How to Avoid Costly Mistakes When Designing and Building a New Home

Show Notes: Thinking about building your first home as an owner‑builder and worried about making expensive mistakes? This episode walks through the most common traps first‑timers fall into and how to avoid them with smart planning. Steve explains that most “mistakes” are really just lack of upfront thinking: not understanding soil and septic realities, misjudging slopes, ignoring flood zones, assuming utilities are cheap and close, or choosing complex rooflines, too many corners, and tall ceilings that quietly drive costs way up. He shows how a complete, well‑thought‑out plan set forces you to decide on things like heating system, window types, electrical layout and deck size before you build, which prevents change orders, delays, and budget blowouts later. You’ll hear why picking the right partners (engineers, surveyors, subs, material suppliers) matters more than chasing the cheapest bid, how to approach permits when zoning, building, planning, public works and HOAs all have different requirements, and how Landmark helps owner‑builders identify site‑specific issues like geotechnical needs and base flood elevations early so the home is designed right for the land from day one. into a confident, funded, line‑item budget.

Transcript:

Steve Tuma: So in a sense, what could be considered a mistake is really lack of planning or understanding. You minimize those mistakes by thinking things through.

Interviewer: Hi everyone, and welcome to Episode 77 of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show.

With me today, as expected, is the President and Founder of Landmark Home and Land Company — the 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, sir?

Steve Tuma: Doing great. Again, another great homebuilding day.

Interviewer: That’s good.

Steve Tuma: Yeah, and another one expected tomorrow.

Interviewer: I thought we’d do a slight curveball here and talk about first‑time homeowner‑builders and the mistakes that they make — and exactly how Landmark can kind of help them get past those mistakes.

And I would imagine that’s usually people who have done a lot of work toward their house before they give you guys a call — but maybe afterwards, after they’ve talked to you.

What are some of the first‑time homeowner‑builder mistakes that people make?

Steve Tuma: Well, fortunately, we’re able to catch them before they really happen.

One thing that we do is we spend a lot of time making sure that our plans are drawn right. So we avoid the issues and minimize mistakes — or just things where you go, “Uh oh” — by making sure that the house is planned properly. Not just the floor plan and the bathrooms and stuff, but:

The look of the house
The roof design
The foundation design
How it sits on the actual property they’re building on
Driveways and other concerns like that

Because what this does — by talking about it up front — is it leads you to a point where you think about it.

So in a sense, what could be considered a mistake is really lack of planning or understanding. So if we work up front to say:

“Hey, what kind of a heating system?”
“Are you going to go mini‑split?”
“Are you going to have a wood burner in there?”
“Are you going to have a conventional HVAC?”
“Are you going to have heat pumps?”

It leads people to think about it. So when you think about the different items, you can then go through and plan it into the home properly.

And since our main thrust is to have a complete and accurate set of plans, you minimize those mistakes by:

Thinking things through
Understanding the ground condition
Understanding the right foundation
Understanding the right roofing system
Understanding the right kitchen cabinets

You minimize the risk of something not being thought out.

So that’s what we always tell people. It’s kind of an education system of working together with people, where we can go through and bring topics up that people don’t think about.

Because in general, when people are thinking about their house, it’s always the fun stuff:

“Hey, what’s the kitchen going to look like?”
“What’s the garage like? I want to put my hot rod in there.”
“Hey, what are we doing in the family room?”

Well, there are some things that are exciting, but maybe not as exciting as figuring out your family room or your rec room, but:

“Hey, where do you want electric sockets?”
“Do you want ceiling fans?”
“How big do you want your deck?”

Different things like that.

So by going through the planning stages, and our support through there, I think it gets people where they think about it.

I think owner‑builders in general are just naturally curious people that want to build their house. Part of doing it is just the life experience — and also learning about it and building the house that you want. That’s the key thing to it.

And that’s the part that’s really, really important and valuable — taking the time to enjoy the process of properly designing a home.

We’ve done some homes that are very simple that still need some thought. We’ve done some extremely complex homes where the level of thinking for the design or the features of it just get to be a little bit deeper.

So I don’t necessarily want to say that there are big mistakes — it’s just lack of planning.

Interviewer: Yeah, but you’re talking about one of the things you guys do at Landmark — you help a customer understand the overall project. And people can go into a project and think they understand the overall, but there’s really a lot that they don’t quite get yet.

