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Show Notes: Discover the ins and outs of building a custom home with Landmark’s services. We discuss the importance of meticulous planning and how aligning your plans with panelized home packages can make the process smoother and more efficient. You’ll learn about the various stages involved in developing comprehensive plans and how our personalized customer support can enhance your home-building experience. We also highlight how Landmark’s tailored approach sets us apart from standard assembly line methods, ensuring that you achieve your dream home with ease and precision.
Transcript:
Steve Tuma: We just find that the better information we have to develop a better set of plans, the customer is able to stick to the budget better, stick to the schedule, and get the house that they want.
Interviewer: Greetings everyone and welcome to episode 64 of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. We’re here today, as usual, with the president and founder of Landmark Home and Land Company, a company which has been helping people build their new homes where they want, exactly as they want, nationwide and around the globe since 1993. The always illuminating Mr. Steve Tuma. Steve, how’s it going, amigo?
Steve Tuma: It’s a great day. It’s another good day. It was a really interesting day. A lot of interesting projects, people building retirement homes, first homes, and some people doing mega mansions. So it’s one of those days—a lot of different projects coming from different directions.
Interviewer: I’d like to have a mega mansion. That’d be awesome.
Steve Tuma: Do you want the mega mansion price?
Interviewer: Yeah, I’ll take a Mic mansion right now. The past few episodes, we’ve been going over some of the more basic aspects of how and what it takes to be a panelized homeowner builder. So if you’re good to go, let’s continue to explore some of those basic informational facts and myths on the kit home building process. So shall we hit it?
Steve Tuma: Yeah, let’s do it. It’s an interesting process. A lot of people take it from different directions, but we can help.
Interviewer: Sure. Well, that’s what you’re here for. You’re here to help. Okay, so let’s say I’m thinking of building my first-ever panelized home and I’ve just recently heard about panelized homes or I haven’t heard about them at all. How do I begin the journey, as so many Landmark Home and Land Company customers already have, to being a panelized homeowner builder?
Steve Tuma: Well, it’s kind of interesting because people approach it in different ways. Some people want to know they have their design first. Other people want to know they have the land first. Other people are like, well, I’ve got to get the banking in line before I buy the land. So there’s a variety of different approaches that people may take, and they all work. It’s just a matter of what works for a particular situation that someone’s in. Basically, you’ve got to have the money to do it, you’ve got to have the land, and then the general ideas to the design. So what we can do is help a customer kind of understand that process. Sometimes they do or don’t know details about land, what makes land easier to build on, what makes it harder and possibly more expensive to build on, details like country areas generally don’t have sewers, so there’s septic systems. And then also how does a particular house fit on a piece of land. So we can talk to potential customers at that point to find out exactly what it is they need and what’s of importance to them to guide them through the process. So that’s kind of the initial phase, is the formulation of the idea to just figure out, I want to live in this area, I want a two-story home, a ranch home, whatever it is. And then generally what customers do is they’ll contact us and have a plan idea, a plan that they sketched or thought of, or maybe they found something on our website that’s close that we could customize for their particular needs. And then from there, we just kind of begin the discussion to figure out the design work, to make sure it goes on the land right and contact the building department, find out what their details are. And then from there, we just get into the process. So to start the process, someone just needs to kind of have the idea and desire to move forward. Now, as an owner-builder, a lot of our customers do it to save money. In addition, they get to look at the quality, know the quality, see the home get built, know exactly what it is. A lot of people do it because it’s an educational thing. It’s just a life dream. It’s a desire, you know, whatever it may be.
But a lot of it, it’s really just control of the cost and understanding what’s there and knowing exactly what is getting built. Our customers generally aren’t the same type of people that would buy a tract home. Our customers want to see what’s in the house, control the design, get the design they want, and detail it out. So, yeah, so I guess to backtrack a little, basically contact us, let us know your ideas, let us know where you want to build, what type of house you want to build, and then we could help develop the idea from there. Some people come to us with some very good plan ideas. Some people are literally at the first step where, “Hey, I’ve been thinking about this for a while, how do I start?” The key to it is we’re very customer service-oriented. We want to talk to our customers. We want to help them through the process and also understand some of the pitfalls and the extreme benefits of doing the owner-builder process.
