First Time Kit Home Builders

What this episode covers

Show Notes: First time kit home building and Owner Builders.  Quality plans for your Owner Builder project.  Building Codes and building permit application and approval. Transcript: Interviewer: Hello. Hello. It’s Episode 34 of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. With me in our studio is Founder and President of Landmark Home and Land Company, a company which has been helping people build their new homes where they want exactly as they want across the nation and worldwide since 1993, Mr. Steve Tuma. Steve, how is it going today? Steve Landmark: It’s a very nice day. We’ve been busy helping people all around the country design their homes, getting details together for their floor plans and house design so that it looks the way they wanted and get them ready for a permit application. Interviewer: Busy business as usual over at Landmark Home and Land Company. So Landmark receives a lot of inquiries from folks who are thinking about building a new home but have never really taken on a building project before. So I thought it’s time we perhaps address those folks and sort of lay out what a first-time builder might be dealing with. How about we give that a go? Steve Landmark: Well, it’s kind of an interesting process there because the concept of building your own home to some people is kind of like, “Wow! I never thought of that.” Interviewer: Yeah. I mean let’s say I’m a first-time home builder like talk to me like there must be a – do I need a certain level of knowledge before beginning? I mean I may not have built anything as hard as a home before. Is it a management job or an actual hammer and nails type of project? What should I know? Steve Landmark: Well, that’s the interesting part is, is it a management job or is it a hammer and nail kind of getting in there? It can be either and it can be both. We’ve had customers that have never picked a hammer up but understand that they need to understand the design of the home, the budgeting, the scheduling and working with the right people to get it built. And then we’ve had the other extreme where they’ve literally done everything, the family is involved in the trades, someone does foundation works, someone does electric, someone does framing and they get it put together. And then most customers are somewhere in the middle where they are managing it and then they are doing the work that they choose to do or know how to do. We never suggest that someone go out there and do a job that they don’t know anything about. We always suggest that they work with people that do know what’s going on in the project and then they take care of the work that they are capable of doing. So to answer the question, it can literally be a management job or it could be get in there and swing the hammer and run some wires and paint type of a project. So the people that have done this with us have been all different types of people. They have been people that have been managers at upper level. They have been some people that are very top level management. They have been some people that are in the building trades or some people that just got divorced and said, “Hey, this is the only way I can afford a home.” There are some people that have gone through different situations and realized that they can get a better quality home by building it. So there isn’t at least that I can see is – there isn’t like one thing that you have to have to build a home. You just have to have the desire to learn the process, understand it, develop a schedule and be able to manage it and move forward. And that’s the key element. And what’s nice is we are also able to help people. So depending upon how deep you want to get into the actual building processes, that’s something you can control and that’s a nice thing because even just by managing the building of your home, you are going to save a considerable amount of money compared to hiring a general contractor....