Steve Tuma: Right. And that’s the thing, because in general, if you go somewhere and say, “Hey, I need windows,” they’ll be like, “Well, we suggest this manufacturer, this model,” but you don’t necessarily know why. Is it:

A cost thing?
Availability?
The salesman gets a bigger commission?

What’s the reason?

So it’s always good to have an understanding of what’s going on. Now, customers can get as deep as they choose, but we’re here if they need a little guidance on, “Hey, where do I start?”

And by us having a good, well‑thought‑out set of plans, that’s the information that they need to then go to suppliers and get the accurate information so they can make a decision for themselves.

It’s actually pretty cool. We work with all different types of customers. People can look at our reviews and see that there are excellent, A‑plus reviews of people saying that our level of support is exceptional. And I think that that’s just as important as the plans and the actual panelized home package. It’s a one‑stop shop.

Interviewer: So I’m thinking back on what you just said, and it’s understanding the overall — but people aren’t going to understand that.

I mean, are there any pitfalls that you want people to know about? When you first talk to somebody and you hear about what their ideas are, do you see pitfalls as well as the positives in everything?

Steve Tuma: Yeah. And generally what I tell people — in my own projects, it’s kind of funny — the biggest “uh‑oh” moments have always had to do with something that touches dirt.

Because just by walking on a piece of land, if it’s a situation where you have a septic, you can’t just say, “Hey, I’m going to put it here.” By chance it may go there, but generally you have to have a soils test done for the septic to see where it’ll be put.

So someone could say, “Hey, I want my septic over here,” but for some reason the ground conditions might be different and it needs to be put over there.

Different things like: where are the utilities? Just because someone tells you that the utilities are available doesn’t mean that they’re right in front of your lot for a very inexpensive or free connection.

You can go to a store and look at five different manufacturers of windows — you can touch them, feel them, learn about it. But until you do the research on land, you can’t tell.

One thing which is common in people building in sloped areas or mountain ranges is the perception of the slope. People will say, “I’ve got a three‑foot drop‑off,” and then a surveyor’s out there and it’s an eight‑foot drop‑off. So that changes the foundation.

So my personal experience has been: the little demons of details that you need to work out have something to do with touching the soil.

And in places where you’ve got different types of soils — soft soils, expansive soils, water table issues — you just need a geotechnical report to get that information.

So all of these things can be put together where people just don’t always understand what it takes to research a piece of land. And that’s where we can help them.

We’ve had a lot of people come through with floodplains. They say, “Oh, we’ve owned the land for this time, there aren’t floodplain issues.” And then the building department — or we — suggest to them, “Go check to see if you’re in a floodplain.” They find out that there are.

We’re working on one — it’s kind of funny, you know, everyone thinks Arizona is a dry desert. It isn’t. We have one where a customer has to put their house six feet up in the air above the grade because of the potential flooding of a local river.

Now locals will say, “It hasn’t flooded in 100 years.” Maybe they’re right, maybe they’re not. But the thing is, at some point it might. And people say, “Well, what does it matter?” It’s like, well, the building department wants you to build it right. But your insurance company also wants it to be built properly.

So those are things that — we can talk to people, give them an understanding, and then help them along to get the right information so that we can design the right house and avoid future problems.

Interviewer: So I’ve heard you say in the past that you “choose great partners” to build your new home. Are you talking about the partnerships with subcontractors and material suppliers, or when you say “choose great partners,” what do you mean by that?

Steve Tuma: Well, it’s the idea that if you have good people that are knowledgeable and supportive, your project is going to be a better‑built home because you’re working with people that care about their work. And it’s also going to be easier.

There’s no one out there that I’ve ever met that knows everything about everything about building a home. We know a lot because of our experience, but we’re not geniuses on the finer, finer, finer points of how to do electrical layouts.

We have the engineers to do the layouts, but someone might say, “Hey, I need to do three EV chargers.” We have people that have different situations — home arc welders, different types of hobbies that people may have, different welding setups, different woodshops and stuff like that.

So we can always help guide them to what they need to do. And by working with a specialist — let’s just say someone needed a certain type of car lift. We have a lot of customers that have antique cars, or they tinker with them on the weekends, so they’ll get these lifts. We understand the ideas of the lifts, but there are different types of car lifts and how they need to be supported.