Interviewer: Well, you’re talking about design and plan, so there’s a good place to start. You know, go on the website. You guys have a ton of plans on the website—I think 6,000. It says 2,000, but we haven’t updated that tab. So how do you begin that process, just picking your plans?
Steve Tuma: Generally, people have an idea of what they want. They’ll say, “Hey, I need a 2,000 square foot ranch home with three bedrooms and two baths.” Or they want a two-story, or if it’s hilly land, they want, you know, a chalet crawling down the side of a hill. So people, in general, have an idea of what they want. Maybe they need a little help finalizing that idea. Right. So going through and, you know, let’s just take the example of a couple thousand square foot home with a two-car garage. They might have different ideas of how their family eats. Maybe they want an island. Maybe they want a peninsula. Some people want a formal dining room, you know, for family events. So we can help them formalize it.
Now here’s the key thing that people don’t understand. And it’s something kind of weird. But not all plans are the same. So a lot of people say, “Hey, I had this guy in town. He drew it up. It was $500. He wins all the awards. The newspaper said he’s great.” And we get a set of plans that might look good as a conceptualization, but it doesn’t have all the details. It doesn’t have structural details. It’s just missing a lot of information. So people have to understand that not all plans are the same even if your building department may have given you a permit. There’s a difference between obtaining a permit and being able to build a house. Generally, building departments are looking for, you know, safety issues, code issues, but they’re not looking at the buildability of the plans and the completeness to it. So sometimes we have people, they’ve spent tremendous amounts of money for plans that just aren’t detailed. They aren’t finished. They aren’t complete. They don’t have the right code details. And in some cases, it’s not even what the customer wants. Someone says, “Hey, I was kind of sick of paying this architect to draw this up. And it just got to the point of whatever. It’s just a bill and bill.” So we have a system where we can work with the people—and I think we probably talked about this a lot in other podcasts—to work with the people to get the exact set of plans, detail the plans out, make sure all the details are there. So the customer understands what they want. So the contractors understand, the building department and us understand. No, and financing sources as well. If financing’s involved, the banks usually want to take a look and see what’s there. So we can have a full set of plans. So it’s very clear as to what’s to be built and then how it gets built. You know, we’ll get a lot of plans, and it’s funny. People spend a lot of money, and we tell them, “Don’t do it.” You know, but the perception of, “Hey, I’ll just go online. I’ll download these plans for $1,000. They’re ready to go. But there’s a lot of disclaimers on there as far as needing code updates, structural reviews. They might not be right. They should check a lot of the elements of the home. And that’s what we do, is we go through those details. So the plans are actually buildable and usable and clear. So sometimes for first-time or even second-time builders, people may not realize that. They may not realize that not all plans are the same. They may not realize the little disclaimers on the plans that say you still need to finish them. You know, so like for example, a simple one that I think people understand is they’ll buy a set of plans for a house that’s meant to be on a flat piece of land, and then their land has a slope to it. And they’ll say, well, you know, they can just adjust that on site. And I’m like, well, they can. That’s kind of like saying, let me open my wallet, take what you want, and hope it ends up being what the family wants.
So we suggest working with our planning service, which is part of our service, part of the One Stop Shop and the Panelized Home. We can help do the preliminary plan set, do a bunch of changes, updates, detail everything out so the home is just like the customer wants it to be right on their piece of land. And then we finalize the plans, do energy codes and all the details for their exact situation so their building department gets an accurate set of plans and they know what they’re building. It’s kind of odd, but not all plans are the same. Just because they’re stamped, just because you bought them from somewhere that has great ratings doesn’t mean that they’re detailed, doesn’t mean that it’s there. And you can always see the disclaimers right on the plan. So we want to go through and work with a complete and accurate set of plans. And we find that doing what I say, doing our homework up front, do the plans right, makes the permitting and building processes much easier.
We’ve got a great design process. People are welcome to call us. We can go through the process, explain to them how we do it, explain to them how the structural design affects the architectural design, is affected by the house, by site plans, by green codes, by energy calculations, and how it all needs to be brought together. Now that sounds like a lot of stuff, but we do it every day, so it’s easy for us. And I think that’s one of the main reasons people enjoy working with us is the planning process.
