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Show Notes: We explore the journey of becoming an owner-builder for a panelized kit home. You’ll discover the process of planning and executing the construction of your own home, learning about the challenges and rewards that come with it. The discussion delves into the roles and responsibilities involved, how to navigate building departments, and effectively manage time and budget. You’ll gain insights into the flexibility of building at your own pace and the significant financial savings possible. Whether you’re interested in the personal pride of building your dream home or the financial benefits, this podcast provides practical advice and inspiration to guide you through the process.
Transcript:
Steve Tuma: You know there’s not a magic button on anyone’s computer to just magically have a house show up. You have to understand what you want, think through the process. It’s their project. It’s their financing. It’s their design.
Interviewer: Hello everyone and welcome to Episode 65 of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. We’re here today, as we usually are, 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 are you, buddy?
Steve Tuma: I’m doing great. As I always say, it’s a great day. There’s been a lot of different projects coming along, a lot of situations we’re helping customers through. Every day’s a new day. We help people, and we’re on over into our 31st year of helping customers design and build their own home, which is pretty cool.
Interviewer: Yeah, it’s very cool. We’ve been doing a series here on going over some of what we may consider really basic questions, but a first-time panelized homeowner builder would be interested in knowing. If you’re good, I’m going to continue with that little trail we’re on and ask you some questions that might on the surface seem very simple but inquiring minds would like to know. Let’s just start with where I can build a panelized home. If I have land already, it’s already purchased, I’ve had it in the family for a while. Can I build a panelized home on my own land?
Steve Tuma: Yeah, that’s the cool thing about it. It’s not restricted where it’s like, hey, you have to build in our community, you have to do this. Basically, your land, in the city, in the country, way deep in the country, on raw acreage, on ranch land, on equestrian properties, airplane communities. We’ve helped customers on every piece of land that they’ve had or are about to purchase. That’s the cool thing. People can choose the environment and where they want to live. It’s not restricted to say, hey, you’ve got to live in this subdivision. You can basically go anywhere. We’ve helped people on islands, oceanfront cities, mountaintops. The answer is yes, I can build a panelized home on my own land no matter where it’s at.
Interviewer: Yeah. That’s a little long way around to saying yes. Yeah, we can. We’ve helped people in foreign countries too.
Steve Tuma: That’s interesting. Yeah. We’re able to help them. A lot of people say, well, how does that work? How do you know the codes? We understand them. We’ve been around so long. We understand the different nuances to what a building department needs. Every building department’s a little different, but we understand the processes. If they come up with something a little funky or weird, we’ll get through it. We’ve done it at every other house, so we’re able to help. That’s the key thing is that sometimes people say, well, how do you know the codes in my town? You’re not here. It’s like, well, you don’t need to be in your town to know the codes. It’s a national code with specific applications to building sites. It’s also just based on experience and our desire to continuously learn and get better every day to make sure that our customers are supported properly to get through the issues. Yeah. Any piece of land. We also help someone way back design a home that’s going to go on a barge.
Interviewer: Oh wow. Wow. Yeah, I guess we can even do it when it’s not on a piece of land. Just interesting to me because I imagine, well, you’ve been at this 31 years now, so you’ve probably had everything come your way, but I mean, I’m sure that building in Spain or Italy, it’s got to be some differences when it comes to building in the U.S.
Steve Tuma: Yeah. It is basically the codes and different things, and then putting it in a container and shipping it off overseas. It’s a little different process, but they’re still building departments. They’re still making sure the directions are right, making sure plans are clear for people to build a home and understand what’s going on. It’s pretty cool. It’s communication. It’s a lot of effort, a lot of good thinking, and a lot of well-intentioned methods of helping customers get the home they want.
Interviewer: Cool. Well, let’s stay stateside for the moment.
Steve Tuma: Okay.
Interviewer: And on this planet, right?
Steve Tuma: Yeah. So you never know, with all the stuff Elon’s doing, Landmark Home and Land Company, your grandchildren may be building homes on the moon. You never know.