But it’s also — sometimes people say, “Well, this will lift my car eight feet.” I’m like, “Yeah, but how tall is your car?” So if your car is five feet, in theory you need a ceiling more than 13 feet. How do we get that put together? And that’s how we work.

So by having experts in each area that understand their project, they’ll find that getting the budgeting together, the scheduling, and the actual execution of building the home will be a lot smoother, because people have thought it out. They’re looking out for you and they’re working as a team.

And that’s what we start the process with — by working with customers, helping them through:

The planning process
Understanding building department issues
Understanding building permit concerns
The components of the building permits
The components of a complete plan set
And then also the manufacturing of the panelized home package

So just in contacting us and working with us, we’ve taken care of a huge component of the building process. And then we’re able to support them and give them the information so that they can talk to their local contractor — say for foundation installation, plumbing, electric, roof installation, or whatever it is.

And we’re very flexible in helping customers through this. It’s a lot of fun. It’s really cool to see a family go through and do it. And then it’s really cool when they call back in three years and say, “Hey, my son or daughter is getting married, we’re going to help them. It was so much fun.”

So yeah, that’s how — I guess it’s like in life: work with positive, good people and it’ll work out. They’ll look out for you and avoid some of the little pitfalls — or “uh‑oh” moments, as I call them.

So it works out, and people can find those people. Some days you’ve got to meet them. You talk to them, you get an idea, you talk to them on the phone and you see:

How complete their answers are
How responsive they are
Do they do what they say?

If we send them a set of plans and they put a bid together, is it a detailed bid, or is it just something like, “Oh yeah, it’s about X amount of money”?

You want to work with people that have thought it through and are proud of the work that they do. And those contractors are definitely out there. There’s a lot of good people.

Interviewer: And going back to the materials — when you’re ready to start putting your materials list together — you’ve said something in the past: the cheapest isn’t always the best, and the most expensive may not always be the best.

Is that something you find holds true?

Steve Tuma: It’s very true. And it also depends on what someone is doing.

Sometimes, hey, if you have a tight budget, you just have to do what you can. I say, hey, sometimes something’s cheap, but do you have to fix it in six months? Then you’re paying twice. It doesn’t make sense.

So, to me, we recommend that you put good‑quality products, work with good contractors, to build a very quality home. In the long run it’s going to help — whether you’re an investor flipping it, you’re an investor renting it out, or you’re a person building the home to live there for two years, five years, or the rest of your life. It makes sense.

And in the different economies and different markets in each state, costs can vary significantly. And from what I have seen and understand from my customers — just because they’re more expensive doesn’t mean they’re better, and just because they’re cheaper doesn’t mean they’re bad.

There are a lot of good people out there that just say, “Hey, this is just my good price. We’ve been in business for a while. We’re going to take care of you, and let us help you next time.”

So I think — a lot of people say, “Hey, get three bids and go with the middle one.” It’s like, well, you’ve got to make sure the bid’s complete.

A pitfall that sometimes people come into — they’ll talk to a foundation guy. Some foundation guys will coordinate the excavation, in the case of a basement — they’ll do the wall and the cement slab. Some foundation guys only do the walls. You have to get someone else to excavate and someone else to do the flatwork.

So if you were to just look at it and a guy says “foundation cost,” it could be a little misleading unless you read it to see what’s included.

And that’s the point that I think people need to work with. Now, I’m bringing this up — it’s a problem with a very small percentage of people. Most customers understand it. I’m just bringing it up as conversation to say, hey, if someone does need help, if they don’t understand it, we can help them through the process.

And again, our great set of plans is going to help them communicate with the contractors so the contractor knows exactly what’s to be built.

It’s a team effort. We’re part of the team. Even though it’s our customers’ home, we still kind of think it’s ours. It’s pride.

Interviewer: Let’s go back and talk about permits for a minute. We cover permits a lot on this show, but there’s always something new that pops up. To me it just seems like something we can never go over enough — permitting.

How does a future homeowner‑builder find out even what permits are involved — what they need — to build their new home?

Steve Tuma: This is a real interesting one, because you would think that you could call the local jurisdiction — the county, the city, whatever it may be — and call a department up and get a complete list of what’s required for permits.

Well, that may or may not be true.

Some building departments are thorough, and they’d be like, “Well, we do the building department, but before that you need to have zoning approval. You also need to have your septic approved, or well or water supply,” and different things like that.

Other building departments say, “I don’t know what else you need.” They just kind of push it away.

