Show Notes: This episode provides a comprehensive understanding of the benefits and processes involved in building panelized kit homes. Key topics include the importance of energy-efficient designs, proper sizing of heating and cooling systems, and adherence to diverse building codes. The discussion also covers the precision and efficiency of off-site construction and the adaptability of homes to various climatic conditions. Additionally, it offers insights into personalized interior and entertainment design, addressing practical aspects such as gas lines for outdoor grills and insulation for multi-generational living. The episode emphasizes the importance of thorough pre-planning and robust customer support, equipping anyone with the knowledge to ensure a seamless and efficient home-building experience.
Steve Tuma: If you want to stay to a good budget, if you want to stay to your schedule, we should make these decisions now in the design phase instead of while you’re building and a house is already up and then you decide to move something.
Interviewer: Hello everyone and welcome to episode 56 of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. Joining me as always is the president and founder of Landmark Home and Land Company, a company which has been helping people build their new homes where they want exactly as they want, nationwide and around the globe since 1993, Mr. Steve Tuma. Steve, how are you my friend?
Steve Tuma: It’s another great day. I’m just thinking you say that since 1993, when we start we’re 30 years and a half year old. It’s amazing. We’re going through going strong, 30 years six months. That’s awesome. It’s great.
Interviewer: Yeah, well it’s helping people around the country and telling a friend to buy from us. So it’s kind of cool.
Steve Tuma: Yeah, it’s actually very cool.
Interviewer: Today I thought what we did with the last episode I’d like to continue with, and that was we had started taking questions from people who write in using the Landmark Home and Land Company website and just sending in general interest questions about panelized homes and kit home building. And I just thought today we might go through some more emails. So there’s a lot more to get through than what we got the last episode. So if you’re up for that you want to give it a shot again?
Steve Tuma: Yeah. It’s kind of like put Steve on the hot seat apparently, but I’ve been doing this a while. So I think we can get some good answers.
Interviewer: Yeah, of course. Yeah. So let’s start with one that, well, there’s this one that quite a few people have written in and asked. It’s simple but I think a very important question, I feel. And I think you’ll agree. So first question here from a person writing in, what are the pros and cons of kit homes and kit home building?
Steve Tuma: The pros and cons of kit homes and kit home building. That’s interesting because it’s really, really helpful in the way we put it together. At Landmark, we’ve developed a different process, kind of the one-stop shop where it’s not just the kit home process. It’s the design, architectural design, engineering, green codes, energy codes, site plan work where we put it together. So a big pro to our process at Landmark is that we don’t just help in supplying the materials. We help in the designing, obtaining permits, getting the plans together for permits, you understanding energy codes, making sure the house fits on the land, not just setbacks but also on the grade if you’re on flat land or if you’re on slope land. So there’s a lot of details there in the design.
And like we’ve spoken about in other podcasts, the designing process I think is very important to make sure it’s easy to obtain permits and also for a successful build, successful inspections, and staying on budget and on target. So that to me is an immense pro that people don’t always realize. They think, hey, this is materials, it’s wood, I could buy it anywhere. It’s like, well, it’s not true. It’s how you use it. Is it used effectively? Is the cost contained like we do? And is there knowledge and support to help you through the building phase?
And I think that’s extremely unique to Landmark Home and Land Company and what we’ve developed here, kind of the one-stop shop. I would consider that to be an immense pro that it’s interesting. Customers don’t even realize it when they call us. They call us to find panelized homes, the wood product. But as they go through there, a lot of them, almost all of them, will say, Steve, the planning is more important.
So that’s what we’re trying to get across is like, hey, what’s your project? How are you going to do it? How are we going to make it efficient? What are we going to do to help you stay on budget, help you stay on schedule? That’s an extreme pro to working with us.
Now the con to it is you got to think and make decisions. Ultimately someone’s going to have to do that. Whether someone decides how big their kitchen is while they’re designing or while they’re building, at some point they have to make the decision. It’s just better to do it when we’re doing the design phase on paper and PDFs. It’s easier to make an adjustment there instead of at the building site.
So what I found is some people think it’s normal because they must watch TV shows on doing changes as fun and doing changes as part of it. Well, it’s really only part of it if you didn’t do the thinking and decision making upfront and then stick to those decisions. So the con is that we’re going to work with you and kind of work with you to say, hey, these are things to think through now. If you want to stay to a good budget, if you want to stay to your schedule, we should make these decisions now in the design phase instead of while you’re building and a house is already up and then you decide to move something.
So that’s kind of something there. Now that doesn’t mean you can’t do a change to a panelized home. You can. It’s wood. We can help someone through if they need to. But it’s just more efficient to do it in the design phase. So there’s always little details here and there. Basically, we’re supplying a more efficient design and building system than conventional stick building. But that, I think, is it—the ability to design right, work it through, look at your whole project, look at the detail but also look at the overall project.
How does the house fit on the land? What’s the building department’s involvement? Then looking at it, hey, how big of a window do you want in the kitchen? Do you want a double sink in the kitchen, a triple, or a single? So we’ve got to look at the details and the macro view as well.