Interviewer: Yeah, it seems like maybe it seems a little daunting to someone. “Oh, I got to plan this all out.” But it can actually be part of the fun of building a new house.
Steve Tuma: Right.
Interviewer: Yeah. So we talk about things on this show like energy code calculations and site plans. We talked recently a lot about civil engineering, other details like that. How do I know if I even need those things?
Steve Tuma: Well, that’s an interesting thing because a lot of people will say, “Well, my building department doesn’t need it.” I’m like, well, that might be fine. They may or may not realize that it’s an important component. But we just find that the better information we have to develop a better set of plans, the customer is able to stick to the budget better, stick to the schedule, and get the house that they want. So some people—energy codes are the classic thing—they’ll say, “Well, my building department doesn’t require energy codes. Why should we do it?” Well, your building department’s not the one paying the energy bill every month. You are. So let’s make sure that the house is energy efficient so that when you’re installing the insulation, you know that you’re doing something that’s of benefit to your project. So I consider the building department important in that they’re doing their level of review to review the plans for a permit application. But ultimately, it’s your house. You should understand what’s being done and how we help and make sure that everything goes together. So that’s why site plans are important, just so you understand what’s being built, so that the foundation’s put in the right place, so zoning’s adhered to. I have run into situations where people are like, “Well, I’ll just pace off 20 steps.” And I’m like, “OK, you can do that. But how do you know that 20 steps is on your land?” You should know that you’re putting your house on your land, the foundation is in the right place. Make sure zoning setbacks are right and details like that. And we spoke about civil engineering a podcast or two back. That more involves situations where there’s slopes in the land, maybe more extreme slopes, big flood areas, things like that. So we can make sure that the house is accessible. You know, you can easily access your driveway, your front door, any patio areas, but also make sure that it’s out of flood areas. And customers work with civil engineers. Some states have green codes to make sure that you’re building a “green” home. You know, sometimes it’s just little stuff, like low flush toilets. You know, are you dumping your garbage properly instead of someone throwing it on the side of the road, that it’s actually going to a dump. And if you’re in a state that has codes like that, you know, we can get them developed so that you’re ready to go. So the plans are an extremely important part. And that’s what we are fully set up to do, is develop a complete set of plans. And we’re willing to take the time so a customer understands what’s going on in their project.
Interviewer: Let’s talk about Landmark’s ability to give customers bang for their buck. What all is included in a plan set for building permit applications?
Steve Tuma: Well, that’s an interesting thing because every building department is different. There are areas in the United States where you can build a house without a permit. Others, they’re very simple. You walk in, you give them some money, and you walk out with a permit. Others are in between that, where they are a little deeper, where they look at your plans for a week or two, stamp them, and give it to you. There’s in-depth processes that can take a month or two or three or four to submit plans. They come back with checklist items asking for more details, and on and on. So most building departments are pretty easy to work with, but we’ve done so many of these, even the more complicated ones are there.
So what comes with the building plan set for our owner builders? First of all, we’ll contact the building department or ask the customer to get us the list of what’s required. And we’ll supply what’s required. Generally, it’s architectural plans, energy codes, maybe site plans, maybe structural engineering, maybe green codes, maybe some mechanical details. Plumbing and electric details we always supply. But then sometimes there’s things where they want electrical load calculations, gas pipe design, and sometimes you just have building departments that really just have far-out quirky things. It might be rare, but we actually had one where they needed an analysis of the homes next to the home being built to make sure that someone’s window wasn’t looking straight into the neighbor’s window or bathroom. So hey, it’s not a big deal that we’ve had other places where they dictate where the mailbox goes. You don’t just put it in the front yard. It has to be there in a certain way. When you talk to the building department, you’re like, “Wow, this is a little extreme.” But they have points because sometimes people put mailboxes in areas that create a blind spot so that you can’t see when you’re coming out of a driveway, like a little kid’s on a bike. So either way, whether it seems to be a little extreme or more simple, we’re able to do it. But our base plans first of all start with our preliminary plan set where we draft the first set of plans based on what a customer wants, do all the changes they want, and then we could go through a few sets of revisions just to update those plans and fine-tune them to make sure everything’s right. Because designing a home, even if I were to do my own, I couldn’t really come up with everything the first time around. You draw it up, then you fine-tune things, then you fine-tune things again, make adjustments, and go through. So that’s the preliminary plan stage. We’ll do the floor plans, floor elevations, a roof plan, and a foundation plan.