So in the process, we always tell people, “Hey, you have to check with zoning,” and we can do a site plan to show how the house sits on the lot, figure out:

Height restrictions
Setbacks
Things like that

So you have a nice clean site plan to get approved.

Water and sewer situations — septic, water — there’s either a water department or a well person. There’s a septic person or a sewage department, where the customer has to find out what’s available.

There’s also historic committees sometimes, homeowners associations, other people that might be there. So those are, in general, the big concerns.

Some areas have planning departments. They’ll actually dictate how your curb has to cut into the road, or how your mailbox has to be there, or a limitation on the size of plants by a driveway entrance. So planning departments can become involved as well.

And then public works in some areas — water and sewer connections.

Now, all of this might sound overwhelming because someone hasn’t done it — but we’re experienced. So if someone wants to give us a call, we can walk through the process with them and find out what’s relevant to their project, because different areas have different concerns. Some are stricter and some are less strict.

Some building departments don’t exist.

So what we suggest is: always have the right information so that you can do it right. You don’t want to cut corners on this stuff. You want to make sure that everything is done right — it’ll come back and bite you.

So you want to know that everything works out well. It’s not just the building permit; it could be:

A water supply issue
A sewage issue
Planning
Public works
A homeowners association
An architectural review committee

But that’s all stuff we deal with every day. Someone can just contact us and we’ll spend a little time with them, trying to sort out what needs to be done in their area as part of the teamwork.

That’s part of the way‑up‑front planning. The more homework you do up front, the easier the building of the home is.

Interviewer: I’m not going to put you on the spot, or hold you to any particulars here, but do you find with your experience that there are certain features that can make a particular home design more expensive to build?

Steve Tuma: Yeah. I mean, it’s actually a relatively simple answer. The more complex the roof — the more ridgelines, the more valleys, the steeper it is — that will add to the cost. The bigger the roof is, and then also the more corners you have in the house.

You can get into different ceiling heights too — if you have a house with 20‑ or 30‑foot ceilings, that’s going to add complications. But we’ve done houses like that.

For the typical person, it’s the roofline — a lot of ridges, a lot of valleys, a lot of corners, a lot of detail work.

If you take the example of a simple roof — a 4/12‑pitch gable‑end roof, like you see on the typical all‑American ranch — it’s easy. A guy could go up there and, on a 4/12 pitch, just put the shingles on.

But if you’re sitting on a 12/12 pitch that’s 30 feet off the ground and there’s a lot of valleys and ridges, there’s just a lot more work for the area that you’re covering. It’s just harder to do.

So if a house has a lot of corners it’s just going to cost more, because when the guy’s doing the siding or putting stone on it, it’s just harder to work around a corner than it is to work on one straight wall.

Those two are the biggest indicators that anyone, once they look at a picture, can go, “Hey, that house has 58 corners — something’s going on here.” You can look at the roof plan and just see the complexity of it.

Those are things where it can get expensive pretty quick. Because on a corner of a house — if you have four corners, it’s easier for the foundation guy. If you have 60 corners, that hits:

Excavation
Foundation guy
Framer
Sider
Roofer
Fascia guy
Electrician
Plumber

It hits everyone. So it just compounds.

Now, it’s not real easy to say, “Hey, it’s going to cost twice as much, or three times more.” It kind of goes design by design. But that’s something — when we talk to people about the particular house they want — we can preview that.

So if someone says, “Hey, I want to build a house for about this much,” and they have a super complex design, we might point out to them and say, “Hey, you’re kind of pushing it with that budget, depending upon how much work you do and how you put the project together.”

But that’s the simplest way for someone to look at it.

And then again, tall ceilings — 8‑foot, 9‑foot, 10‑foot ceilings are all relatively common. You start getting into 24‑, 25‑, 30‑foot ceilings, especially tall walls with a lot of glass in them, there’s just a lot of complications in the structural engineering and proper support of those walls.

We can do it — we’ve done it for a long time. You just asked what are the things that make it more expensive.

And then also, sometimes where you build. There are some very high‑rent districts in the U.S. If you went and built the simplest house in a high‑rent district, it’s just going to cost more — the nature of the contractors, the nature of access to the site, the nature of the cost of where the contractors live to build your house.

But even that’s interesting — it’s changing. Some of these people have contractors drive two hours, stay there for a week, and they’re able to help customers.

So there’s always a way to work around it. It’s just a matter of having the true understanding.