So what we find is our customer base, even though they may not understand the processes, they really enjoy it because that’s kind of the way fun part. It’s like, hey, Dreamland, let’s design this house, let’s make it work. And that’s where they get to be involved and really start seeing the home come to life. So those are the big, I would say, the big pro and the big con to it. In a sense the con is just really saying, hey, think it through. We’re here to help you think it through. We’re here to help you understand the project so you know what you need to think through if someone doesn’t already know and go from there. And some of our customers have built a lot of homes, others have never done it before. So we’re here to support it. So I guess I’m trying to make a con into a positive.
Interviewer: I was just going to say that when it comes to what Landmark’s doing in the home building front, the cons are really learning experiences. So that’s not a con at all really.
Steve Tuma: Well, that’s the interesting thing. I ask customers why are you doing this? And some people say, well, it saves me money. Other people say, I’ve just always wanted to. And the biggest thing I hear is this industry is strange. I want to know what’s in my house. I want to see it. I want to know what’s going in. I want to know the quality of my home. And I want to know why it’s done this way instead of someone covering things up. So our customers can get into it and know what their house is, how it’s built, how it’s designed, why it’s built, what the budget is, and then think it through. And it gives them immense control.
But I think the coolest thing is the satisfaction afterwards when they sit back and they’ll send a picture of the family barbecuing in the yard with this new home or the first holiday season or the first kid’s birthday. It’s kind of one of these monumental times in people’s lives where they sit back and go, this is cool. The amazing thing is how many of them come back and say, Steve, I want to do another one. That’s always an incredible pat on the back to us.
Interviewer: There’s no con in that.
Steve Tuma: No, it’s fun. I got off of a phone call today with a man that’s doing two of them, kind of his semi-retirement thing. He’s building two and then he’s going to build six more. And he said, Steve, everyone tells me home building’s hard. And it is. He said it can be stressful. He goes, but it’s cool. My wife and I are having a lot of fun. We’re building this house and we’re learning. He goes, it’s just so much fun.
Interviewer: That’s got to be nice to hear.
Steve Tuma: Yeah, it’s not just that, hey, I got a house and let me put my dog in it and put my truck in the garage. It’s a life-changing experience where the people, they’re satisfied. They enjoy it. So I guess that’s not necessarily something just pertaining to the house but it’s what it does to people. They understand it. One of the coolest things is we’ve had a couple of customers where their young kids are involved, like eight, nine, 10, 11-year-olds, in the budgeting, the design, the kind of management of the process. And you look at how that helps them live their life down the road to understand keeping a schedule, making decisions, being accountable for what you do. So yeah, I guess I got a little sidetracked there from your question.
Interviewer: That’s okay. That’s what we’re here for.
Steve Tuma: I’m trying to get extra credit.
Interviewer: We’re here to sidetrack you because we always get more information than we’re looking for. And that’s not a con at all. But yeah, let’s move on. There’s a question here which is sort of off of the subject of actual building a house but the financing of a house. Is it difficult to get a mortgage for a kit home? Is it any different at all, is the process any different than going and trying to fund a regular stick home sort of build?
Steve Tuma: Actually no, because panelized homes are conventionally built homes. They’re just done in a more efficient manner in a production facility. That question is probably coming up because a lot of the modular homes and HUD homes, the quote trailer homes, are financed different and there’s different disclosures and there’s different financing restrictions on those. They don’t always appreciate, there might be stigmas to them. But our panelized homes are just like a conventionally stick-built home. So the design, budgeting, appraisal, financing processes are pretty much exactly the same.
Interviewer: Yeah, I think I misspoke Steve because I said is it different than a stick home. But really it’s the same home. So my saying that I should watch that because the panelized homes are just like regular stick homes.
Steve Tuma: Yeah, that’s basically it. With our system we can control the quality, give a guaranteed cost, do a lot of changes. A lot of stick builders won’t do changes to homes. We’ll do it so it’s truly a custom home but we’re able to because of the efficiencies of the production line, we’re able to go through and still get people a high-quality custom home for their personal needs but also for fitting on the land properly.
Interviewer: Right. That’s interesting. The whole thing now is building these little add-ons or even separate little houses on a property, but how does that process work? Can you add on to a home in the future?
Steve Tuma: If someone wanted to, they can. And what’s really cool about that is you bring this up, it’s kind of a two-phased answer because some people plan on adding on in the future.
Interviewer: Oh right, yeah.
Steve Tuma: But to answer the question, just get to the point right now, yes, you can. It’s like a conventional stick-built home. You can take the siding off, add on to it, and go from there. I guess if someone wanted to do a ranch home, make it a two-story, they could do that. So yes, someone could add a garage in the future. But what’s interesting is we have had some people that are like, hey, we just got married, we don’t have kids but right now our budget allows for the two-bedroom home. Can we do the three-four bedroom addition when time allows? So we’ve had situations like that. And sometimes these additions are literally attached to the home. Other times people have a plan to say, hey, my parents are going to move in in the future, let’s make sure the land is laid out so we can have a separate kind of apartment, little granny flat, ADU off to the side. So yes, we’re fully capable of doing it.