Interviewer: Yeah, or even farther.
Steve Tuma: Yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah. So I can design my own home, is what you’re saying, wherever I wanted to build it. So the design process we kind of covered in our last podcast episode, but if you don’t mind hitting on that again, designing my own home working with Landmark, how is that process?
Steve Tuma: Well, we’ve got a full design team: architectural design, structural design, mechanical design, electrical design, plumbing, energy codes, green codes, site plans, and we can interact with people’s local civil engineers if they need one. So we’ve got the full design, and it’s basically communicate. Some customers have design ideas they can send to us; others work off of our website and pick a plan and do alterations to it, but we can help them through the whole design process, delivery of the panelized home package, and other components of building if they do need our help. So what I think they’ll find to be important is that we’re the one-stop shop.
What people don’t always realize is they could say, “Hey, can you make that window bigger?” Well, sometimes it’s really easy, and sometimes it’s a little more complex. It could affect your structural engineering, it could affect your energy codes, it could affect ceiling heights, it could affect a whole variety. How the trim is installed in your house can be affected if you make a window bigger or smaller or whatever it may be. So that’s where we’re able to help them, is to go through and say, “Hey, if you do this, we can get it taken care of, it’s not really going to have a big effect,” or “Hey, it’s going to be a bigger issue here, and we should move forward and get them taken care of.” And I think that’s an important part, is the knowledge and the support to help a customer go through and do it.
So with our full design team, our knowledge, our experience, our understanding, and then our positive attitude to want to be proactive on a project, the design phases, they take a little bit of time to do it right, but it’s time well spent to make sure the house is just what a customer wants.
Interviewer: Well, just the overall help from Landmark. I have a feeling that with Landmark Home and Land Company, no matter how simple, like we’re going over some simple questions here, but I would imagine there’s no too simple or too stupid questions for you guys.
Steve Tuma: Well, you know what’s funny? Simple can become complex, and complex can be simple. We had a customer in Newport Beach, California, kind of a high-rent district, beautiful area, and they said, “Steve, my building department’s asking how the drip line, the condensate line, leaves the house so that it doesn’t create a little drip line down the side of the house.” Which I can kind of see it. It’s kind of like, okay, why are you worried about it? It’s just a little detail you deal with on site, but they wanted to make sure that the houses were done right and easy to maintain. So we had to work with them for this little condensate line to have a little gutter to go down. So it sounds simple. It’s like, why are you even worried about the condensate line? A little drip comes out every once in a while. Well, hey, if it’s down the side of your cream-colored stucco, eventually you’re going to have a discoloration there. So a little simple thing like, oh, is that really a big deal? It can be, but we can work to that level of detail if a customer needs our help to get through it. So it might be simple to us, it might be hard to us, but either way, it’s taking care of the customer. That’s the important part. And that’s why people come to us as owner builders or self-builders because they know they want to build their own home, but they also know that they don’t know everything. So with that, we’re able to fill in the blanks and help them through the process. Now, I don’t want to sit here and say we know everything about everything all the time. More people do. We have great 31 years of experience doing all different types of houses all over the country. So I think that we’re an excellent knowledge base to go through and make sure that customers are supported properly in a very proactive and positive way.
Interviewer: So if you don’t mind another kind of what might seem like an idiot question, when I purchase a Landmark Home and Land Company kit home, who’s actually working with the building department? Is that me? Is that Landmark? How does that work?
Steve Tuma: Well, that’s an interesting one because a lot of times our customers will have the details from the building department of what’s required. They’ve researched it. The building departments typically have a webpage or a PDF explaining what they want. Some of them it’s extremely detailed. Some of the building departments will just say things like “get us plans,” you know, “plans.” It’s like, okay, so what do you want on the plans? So if a customer has that information, it’s great. Otherwise, I can contact them, find out what they need, and work through the process. So that’s the initial contact just to find out what they need and then make sure that our plans include that information. And then also there’s the secondary part of actually the submittal. We develop the plans, get it to our customer, and our customer actually does the application. They’ll have to fill out different details, maybe pay some fees, set up a portal online where they can submit and go through. So it’s kind of a little bit of a team effort. We’re always available to help a customer if they need it, but that’s the general process that we go through.