Interviewer: Mm hmm.
Steve Tuma: And then once a customer’s done with changes, we go through the final structural design, energy calculations, final architectural plans, any mechanical details that are necessary, site plan if they need it, and then also the details that a specific building department will want. And then we could send the plans by electronic form or paper copies. More and more building departments are going to electronic submittal, which is nice. And that’s where we work. The key to this, though, is it’s not just the plans. It’s the customer support, the knowledge, the responsiveness. So if a customer needs help, we’re there to help them through the situation.
Interviewer: Mm hmm.
Steve Tuma: We’re on their team. And that is the key element. Because I joke with people, I’m not that great of a cook. Someone could give me a cake mix, I could still burn a cake. Every once in a while, you need that call to say, “Hey, what do I do with this? What happens with this?” And it kind of helps people go through. So we’re always available. And I actually think that’s the biggest component. Not all customers ask about customer service, responsiveness, and they kind of make it happen in a positive way attitude. But once they get going, I think they really, really appreciate it. Because they see all the little nuances of what it takes to really design a home and help them build the best home possible.
Interviewer: Right. It seems I know it’s not as—there are just so many elements to it. So there’s a difference between something being complex and something just being concise. But let’s talk about the time frame in all of this. How long does it really take to develop plans before you can start building your new home?
Steve Tuma: Well, that’s an interesting question. Because a simple home will be faster, a more complex home will take a little bit longer. It also depends on how many changes a customer has along the way to do it. But in general, the first set of plans, the preliminary plans that we develop, take 7 to 10 days. Any revisions after that are typically 3 to 5 days, depending on the complexity. So I would reasonably think that a 2 to 4 or 5-week period to go through the preliminary plan stage is there. Customers always call and say, “Hey, I want them fast. Can you do them fast? You know, I could buy these online and I could get them in 10 minutes.” I’m like, “Yeah, I know you can. But they’re not complete. It takes time to do it right.” So I think customers, once they see the value of making sure the plans are done right when we work with them and help them through the process, they’ll see that taking a couple of weeks to fine-tune the preliminary plans is very valuable for the long-term benefit of the project and the enjoyment of the home. Once we’re done with the preliminary plans, the final plan stage, where the customer said, “Hey, we’re not doing any changes,” they let us kind of get to it with the finalization of the architectural plans, mechanical details, and structural design and other details. That generally takes, say, 3 to 6 to 8 weeks, depending on the complexity of the home—is full structural engineering required—and kind of go from there. If you add that up, you could say, give or take, 2, 3, 4 months to get through the planning process. Now, some people, that’ll turn them off. They’ll be like, “Well, the guy down the road told me he could do it in a week.” I’m like, “Great. I’m sure he’ll do something in a week. But I doubt that it’s a complete set of plans with all the details your building department wants with also details that are put together. And it’s worth taking the time to make sure it’s done properly up front. You don’t want to rush the project. Schedules are important. Everyone wants to get into their house quick, but the time you take up front to properly design your home will save you a lot of time, headaches, and money during the building process. People that are concerned about, “Well, I got to do this, I got to do this,” it’s important. But you got to make sure it’s done right. Just starting something and creating problems isn’t the way to do it. Doing it right, moving along methodically is the way that we found it makes sense. And customers understand it. Fortunately, I think a lot of our customers have really thought through the concept of owner building, building their own home, self-build, whatever words they use. And I think that they find out that there’s a big value to taking the time up front to plan what they want so that the home comes out better.
Interviewer: Yeah. Well, it seems to me that there’s so many aspects of this. But, I mean, Landmark, if you come into Landmark, you guys are there on the phone. So anything to me as a customer that seems like it might be a little daunting, you have the answers to help get us over that hump and into that planning process.
Steve Tuma: Right.
