codes, there’s a lot before you even can can say, “Okay this is the final plan, this is the final deal.” There’s a lot of research that must go into that. That must be incredibly uh… just a big job just that part of it.
Steve Tuma: It it is, but we we’ve done it a lot. So we have a very strong understanding of it. So say, you know, 80 90 percent of the planning and design process we have sorted out. It’s that little 10 15 20 percent where you’re like, “Okay, how does this apply to the side of a hill on the ocean? How does this apply to an earthquake zone? Or how does this apply to uh you know, expansive soils in a mountain range?” And those those are the little things, but the actual processes we’ve got very strong understanding and professional people that have been doing this for a long time working through each of these. So we we have the knowledge base. It’s just how how does it get applied to to that situation.
It’s actually quite invigorating because, you know, what what would take someone um, you know, a long time, 5, 10, 20 years ago to sort out, we we have it now and we’ve got a process of of professionals on our team where it just flows. Communication’s open, attitude’s 100 positive, support each other, help it, make sure the customer is taken care of properly. So it it it may sound like a lot of work, and it is an incredible amount of work, but it’s also extremely rewarding to go, “Hey we took care of that. Here’s a mid-century modern house going to Carmel, California. Hey here’s a an all-American ranch going to Iowa” type of thing. “Here here’s an executive country home going into uh the Adirondacks. You know here’s a family’s winter home going to the the Gulf Coast.” So it’s uh it’s pretty cool. You know, it’s it this isn’t just cookie cuttering houses. It’s helping customers achieve the goal and the lifestyle that they’re that they intend on building. Right. It’s really cool.
Host: All right. Well fun is good. That’s going to do it for this edition of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. But before we let you go, Steve, let the listeners know just how to find out more about Landmark Home and Land Company.
Steve Tuma: I think the best thing to do is is uh look at our website at lhlc.com… kind of the initials of Landmark Home Land Company… lhlc.com. And on there there’s plans, there’s discussions on what we provide, how we help, there’s thousands of plans to review, there’s videos, and there’s these podcasts. So that’s that’s a good place to start, but you can also on our website send us an email or send an inquiry on a specific plan. And you can also call in at 800-830-9788 and uh Michael will answer the phone, and he can work with you up front to just kind of sort out what you need, kind of get things figured out, and then after a certain point uh Michael will let me know that it’s time for me to jump in and help a customer go through and finalize details, get the plans going.
So we’ve got a friendly, easy going process, and that that’s the cool thing about it. I mean, people can check out our website, they can call in, have conversations, see see uh what works, see how we can help them. And it it’s also something if someone wants to call and buy right away that’s fine, we also have customers and totally understand that sometimes it takes a little while to get everything in line for a customer to start. So we’re here to help support a customer, you know, for the home they want on the schedule that they need and work their budget. So that’s uh check out our website lhlc.com and uh like I say we said earlier, if someone wants to call me and talk about stuff, let me know about their project. My direct cell phone is 708-205-2043. So uh it’s pretty cool. A lot of fun.
Host: Fantastic. 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 Steve.
Steve Tuma: Thank you. It’s a lot of fun. Thanks.