We even a little while ago worked on some designs where they were kind of little designed units, little rectangular units that could be put together to add on. So someone could say, hey, if in the future I want to add an office, here’s the office module that we could then design just to attach. But here’s something else. Sometimes you think of additions of hey, adding a great room, another bedroom. Sometimes people do things on additions in the future that are kind of smaller. Okay, so let’s just say someone had a two-story home and they want a second-level deck. But right now it’s just not in their plan to put the second-level deck up there. We can do the framing for that wall for a bigger window, a bigger patio door so that when they go in and attach the deck they could just remove the siding, some of the drywall, and the framing’s already there for a bigger window or patio door that’s more useful for the deck. So there’s a lot of stuff that we can do to help people out. Oh, here’s another one. I mean, this is probably even more common is people saying, hey, in the future I’m going to finish a bonus room out, a bonus room above a garage, a bonus room above a main part of the home, or even situations of continuing the build into a basement or a walkout basement. So there’s always different things that we can do to do that. We just helped a family in Nebraska do a house like that. They wanted a basement but right now they weren’t in the position to go and finish the basement the way they wanted. It was going to be a huge home theater, family room.
So typically a basement might have some posts and a beam running through it which would block the use of the room just by having dropped beams and posts and variety of things. So we worked with them to go through and figure out what they were doing. And basically they had a family, 12-15 people that would come over and what they were going to do is put a big game room, home theater down there. So big pit couch, big swing theater.
Interviewer: Yeah. That’s a new thing now, people designing home theaters.
Steve Tuma: Oh yeah. And they’re going to put retro Pac-Man games and stuff like that in it. Right. That’s cool. Since we got in that conversation, what we’re able to do is use clear span floor trusses to eliminate the posts and eliminate the beams. And then we made their staircase to the basement five feet wide instead of a kind of standard three feet. So what that allowed is the structure of their home is there. They don’t have to go down later and go, oh, this post is in the wrong way. Where are we going to put the TV? It gave them like an open framework to put the TV wherever they wanted, the food, the bar, the little kitchenette, the video games, without the restriction of a post or a beam hanging down. And then a wider staircase when you got 15 people running up and down for sandwiches and munchies, it’s better to have a clear staircase. And apparently, they got together a lot. So there’s a lot of pre-thinking that we could do to make that future build, whether it’s finish a basement, finish a bonus room, or do a complete conventional add-on. We can really think it through with the people.
Interviewer: Right. And that goes back to when I had misspoke and said, you know, is getting a mortgage the same as for a regular stick home. Well, a kit home is a regular stick home. And if you want to expand on it in the landmark, then you would if you were just adding on to an older house or something. So it makes sense.
Steve Tuma: Right. And sometimes, you know, man, you got me going here. Here’s the thing. Sometimes adding on isn’t like just adding space. Sometimes people want to add different heating systems in the future that might be more efficient. They might need different stuff for technology. Some people have hobbies. We’ve had a bunch of customers that the family’s into restoring cars. So they’re like, hey, at this point, we only have one car, but, you know, we know we’re going to get another one and we’re going to want to lift so that my son and wife and I, we can change the oil, family time, work on the car, the hot rod, the convertible, whatever they have and go. So in that case, we’re like, OK, so what are we doing here? Right? You’re going to have a car collection and change your oil. You really want a nine-foot ceiling or do we have to lift it so that someone could put a lift in the garage for additional storage or to work on the car? And some people could say, well, that’s no big deal. It’s like, well, it kind of is because we have to have the headroom. But we also at times, depending on the lift that they have, have to do stuff with the reinforcement of the cement so that this lift can work because some of the lifts are, they can just be put on a regular four-inch slab. Others need a slab and a variety of details depending on the complexity of the design. So whatever work we can do up front… Oh, my mind’s going again.
Interviewer: That’s what I’m here for.
Steve Tuma: A variety of people saying I might put an elevator on and in the future.
Steve Tuma: So people are like, wow, an elevator, that’s pretty cool. Can’t you just stick a four by four hole in the floor? Well, it’s kind of true. You can just put like a shaft there, but there needs to be certain attachments for some of these elevators to be attached to the floor or to a wall system or to have certain mechanicals or electrical units there. So just all the little work that we can do to pre-design for a future elevator, it’s relatively easy to do now and it’ll save someone huge headaches and a lot of money when it comes time to actually install the elevator.
Interviewer: Because otherwise it’s not an elevator. It’s a fire pole.
Steve Tuma: Yeah, exactly. Or a real quick way down if you just take the floor out of the closet. There you go. I got to tell you a funny story now that we’re on this one. You know, most elevators, there’s like a driveline along the wall for residential that’ll go up one or two floors. We had one customer, kind of a good old boy. Great guy. Incredible, incredible person. He was just using an old forklift. I asked him what this garage was in the back of the house. He goes, that’s where I drive my forklift at night. I have a platform and it lifts from the first floor to the second floor. And I’m like, well, I don’t know what the building department will think about that. But yeah, we could put a little garage in the back of your house that just happens to be sized for a forklift. So sometimes people have pretty interesting ways of doing it.