Interviewer: And that’s Landmark, you know, the one-stop shop of Landmark Home & Land Company. It really is important, especially in this day and age. We don’t get a lot of customer service anymore. Not like when we were kids, you know, that was a big thing. Now it’s less and less. So when a company like Landmark comes along and you can actually make a phone call and somebody picks up the phone, it’s like a blessing, you know.
Steve Tuma: Right. No voicemails. Push two for this. Push one for this. Push eight for that.
Yeah. You know, and that’s the thing. We answer the phone. People call me on my direct cell phone. I answer the phone. We get them taken care of. And if I’m awake, I answer the phone. Nights, weekends. And sometimes it freaks people out. They’re like, “Steve, what are you doing? It’s 10 o’clock Sunday night. Why are you answering the phone?” And I have a great relationship with customers. I say, “That’s a funny question. Why are you calling me?” But hey, we’re here. You know, we’re here to get you taken care of. That’s actually the cool part because we get to know our customers. If someone needs help, we’re here to help. And I think that’s what I’m trying to put across: Not all plans are the same. Not all permitting processes are the same. Not all customer service is the same. Not all panelized framing systems are the same. And I think that’s where we stand out. We put the package together so that someone understands it. And then we’ve got the solid team to really support our customers to make sure that they do the best job possible.
Interviewer: Yeah, that is funny when that happens. “I was expecting to get the voicemail. What are you doing picking up?” That’s funny.
Steve Tuma: Yeah, well, that’s it. I mean, I’ve got phone numbers of customers from 15 years ago on my phone. You know, when these smartphones started coming out. So it’s kind of an amazing process. So sometimes when customers say, “Well, you know, I could buy this online, you know, this plan set.” Yeah, but you’re not getting the details of what you need for your land. You’re not getting the what-ifs. You’re not getting someone looking forward to say, “Hey, you will need…” You know, that I think is the important thing as to why it’s important. If someone wants one of our panelized packages, to go through our planning, engineering, you know, full plan set process.
Interviewer: Right. So how important is it that the plan set matches the panelized home package that I as a customer would get from Landmark Home and Land Company?
Steve Tuma: It’s extremely important. And no one ever asks about that. This is one of these little nuances, you know. So we develop a set of plans like we just described a little bit, you know, to our customers’ needs, the building department needs, and then also just make sure the details are there so that they can build it properly. And that’s one of the key elements. We take the approved set of plans, and that’s what goes into production for the panelized package. So you end up with less of a chance of an inspector coming out saying, “Hey, the plans show this, but you built that.” You know, it matches. So it’s faster to build. It’s faster and easier for inspections. It’s less stress. It’s easier for you to control the project. It’s easier for the framing contractor to assemble it. And that’s one of the key bridges there that’s there is to, you know, the one-stop shop. So everything matches up to make sure that the process goes smoothly of getting the framing system.
We’re really supplying the idea from the conceptualization of “Gee, I’d like to build my own home” to the framing system being there. We bridge that gap and all the processes and different home building disciplines and the design and the manufacture of the panelized home package where people will see what it is. We’re delivering an extremely complex home this week. And I think the customer and the framers are like, “It was worth the time.” Let me give you an example of a house we’re going to be doing in the south. It’s a couple thousand square foot home. The customer has been involved with building the same plan in other methods. So it’s basically his friends built it, and he wants to build the same house or some situation like that. But he’s seen this house get built two other times. We’re calling him with different things saying, “Hey, what do you think about this? What do you think about this? Hey, this beam needs to be here. And you know, this needs to be this way, you know, for structural reasons or energy code or whatever it may be.” He said something like, “You guys really pay attention to this. I don’t think that if I just gave these to a builder that all these concerns would be there.” And it’s kind of true because there’s a certain point, and I think people will experience this in their regular life, you know, whether it’s a car mechanic, going to dinner, or a doctor’s appointment. Some people sit down and, let’s take the doctor for example. They sit down and say, “Hey Mr. Customer, how are you doing? How are you feeling?” You say your knee hurts. They’re getting to know you to see what the real issue is. Instead of just saying, “Oh, here’s a guy, he rock climbs, he’s 50. He does this, this, and this. This must be the problem,” and make an assumption.