The building departments, a lot of people get intimidated by them. They’re generally just people wanting to make sure that the home fits a certain standard for construction safety, and that’s generally what they’re looking for. And so far, every single customer where we’ve developed the plans, they’ve submitted them has gotten permits. So we’ve gotten through a whole bunch of different situations, a variety of different scenarios. You know, some of them very complex, some of them simple, and some of them just plain out goofy requests that they may have. So, and that’s fine too. It’s kind of an interesting situation. You know, if someone’s in an area that may have a very sophisticated building department, you know, we’ve worked with different building departments like that. We know what they need, and to us, it’s clear-cut. But what might be a little cloudy or hazy for someone that hasn’t done this, to us, we’ve done this before all over the country.
Interviewer: So what you’re saying is the building departments aren’t always the boogeyman?
Steve Tuma: Well, some of them are, you know, they’re vague. You know, like what I said before wasn’t really a joke. I kind of laughed at it. But where they say, “just get us plans,” I’m like, so do you want windows on there? Do you want dimensions of windows? Do you need energy codes? Do you need structural calculations? But most building departments are pretty succinct in what they want, and they do have a process. Every once in a while, you run across a group that just disorganized, doesn’t understand their own job. But either way, we’ve worked with those as well, and we generally know what they need. And even our most basic plan set, I think, is beyond a lot of those building department requirements. So, you know, that’s the thing. We pay attention to what’s going on. So I could contact the building department, get the information, go through, get the details, and get the customer the plans. But in most places that we’re working, you know, where people choose to live, the building departments are pretty clear. Someone might say, “Hey, I heard that my building department’s the worst,” or “These people are just hard to work with.” It’s, yeah, if you’ve never done it before, it is hard, you know. But for us, we’ve done it so many times that we can get through the process and do it. Most building departments, they ask for the same stuff. It’s the last 20% that can be, you know, totally different details. But we’ve seen it before. Chances are we’ve seen it, we’ve done it before, we’ve experienced the situation, we’re able to move forward and help people along. So people shouldn’t be intimidated by building departments or, you know, find it annoying to work with them. You know, we’ll sort it out and get it going. We’ve got a great set of plans. Because I believe our plans are actually beyond what most building departments want. You know, we want to make sure it can be built right. We want to make sure the details are right, the specifications, the sections, any schedules are there so that, you know, it’s easy for everyone in the project to understand what’s being done. That includes the financing source, the family building it, the building department, the contractors, us, anyone else, homeowners association, historic boards, different things like that. We can get it put together. And it’s all just part of the service we supply, which is kind of amazing. It’s a lot of stuff where we’re able to help people. We don’t want to leave our customers out hanging. You know, we want to be able to help them through the process. So we provide that support in a proactive and fun way.
Interviewer: Here’s another one for you. The perception some people might have of a kit home or a panelized home is who does the work? Does the owner-builder actually do all the work? Or are they able to subcontract most of that work?