We’re covering a lot of ground. This is a lot of stuff that might take someone to re‑listen to this or give us a call. And we can help through the process — for what they want to build and where they want to build it — get them exact answers for their situation, not just generic answers.

Interviewer: When you take a look at where somebody’s building — the actual building site, the land — can you see common problems that you’ve seen many times before? And how do you help a customer understand that?

Steve Tuma: By talking to them, getting ideas of the land. Most customers have pictures of the land, or we can go online and find different information for what land is like:

The slopes of land
Where they’re building
Is it rural? Is it city? Is it oceanfront, lakefront, riverfront?

We’ve got general experience to lead them through and then give them ideas to say, “Hey, in this case we need to look at this; in that case we need to look at that.” Sometimes we need to check with a building department.

I’ve referenced previously a project in Arizona where a customer is working with us and it’s by a river, and it’s in a flood zone. You look around, there are houses on the land — they’re older homes, before they really understood flood.

So their house has to be put up six feet in the air. We can tell that just by some information online — the location by the river and some information that the customer got when they owned it.

So we were able to go through and say, “Hey, in this case we need a geotechnical report. We need a base flood elevation certificate.”

Now, this all sounds like a bunch of big words. You basically call a geotechnical engineer — they come out, they take some borings, and a couple of weeks later they have a soil report for the strength of the soil and a suggested design.

The base flood elevation — you call a local surveyor, and they have all the maps, and they’ll go through and say, “Hey, your house needs to be at this elevation.”

So it might be big words, might be something customers haven’t heard about, but it’s not abnormal. And we can help guide people to understand where that is.

Like I mentioned a little earlier, the “uh‑oh” moments kind of come with things where you’re touching dirt — flood elevations and such.

And I talk about a lot of this stuff — I don’t want to scare people away, thinking that every house has all of these issues. I’m just trying to, with broad strokes, explain to people the level of support that we give. So if they do run into a problem, we’re here to help them.

And if people want to, we can talk about the details up front so they can go research it and see what is relevant to their lot — if they’re deciding, “Hey, do I buy this lot or do I buy that lot?” We can have a discussion about it.

It’s pretty cool. And what’s neat about it is, our customer base generally is excited to hear about it. They’re like, “Oh man, this saved me some time,” or, “You put me far ahead by having this conversation and understanding what needs to be done.”

So like I say, all the homework you do up front just makes the homebuilding process more affordable, keeps you on schedule, you don’t hurt your budget as much. Little things will happen. And the stress level is lower.

It’s amazing how many people hear the story, “Oh, building a house is stressful.” I’ll be the first to tell you — yeah, it can be. But I can also tell you how many of our customers are like:

“Steve, that was fun. I want to do another one.”
“Hey, that was great.”
“It was just a life experience. I’m so happy I did it.”

So it’s pretty cool. And we’ve helped people with first houses. We’ve helped people with last houses. We’ve helped people that have built five other homes and they’re working with us because of our capabilities on their current home.

Interviewer: Well, all right, that’s just about going to do it for another informative edition of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show.

But before we let you go, as we always do, Steve, we’re going to let you tell the listeners how they can find out more about Landmark Home and Land Company.

Steve Tuma: I think the best way is to take a peek at our website. It’s LHLC.com — kind of the initials of Landmark Home and Land Company. So LHLC.com.

On there we’ve got pictures, thousands of plans, details on what we include in a package, details of how we help. It’s pretty cool. I think someone will get a pretty strong understanding of how we help.

And then they’re always welcome to submit an inquiry through an email on our web page, or if they find a plan they can click a little button and send us a message saying, “Hey, I’m interested in a certain plan,” and we can get them details on it. And then we can also have a discussion.

They can call in, and initially Mike will work with them at 800‑830‑9788. Again, that’s 800‑830‑9788. And if they want to talk to me directly, my direct cell phone is 708‑205‑2043, and we’ll be happy to spend a little time, get to know each other, see what your project’s about, and see how we can help.

The conversations — it doesn’t cost anything to talk to us and just explore ideas. I think for a serious homebuilder, they’ll find our support and help and knowledge to be really cool, as well as our high‑quality products. We have great panelized homes.

Interviewer: Excellent. And there it is. 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 ahead and we will see you next time.

Thanks again, Steve.

Steve Tuma: Thank you. This is a really unique one. Pretty cool.