The point I’m getting at even thought it’s humorous, kind of subject there, is we’ll work with you to get the house you want. That person of putting a forklift in a garage to make an elevator is the only person ever I’ve never heard of it before, but we worked it out. Other people, if they’re doing elevators, more conventional systems. But more and more people are getting into family time, not necessarily dining rooms but family rooms, TVs, video games, little card playing games, ping pong, home recreation type things. And then they’re also getting into designing the kitchens a little bit more precise for their exact use. And then I’m seeing a lot more with decks and people that they’re spending time. It’s like, man, I’m working at home. I got to get out, sit in the yard, and where are they doing this?
So even though it’s not technically part of the panelized home, it’s part of the lifestyle that our product and service helps where if you’re sitting there and you bought your beautiful lakefront property, you probably want to know where your fire pit is, where this goes, where your driveway is, different things like that.
Interviewer: You had mentioned something about the guy wanting to take his forklift from one floor to the other. You said you’re not sure how the building department would react to that, but that gets us to a good point. Another question that comes in a lot is about permitting and what permits are required to build a kit home. What are the differences between building the permits for building a kit home and building a standard house?
Steve Tuma: It’s pretty much the exact same system because it is a conventional stick-built home just more efficient in our design processes make it easier and cleaner for our customer and the building department. So there are actually areas in the United States and even internationally that don’t require permits. And then there’s places that are extremely picky in the permit requirements. But either way, we’re betting a thousand percent every customer has gotten permits. So we’ve helped people whether they’re in a little town with a really picky stickler of a plan checker or if you’re in one of these bigger places where they’ve got engineers and people that go over every single house design with a fine-tooth comb.
So the process is the same and we’re fully set up to work with it. I work with the building departments to find out what they need. If they do have odd requests, which more and more of them are getting with some odd requests, we’re fully capable of getting through those details. So if it’s a smaller town where you have some Barney Fife type guy who’s going to take control and make your life a little different, we’ve worked with situations like that. And then there’s also situations where you just have these big building departments that just never seem to finish the plan check process. We’ve gotten through every single one that we’ve approved that we’ve been customers asked us to develop plans for. They’ve all been approved and it’s actually kind of fun because sometimes you do see something that makes no sense initially but after talking to the building department you’re like, okay, I kind of understand this now why you’re asking for it. Don’t know why they’re the only one in the country asking for it but that’s what they need, we’ll figure it out.
Interviewer: Hmm. So let’s get into some geography. There’s some people writing in and asking if there are any restrictions on where I can build a kit home. And I’m not—I’m not sure if they mean are there states that frown upon kit homes? I doubt that very much, but are there any restrictions to where you could build a kit home on a slope, on flat land? And you know, what’s your answer to that?
Steve Tuma: We haven’t run into it anywhere, whether it’s some guideline or law or where it’s a, you know, a problem with the land. Now, occasionally and rarely, like if we’re doing something in the Rockies or in the Sierras or remote areas, sometimes people will have a piece of land that’s been in the family forever. And great grandpa had a Model T that was, you know, five feet wide. So the road is six feet wide to to access it. Now over time they’ve probably made it wider just for modern cars and whatever deliveries. Occasionally you end up in a situation where someone just has an extremely unique building site that is harder to navigate, but we know about those. And what we do is we work with the customer still to take advantage of our system so that they can work with it. And then generally in a case like that, we’ll deliver our materials to where the safest point is. And then there’ll be a little truck that takes it from that, you know, down the windy curvy road. Because some of these sites where our customers have built on are just spectacular. You could be going through groves of trees that are 150 plus years old on a windy road. They weren’t thinking of 80-foot trucks at that time. They were thinking of, you know, 20-foot car at most. So you don’t want to cut the trees down. You don’t—you don’t want to hurt it.
But what we’ve done is worked in a way so that our delivery and the panels are put in an advantageous method so that the person can still take advantage of our system and build. Now, I’m bringing it up—that’s rare. That’s like, you know, two-tenths of a percent of our customers that are in a spot like that. We’ve had customers on islands, whether they’re private islands or some of the islands off the Southeast or in the Northwest where we’ve delivered to it. But as far as building, you know, if you look geographically on the side of a mountain, a steep mountain, or over a swamp or whatever, as long as the building department allows it, there’s a way to do it. Now the caveat to it is sometimes these cost more. We had a customer where there was a wetland situation, just the nature of the way the ground was in that area. It was on the East Coast where we had to work with the local environmental departments to figure out the proper type of low-impact, low-environmental-impact foundation. So basically a house was built on a pier, and for every square foot of pier footprint, they had to have a plan to mitigate two square feet elsewhere on the property or pay into a fund that would do it somewhere else in the area.