Steve Tuma: Well, you know what’s interesting about it is a lot of customers, their friends and family are in the trades. So they will literally build the whole house, you know, them and their team. Other people are more, you know, kind of remote general contractors. They’ll act as a general contractor. They won’t do any of the work themselves, but they’ll coordinate knowledgeable people to do it. And then we also have people in between. Some people do some of the work and they hire some of the work out. So that’s the cool thing about being an owner-builder is someone’s able to control the project, control the budget, control the schedule, and then also be able to do the work they want, which can be a tremendous financial savings, not just the cost that they have there but also if they have a mortgage, the interest that they pay over the life of the loan. So, you know, we’ve had customers come from any angle, whether they want to do it all themselves or hire it all out. Like I say, someone in between. And that’s the cool thing about it. So a customer can work from their strengths. We’ve had people that have never built homes and don’t really understand the trades do it because it becomes a management job. You know, so if you had a job, you know, working at some place, you might be a manager coordinating the people that know the specifics of a job. So it’s kind of interesting to see people like that. We’ve had people live across country and build a house in a completely different state. With the right people, they can do it. And then they pop in every once in a while and look at it. We have a couple of people doing that with retirement homes now or these kind of family estates. What I say kind of heirloom homes, you know, where the family’s getting together to build on land that grandpa bought 100 years ago or just land that together they said, “Hey, you know, we can have a beach house or a mountain house if we all pool it together to get it.” Or people that are doing multi-generational homes. So there are ways to get to the end result no matter what position a customer’s in now compared to where they want to be. And we can help them through the process.
Interviewer: So what are the pitfalls of being an owner-builder? I’m sure there are some. There are negatives to everything. I don’t want to say negatives, but what are the sort of landmines when it comes to being a panelized home owner-builder?
Steve Tuma: Well, building your own home, it’s an effort. You have to—you know, there’s not a magic button on anyone’s computer to just magically have a house show up. You have to understand what you want, think through the process. We may ask questions like, “Hey, you’re asking for this garage. You live in a big rural area and you have a 20 by 20 garage. Are you sure you don’t have any bikes or lawnmowers or, you know, yard equipment? Do you want a bigger garage?” People have to think and make decisions. So we can work with someone on that to help through the process. They have to understand that it’s ultimately their project. They’re acting as a general contractor. It’s their project. It’s their financing. It’s their design. But it’s pretty rare that a customer really runs into an issue with that because they’ve set up to it. They’ve thought about it.
I’d say one of the pitfalls is it’s a big project. And it can be stressful. It can take a lot of time. But I’ll tell you one thing, it’s extremely rewarding. I had a customer, she was a single lady, newly divorced, in central Michigan. This was 20 some years ago. She said, “Steve, you got to tell people this story.” She said, “It’s kind of like having a baby. Making the baby’s a lot of fun. The nine-month gestation, you know, the six to nine months it’ll take to build a house, you’re sitting there going, ‘Why am I doing this? This is a lot of work. I can’t get away. I’ve got to pay attention to my house. There’s this, I got to take care of this, I got to make sure this happens so that next week we can do that.'” The scheduling is like the gestation period. And then once the kid’s born, it’s the best thing on earth. And that’s what she said is the personal reward for building it. We’ve had families where their younger children run the project, you know, with the parents overlooking. They’re running the budget. “We’re going to schedule this. Who do we need out there today, tomorrow? What equipment do we need? What things?”
So the personal reward and growth, I think, is why a lot of people do it. Just the pride of, “I built my house. I controlled my budget. I saw it get built. I know the quality of it. And for the money they put in, they got the house they wanted, with proper energy design, the windows they want, taking advantage of the view.” But to get that put together, it’s a lot of work. So I would say that that’s—I don’t know if I want to put it in a pitfall in a negative way. It’s just part of the excitement of going through and building it. And I would say in our 31 years of doing this, most people grasp onto it. We’ve only had a couple where I think it becomes a little overbearing. And generally, it’s outside forces that affected them on something.
So when someone sits back and goes through and talks about it, and we’re very straightforward talking about it, we’re not sugarcoating stuff. Yes, it’s a lot of work. Yeah, it’s always fun to design. It’s always fun to go to the store. Which cabinets do you want? Which lights? But then there’s the actual execution of building it. There’s a lot of things that can happen. And I think it’s like anyone’s life or job; the way they are is the reality of, “Hey, if you have a problem at work or a problem in your own life, you don’t try and solve everything all at once. You prioritize, you take care of it, and go forward.” And we’re always available to help if someone needs some ideas or guidance on getting it done.