Instead, we’re the type of people that go in and really look at the nature of the situation, the site, to make sure that it’s done right. We’re in the business of doing it right the first time once instead of hoping something works and then guessing and doing it wrong later. So it’s the, you know, consciously pay attention to a project, the customer’s needs, the land situation, the building department, and the design as to why I think it’s there.
So, you know, I was emphasizing before that not all plans are the same. They aren’t. And there’s also a situation of how you apply that, how you apply it to a project and move it along. You know, customer service isn’t the same. I believe we provide excellent customer service, and we’re actually like consciously looking at plans to say, “Hey, you know, we should adjust this,” or “Do you really want this? Do you realize what you’re asking for? Does it make sense?” You know, that type of thing, so we can go through, or if there’s a particular concern where something’s a little more complex to engineer, we work the details out so that a customer gets the design they want. That might be a little confusing to people but what I’m basically saying is we’re paying attention to your project to make sure the end result is right It’s not just you know a production line, you know, pump houses out. It’s, “Hey, let’s pay attention to what we’re building, helping the customers with to make sure that they get the house they want.” And that’s just one of the qualities. We care about the designs. We care about the house, and we really care about our customers, and we want to have fun doing it.
Interviewer: So you’re saying Landmark is not an assembly line home builder.
Steve Tuma: No, exactly. It’s not like, yeah, it’s not like, “Hey, there it is. Hope you enjoy it. You get a choice of this.” Right. You know, it’s more, “What do you want?” And then we fill in kind of the blanks in situations that they may not understand or bring points out to them and do it. Sometimes there’s just different traits that we’ve seen some people have. And they’re like, “Yeah, I want to add this. I want to add this.” I’m like, “Hey, wait a second. You said you wanted to build a house of this size at about this price. Do you realize that you just added another $10,000, $20,000? Do you realize it?” You know, so we try to keep things in focus. We try to keep things in line so people understand it because it’s a lot more than just the panelized home package and a set of plans. It’s making sure the project goes.
One of my customers said, “Steve, I couldn’t have done this.” His name’s Mike in Phoenix. Built a house, multi-generational house for his family. He said, “Steve, you’re really the engine of the project. You make it happen. You’re not just here saying, ‘Hey, here are plans. Hey, here’s a stack of wood. Good luck.’ You’re helping drive it so people understand what they can do.” And it’s pretty cool. That’s a huge differentiating mark on what we supply.
Interviewer: Well, all right, that’s going to wrap it up for this episode. But before we let you go, Steve, please tell our listeners just how they can find out more about Landmark Home & Land Company.
Steve Tuma: Well, the best thing to do is check our website out. You know, we’ve mentioned that there’s plans there. There’s videos. There’s a lot of these podcasts. There’s different conversations on what we supply and different details. Our website is LHLC.com, kind of like the initials Landmark Home & Land Company. And on their website, they can email us. They can look at plans, submit inquiries. And they could also give us a call. First, they’ll call and talk to Mike. He’s at 800-830-9788. And Mike will help them through the process of just kind of understanding how we can help, just kind of preliminary discussions. And when the family’s ready to move forward, I would jump into the process and get more detailed on actually getting the plans going, all the specifics, all the details for what they’ll need for permits, all the details of what they’ll need for, you know, the right plan set and for us to develop the proper panelized home package. And people are always welcome to call me direct if they want to call and talk and just say, “Hey, how does this work for me? How does this work for my family?” We’ll take the time. My direct cell phone is 708-205-2043. And, you know, we can take some time. It’s no obligation. It’s just a discussion so we can each get to know each other. Just like our customers want a good supplier and designer, we want to know we’re working with good customers that are serious about building a good house. That’s an important part of it. Very important part.
Interviewer: Makes sense. Thus ends another great and informative talk with Landmark Home and Land Company President Steve Tuma. And we want to thank you all for taking the time to listen to the panelized prefab kit home building show. And we hope we’ve been able to help make you feel a little more confident on your path to becoming a kit home owner-builder. So for Steve Tuma and myself, have a great week ahead. And we will see you next time. Thanks again, Steve.
Steve Tuma: Yeah, this was cool. I hope people really enjoy these, and they’ll give us a call or submit an inquiry, and we can get them taken care of. Thank you.