So we’ve been in some pretty incredible situations. One of the coolest ones was a man in full of boulders, big ones, not like 20 feet tall but two feet, five feet, 10-foot boulders. And he didn’t want to drill into the boulders. So what he did is he had a surveyor—we suggested get a surveyor out there—to find out where there were openings in these boulders where a piling could be placed on raw ground. We then used those areas to develop the piling foundation to support the house he wanted. It was kind of amazing. So if someone wants to do it, we’ll figure it out. Now what I brought up to you is very extreme. Most people, they’re building maybe on the side of a mountain that might be a little steeper but offers an incredible view. Let me tell you where people get caught and they don’t always understand it. It happens in the Midwest a lot. I’ve heard stories that 90% of America’s wetlands have been filled in compared to 200 years ago just for farming or cities or whatever. So what people don’t realize is that when you fill in a pond, you’re putting something semi-solid on top of something soft. Because if you go to the edge of a pond and stand there, you’ll sink. I’m a 200-pound guy. You could go sink. I mean, imagine putting a house on there. So people don’t always think of it. So if you’re by lakes, rivers, areas where there’s likely to be filled-in ponds, it’s always good to get a geotechnical report to find out what’s going on there.
We had a customer in Southern Illinois who said this problem’s not there. This land’s been in the family 120 years. No one’s filled anything. And I said, you should check this out. It’s just one of these gut feelings. And I tell that to a lot of people. And that exact situation happened. He was planning on a three-foot or four-foot crawl space. Well, when they started excavating, he hit a filled-in pond. His basement wall ended up being 14 feet tall to overcome this. Kind of quite the budget killer. We could have checked it out up front, but he wanted to be in that specific spot to take advantage of the view. Now again, that’s an extreme situation, but it shows the help that we can point things out to people and then also work with them if for some reason an odd situation comes up. So I would say we’ve seen a lot of different situations. Hurricanes, high snow loads, landslide situations, soft soils, hard-to-reach locations. So it’s kind of fun. But if we know the details up front, I think we can overcome anything. We haven’t tried the moon yet, maybe in the next few years.
Interviewer: You know, there’s—pardon me for this because I’m bouncing around with these questions as I’m looking at them. They’re not in any specific order. But I’d like to go back to our mortgage question. And this one kind of hits on that as well. How involved is Landmark and what are the available financing options for panelized homes?
Steve Tuma: Well, we understand financing. But generally what customers do is work with a local bank or credit union. And I’ll tell you the reason why, especially if it’s a smaller bank or a smaller credit union, they have a better pulse on what’s going on in the community. Some of the big nationwide banks, you know, they send it to underwriting and who knows where. And someone that’s not even tied to the community may be making a decision, whereas sometimes these smaller credit unions or local or regional banks, they’re people in the community. So they know the nuances of a town. They know the nuances of what’s going on. They know the nuances of the customer. So a lot of people will work that way to get a loan. And a lot of those banks and credit unions have very flexible programs.
There’s also the people can work with farm credit services in more rural areas where I believe that’s through USDA where they help people in rural areas get loans. You know, sometimes rural areas there aren’t as many appraisals. You know, if you had a town of 300 people, you know, how many comparables are there in that area of a similar home? Or a lot of those towns, the houses don’t turn over. So sometimes these loans are there to help those communities get through it. A lot of people have cash. They borrow from their own savings or retirement accounts. Occasionally there’s a lottery winner. And then sometimes people use, you know, hard money investments which are more based off of the asset that is being built more than credit or income. So we have, you know, sometimes self-employed people or people leveraging their retails themselves.
But I think the point of what you’re asking is they’re financed just like any other new home construction. I think banks actually like working with us because there’s a definite control and process to helping an owner-builder build their home. Now some banks will, you know, double check someone if they’re being an owner-builder, make sure their budget’s right, make sure that it makes sense, make sure the appraisal’s right. And they don’t want people to get too aggressive. A bank’s not likely to work with someone if you say, hey, all my friends are going to help me. I have zero labor costs. You know, they’re going to be like, yeah, I don’t think anyone’s got friends that are going to build a whole house for free. Someone might help you here and there. But, you know, the chances of everyone showing up and doing everything for free is kind of limited. So most people, unless it’s direct family, you know…
Interviewer: Or the Amish community.
Steve Tuma: Yeah. Yeah. They just do everything on their own. But it’s kind of smart. But that concept that you bring up there of helping each other is where like the owner-builder thing kind of comes out. So we do have a lot of customers where they’ll either be the general contractor and hire people. And there are a lot of families where the trades are in their friends and family and they can do it. We have had customers that literally have been involved with everything from, you know, excavating for the foundation to cleaning the house, you know, the last day before they move in. So it’s kind of incredible. But, you know, the financing sometimes you’ve got to if you’re going to be doing a lot more work on your own, your bank is going to have to understand that and have a, you know, they’ll probably just want to double check to make sure that you’re really capable of doing things and that your budgeting’s right. You don’t want to fool yourself and say, hey, I’m going to buy everything on sale for 90% off. The chances of that happening are very limited. You might get a deal here and there. So it’s still good to have a realistic budget. And then if you save something, you’re steps ahead.
Interviewer: Yeah. You’d mentioned something about wetlands and the, you know, the there are fewer and fewer wetlands every year it seems like. But how do the Landmark Home and Land Company kit homes, how can you prepare those for environmentally friendly living? Is that something built into your system?