But I would say that there’s a huge portion of people that come back and say, “I’d love to do this again. This is great. I can do this as a business.” And the reward part of it, I think, is something that they really, really enjoy, is looking back at it and say, “I just built a house for my mom. I built a house for my family. I built a house for my family and I saved $100,000.” And over the course of the loan, that’s like saving $300,000 of interest.
Interviewer: Wow, yeah.
Steve Tuma: So when you look at that, the way people navigate it is, yeah, it’s a lot of work, but that’s life. So it’s a good job. So is this. So they go through and do it. And there’s a certain fulfillment of it, I think, that fuels them when they’re getting the house. We’ve had married people, we’ve had grandmas and grandpas, we’ve had newlyweds, we’ve had single people, we’ve had newly divorced single people build houses. And it’s all just in them. They just want to do it. Sometimes it’s the financial gain, sometimes it’s the personal pride, sometimes it’s the knowing that it’s done right, and sometimes it’s like, “I want my house and my land the way I want it.” I think that ultimately is what’s in people’s plans.
Interviewer: So if I’m hearing you right, hurdles might be a better word than pitfalls?
Steve Tuma: I think, yeah, pitfalls, hurdles. Either way, I don’t want to sugarcoat it. There’s the reality of anything you do. You go out, and you go buy a birthday cake. You go to the store, they don’t have double fudge chocolate. It’s like, “OK, I gotta go with strawberry or vanilla or something.” So there’s always something there. It’s in the management of it. And people have to be realistic with themselves. You can’t sit here and fool yourself that, “Hey, I’m going to win the lottery next week. Let’s build a $5 million home.” There’s got to be a reality check to what’s going on to make sure that people develop a plan that makes sense. And I’m not saying an architectural plan only, but the plan for their execution of the building. They gotta be honest with themselves. You know, “Hey, it’s going to be a lot of work and a lot of thinking, a lot of coordinating people.” And what I ultimately tell them is, work with good people that do what they say, and your job will be a lot easier and a lot more enjoyable, and the quality of your home will be a lot better.
Interviewer: Sound advice. So you had mentioned the gestation period. So how long would you say it takes to build a Landmark Home and Land Company panelized kit home?
Steve Tuma: Well, that’s the interesting thing because a lot of that is really controlled by the individual owner-builder’s desire. Some people are building a simpler home, and they’re just very coordinated and then they can get it done quick. And then other people intend to take a longer time. They’re paying out of pocket, or their schedule, or sometimes there are situations where you’re in certain parts in the Sierras and in Colorado and northeast where there’s a shorter building period. You can only build so long. But I would say most people take six to nine months to build their home. Sometimes it goes a year. It all kind of depends on what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. But I found that even our customers that hire a general contractor to do it, the general gets it a little bit quicker. But it’s not necessarily like a general contractor is going to do it in two months and an owner-builder is going to do it in six. So I would say that that’s generally the timeline—six months to 12 months to get it done. I don’t always look for records or whatever, but someone did one in, what, 60 or 90 days once, kind of simple. And they were just in gear. They knew the contractors and their family was it. So they just really hit it, hit it. And then other people, if it’s something where they’re paying out of pocket, they got weather issues because of where the building is at, sometimes they’ll go over a year. But I would say most people, the reality is six to nine months. You do want to work on it methodically. You do want to do it right. And you do want to move it along just so that you can see the progress. It’s kind of rewarding. “Hey, the foundation’s in. Hey, the roof system’s on. Hey, the windows are in.” There’s that little reward that just kind of keeps people motivated. And it’s just cool. Probably every week I get random pictures. It could be eight in the morning. It could be 10 at night on Sunday of customers going, “Steve, look at what we did!” And there’s nothing better than a family out there saying, “Hey, here we are. We’re moving in,” or “Hey, we built the doghouse first,” or “Hey, the garage is up. We can put all our equipment in, all our parts and stuff while we build,” or whatever it is. “Hey, we got the framing up, and we’re going to continue on finishing the exterior and interior.” So I’d say six to nine months is typical, maybe a year. And I think that’s reasonable because our customers generally have other things like families and jobs and birthdays and holidays and stuff they have to do. And it’s a payoff. And when they look at what it costs to build a house with our system compared to other quotes they’ve got, it’s an exceptional financial return for them. And that’s really, really cool. We have a lot more people just working out of pocket to completely avoid financing and banking fees and different situations that might not be advantageous for them.