Steve Tuma: Oh yeah. Some states have green codes to make sure that you’re like water usage is right. You’re not using exotic materials. You know, where are you dumping things so that people aren’t taking toxic materials and just throwing it on the side of the road. So, you know, places that have green codes, we can supply that for the building permit. Other people that aren’t in areas where there are green codes, which is most of the country, we can still give them guidelines if they choose to, you know, want to pay attention to follow that. It’s also in the energy efficiency. A lot of people say, hey, I’m just going to insulate this house like crazy and I’m going to save, you know, all this money. Well, it’s not just the insulation, it’s your windows, it’s the lighting, it’s the heating and cooling system and sometimes even personal activity.
Steve Tuma: You know, on a hundred-degree day, do you want to sit there with your front door open, you know, while the air conditioning is going. We can get a little deeper into organic design as well. So, you know, the types of overhangs to keep sun out in summer, orientation of the house, where are you putting windows, where are you getting things that are heat sinks to keep you know, gather heat during the day and release it at night in the summer—I’m sorry, in the winter. So there’s a lot of stuff that we can do, you know, in green, kind of organic design. More and more people are asking about it. Ten years ago, people would ask but very few would do. But I think now people are kind of understanding the benefits of it and they’re wanting to get this taken care of. And what’s amazing is some of these systems are getting to be more and more efficient every year. So the technology, say in split heating and cooling systems, is far advanced compared to where it was just years ago. So people can build very energy-efficient homes.
We can even get into the designing of the heating and cooling systems so that people’s heating and cooling systems are sized properly because you don’t want too big of a system. You don’t want too small of a system. You want it so it’s designed right for the climactic conditions of where you’re building and also the specific design of your exact home. A lot of people are still out there saying, well, you know, I’ve always put a hundred thousand BTU furnace in this type of home. Well, that might have been cool 30 years ago when insulation wasn’t as good. But now that people are insulating their homes and homes are, quote, tighter for heat and cool transfer, you don’t need as big of a system. So if you put too big of a system in there, it’s going to actually burn more fuel.
People don’t understand that. It’s not something that you see. You don’t necessarily see that dollar going out your heat duct. You know, people just think it is what it is. But there are ways for us to help them go through and design situations like that and then specify certain lighting so that it’s more energy-efficient.
Interviewer: Right. It’s pretty cool stuff. And we had just—you just mentioned green codes and earlier we were talking about building codes in general, but I don’t want to put too fine a point on it. But I’d like to—I’d like to go back to another person who wrote in asking are there any specific building codes for panelized homes? Can we hit on that again just for a moment?
Steve Tuma: Those codes are the same as if doing a stick-built home. The code is actually the same. It’s a national code that might have adaptations, you know, for certain states or certain areas. But then there’s also that—that code will also adjust for different conditions. So it’s the same code. But if you’re building a house, say in Iowa, on a flat piece of land where Iowa doesn’t really have earthquakes and that building site. But then, you know, so maybe that’s an area where it’s a 20 or 30-pound roof load and a 90 mile an hour wind speed. Well, if you took that exact same house and stuck it on Key West facing south, you might have one hundred seventy-five mile an hour wind speed. So we got to make sure that, you know, the home can’t get blown over. But then so—and it’s not just getting blown over, it’s how is it attached to the ground so that the foundation doesn’t get pulled out. So then again, if you took that exact same house and stuck it in Leadville, Colorado, or say Lake Tahoe California or Nevada, suddenly you’re on a hundred seventy-five pound snow load. So even though the floor plan looks the same and the exterior of the house looks the same, now the biggest force is a hundred seventy-five pound snow load pushing down on the house. It’s not necessarily the one hundred seventy-five mile an hour wind speed from Key West. So to answer your question, the code is the same. The application for the house and the specific building site is where we help a customer to make sure it’s put together right, designed right, but also the plan set is proper for the building department.
That—that’s—that’s the key from this. And it’s, you know, we say we sell panelized homes. The reality is we’re helping people with the design to make sure they get the right house, make it easy for permitting, and then build the right house. And if they’re sitting there, you know, in a big snow, they’re not sitting here worried about their roof. If they’re sitting here in a high wind speed area, they’re not worried about the wind.
Interviewer: Yeah, makes sense. A lot of these questions are really what you would think of as real basic questions, but I think they’re really important. And, you know, there are no stupid questions if you’re actually just in the process of learning about something. So one of these is a lot of people asking about the assembly process of a Landmark Home and Land Company kit home. Can you kind of just answer this question sort of in a—I don’t know, concise way that’s not too long and tell us what the—we’ll see if that’s possible.
Steve Tuma: But yeah, yeah, I can’t. Basically, we’re doing a more efficient system than stick building. We’re building it offsite. It’s computer-controlled drawings, computer-controlled saws and assembly systems so that we have a precisely built home. So the floor systems, we design dimensional wood like two by 10s or two by 12s. We can go to I-joists—they’re an engineered product—or we can go to open web floor trusses so we can design the whole floor system. We deliver the materials for assembly on site. The walls are panelized. So what that means is we pre-build them so they come in a panel. So a conventional stick builder might go get a variety of two by fours, cut them, make a wall and put it up where we deliver for an exterior wall a two by six wall 16 inches on center with OSB sheathing, headers installed, and the rough openings installed as well. So you’re not sitting there having to cut and measure, cut angles, you know, build something, build a flat wall in a, you know, out in a field. You’re just taking the panels and putting it up, kind of wall one next to wall two next to wall three. And then we deliver a roof truss system where the roof trusses are then placed on top, and then they’re sheeted with OSB or plywood sheeting, you know, per customer specification. So what you’ll find the quality of labor and availability of labor in the United States is harder to find. So it’s easier for a crew to come in and put it together. You basically need one that understands framing or lady and then a couple helpers, kind of the muscle to move the walls in place, hold them in place, nail them down, plumb them, and go on from there. So the actual process is faster, more efficient, less waste. It’s just cleaner. It allows a crew to get in and out and less of a chance of errors because everything’s been pre-designed. It’s a matter of just assembling components instead of hoping you have the right materials, cutting it right, hoping you cut it right, hoping you assemble a wall right and hoping it goes in place. And the cool thing about it is we’ve got very clear and accurate assembly plans that show what each wall panel or truss looks like and then specifically where it’s placed.
Interviewer: I mean, there’s something in the house—what you’re talking about is something I’ve wondered about too. So what you’re saying is it’s pretty much a contractor—any good contractor can put together a kit home and it’s just that much more efficient. But are people who are buying Landmark kit homes, Landmark Home and Land Company homes, are they looking for a specific contractor or is it just pretty much find a good one?
Steve Tuma: Basically, any framing contractor can do it. We’ve had customers do it themselves. Now I only suggest that if you have a knowledge of it. But yeah, pretty much any contractor can put it together. Now some of them will be like, I’ve heard of panelized, I’ve never done it. So there’s a little bit of a mind bend where they got to go through and say, hey, this company’s doing over half the work, it’s quicker and easier. So some guys that run a tighter business are going to be like, hey, wait a second, I could charge less, I could get in and out quicker and get to my next project and build more houses during the building season. Other people that don’t understand their business as much are going to be like, I don’t know, how do I figure this out. Because I’m not always convinced these guys know how to price. They know what they did the last house and this house is closer, for they’ll charge the same. But we’re always available to help a customer and their contractors understand it and work out how we work together—the delivery process, how it gets delivered, the equipment they’ll need to unload it, the equipment they can use to assemble it, the type of crew. And then really we just want them to know we’re here, we’re here to help. If they call, we’re going to answer the phone, talk to them, answer whatever questions they have. But amazingly, we ship the homes all over the country and sometimes internationally. And I think our plans are so well done and our assembly plans are there that it’s pretty rare to get a call from a framer. It’s more like, hey, this got done quickly. Let me know if you have any other customers where I can help.
Interviewer: Yeah, that just goes back to that world famous Landmark Home and Land Company customer service, man. You’ve got to be proud of that.
Steve Tuma: Well, that’s the bottom line. Sometimes people will ask, well, hey, what’s the difference of your panelized home versus stick building or modular? And I could tell them about the product. The reality is it’s the customer support, the knowledge, and it sounds weird, but caring. I had a customer—I was relaxing last night watching the news and 9:30 at night a customer called me to ask a question. We talked about it, had a good laugh, and two minutes later he was off. He was there with his wife trying to figure out a dimension and what might work for their kitchen dining room area. And they happen to be together so we were helping. They’re putting a budget together to go to the bank this week and get their project going. So it’s not just help as far as, hey, can you set me in the right direction? But it’s also customer support, which is sad to say, as all of us have experienced, customer support does not exist in the world. There’s too many AIs or computers or send an email in, we’ll get back to you in 48 hours.
In our world, I’ll answer the phone, we talk to the people, get things taken care of and walk through it. And we’re proactive and very active on that. So we’re able to do that because we care about the customer, we care about the product. It’s the customer’s house, but we still kind of think it’s ours. But it also leads us to having a better set of plans and a better upfront process to make sure everything’s clear so that less questions are brought up because the answers are right there in the assembly plans or the plans. But we understand odd things happen. Every once in a while something will happen. There’ll be an inspector that comes out of nowhere with one of the weirdest questions anyone’s heard of, but we’re here to answer the question and work them through it if one of those situations arises. So it’s the customer support that really matters. And the knowledge and the availability of knowledge. Now, we’re not a committee-run company. We’re lean and trim on taking care of people. So chances are if someone calls me, I could give them the answer right away. If not, if they do stump me on something, I’ll get the person right away to get an answer so that they can move on with either their design project or building or budgeting or whatever they’re doing. So it’s the customer service that really, really sets it apart. And I think people will realize it’s not something that people always ask about up front, but when they’re in the design and building phases, they realize the benefit of it. And that, I think, is we just care. It’s fun. It’s cool.
Interviewer: It’s just so important. Customers are friends. The passion of it. As you know, Steve, I was talking to you about here in the studio, I had a new piece of equipment and a lot of questions in the company we bought the equipment from. That guy was right on it, man. He was there for us. And I think Landmark is the same way. It’s just so much about customer service and building those relationships.