Interviewer: Well, if you can do it, why not?
Steve Tuma: Yeah. So the key to it is to have a plan and a realistic target. I tell people it’s not a race. Yeah, it might be great your neighbor told you they built their house in four months. Great. The idea is to build the house you want, on the budget you want, and control quality. Most of these other stories aren’t true anyway. But the thing is to have something that works for you, to go out and make sure, say, “Hey, our intent is to do this, our intent is to do that,” and then logically plan it out and be real with yourself. And it comes together. And we’re always available if someone needs help or a little guidance on how to schedule something or if weather kind of throws them a curveball or whatever—we’re here to help them navigate. It’s fun. We’ve become a lot of friends with our customers. It’s interesting to see the development of them and the family and seeing pictures. I’ve gotten pictures of three-year-olds helping to sweep a porch off or move rocks out of the yard or something—the family. So it’s kind of interesting.
And then we’ve also helped people 78, 82 years old build their retirement home.
Interviewer: Wow. It’s cool. It’s amazing. I hope I can put off retirement until I’m 82.
Steve Tuma: Yeah, but it’s kind of cool. They’re just doing it because sometimes they need to move closer to the family or into a different weather situation or whatever it is. And some of these people, it’s really cool. It’s just a life goal.
Interviewer: Yeah, of course.
Steve Tuma: Yeah, so I think you asked about the timeline. That’s generally, I think, the way it would go—six to nine months, sometimes a year. But everyone develops their schedule. We’re not breathing down their neck. We’re enhancing the situation and being supportive of it through the process.
Interviewer: Well, that’s going to do it for us today. But before we let you go, as we usually do, Steve, tell our listeners just how they can find out more about Landmark Home and Land Company.
Steve Tuma: Well, the best thing to do is check out our website at lhlc.com. It’s like the initials of Landmark Home Land Company. On our website, you’ll see these podcasts—well, you’ll hear the podcasts. You’ll see videos. You’ll see a variety of different plans, some low-cost ones, some where there’s just a selection of thousands of plans, discussions on how we can help building in different states and different details. And that’s what we’re able to help our customers with. And that’s the best thing. They can send an inquiry through the website. They can send an email directly through the website. And some of the plan selections, they can send an inquiry right there with questions. And if they always want to, they can call direct. Mike will answer the phone at 800-830-9788. Again, that’s 800-830-9788. And by the way, we do answer the phone. We don’t have some crazy voicemail system. The numbers you’re calling end up at people’s personal cell phones where they can answer the phone, get you taken care of. If you do get voicemail, we will make sure you leave a message with your phone number, and we will call you back right away. And if someone wanted to talk to me, just talk at a higher level of different details, specifics on their land, they’re always able to call me on my direct cell phone at 708-205-2043. And we can talk specifics, details, generalities just to kind of set a path that makes sense. Because every customer has a different house, different need for them or their family, different piece of land, different building department requirements. So we listen to what the customer wants and then formulate with our customer a plan of action to build a house and then also start on developing the actual plans for the house. It’s pretty cool. It’s kind of customized. It’s not a one-size-fits-all. It’s, “What do you need, and we’ll help you through it.”
Interviewer: Perfect. Well, there you have it, folks. Another informative chat with Landmark Home and Land Company President Steve Tuma. 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 you feel 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: Thank you. This was a good one. It was a fun one. Hopefully, it helps people.