Steve Tuma: Well, that’s exactly what it’s about. And that’s pretty much what separates the good from the bad. And we choose to do this. We enjoy it. I founded this. It’s like, this is a great time helping people. Like we spoke about earlier, it’s not just sell wood and build a house. We’re affecting people’s lives. People’s lives are different. They’re able to help their parents live. They’re able to get their kids into a better school district. They’re able to have space for a hobby or family get-togethers or save money or do whatever it is or get a more comfortable home. So that’s what it’s about. And you don’t do that just by saying, here’s a great piece of wood. No, you see, we’re saying we’re helping them build a home and environment so that it works well. And I don’t really know how to put it across other than to say we care. And we’re there to help people. It’s in our blood. It’s also a great time, like I say. It’s really cool.
Interviewer: I think that was the best answer you could give. You got time for another question? I’d like to bring one that’s kind of off the wall. But a lot of people write in asking, we’re always talking about the exteriors of houses and building walls and roofs and everything like that. But what about prefab home interior design ideas within your plan system? And if you go on the Landmark Home and Land Company website, there are so many plans, it’s mind-boggling. But as far as designing interiors and the design ideas that you guys come up with and how adaptable are there and how easy is that process?
Steve Tuma: It’s actually part of our process. Now, there’s two parts of it. There’s the interior designer, which sometimes customers, the wife or daughter will do that or they’ll hire a professional interior designer to do that. But it kind of ties together along with our work. So let’s just say someone had a room with a couple doors, say a big living room with a couple doors going into it and windows over the balcony. Someone could say, be like, oh, I’ll just paint it white. Well, someone might come in and say, no, I want to put a skylight in there. I want a patio door. I want to have the wood trimmed inside with walnut. I want to have a certain finish. I want a tray ceiling. I want arch door openings instead of squared off door openings. I want barn doors instead of regular doors or I want pocket doors. So we’re not necessarily driving the actual design of what color, but we’re helping the customer achieve that when they say, hey, I want a patio door. I want a huge accordion door. I want to have a sunken living room for certain things. Or hey, I want to have this type of fireplace, southwest like a Kiva fireplace, different things where we can work with them to make the structure and the design is important.
Now, we’re having more and more people that are getting more involved with the interior design and our design processes, whether themselves or with professional people, but sometimes this can affect the permitting. And what a lot of people are doing with these outside entertainment areas is having fireplaces that are in the house and outside of the house—one unit with dual exposure. That can affect energy codes and a lot more building departments want to know what you’re putting in there. What’s it fueled by? Is the venting right? So it’s kind of weird, you know, sometimes someone might say, oh, interior design, it’s just colors and wallpaper and curtains. Well, not necessarily. It could be your fireplace, and suddenly it’s like, is there enough space? Is this fireplace at floor level? Is it raised on a hearth 12 inches? Is it higher up? Is there a TV on top of it? Is there a bar to the side or a buffet for serving food? So a lot of these little things we’re getting more and more involved with so that people can understand what’s going on. And sometimes it’s as simple as, maybe it’s not really interior design and stuff, I’ll call it like entertainment design—I just made that up. But you know, like in the back, say you had a back deck and you’re going to have a gas grill and maybe a little outdoor refrigerator. A lot of building departments want to know, how’s your gas line coming in? You know, if you have an outside electric socket, is it covered to be weatherproof.
Steve Tuma: So there’s a lot more of those details we’re getting into. And I think I’m probably sounding repetitive, but we’re helping someone here build a home and an environment, not just saying, hey, here’s a stack of wood, have fun moving into it. We’re helping them do that. So not everyone’s going to realize the situation of, hey, I want to put an outside grill, that a building department might say, well, what’s the fuel for it? Is the piping going to be the right size? Different things like that. So that’s pretty cool.
And then let’s just go back to this thing. Suddenly you have a patio, say a regular deck, and then someone’s like, oh, you know, we’re in a sunny area. We want to make it a three-season room. Suddenly you put a roof over it. Is that insulated? Is that a cathedral ceiling? Is there a ceiling fan in that cathedral ceiling of the porch roof? Are there outside heaters, outside coolers? It’s pretty amazing how, hey, let’s just make a barbecue area in the back and suddenly it becomes a little bit of an atmosphere where they like the idea of us being able to design it in. And that’s kind of fun. And that’s just part of our service is kind of making sure that everything goes through well. And that’s because we choose to help people with one of the harder parts, which is designing the house right so that it’s easy for a building department to understand and approve the process.
Interviewer: I think that, uh, I think you hit on some important parts of this whole process in that last, uh, that last little exchange we just had because, uh, you’re building a place where people are going to build memories. So you’re, you know, that’s the thing. And it’s, that’s what I like about Landmark Home and Land Company. You’re not just as you said throwing sticks together. You understand what’s going to happen in this home once it’s built and what it is.
Steve Tuma: Ya, what’s interesting is, you know, 15-20 years ago, people were building homes for their family, moving up, moving to a new area, wanting a more efficient home, whatever. I would say ever since the economic crash in ’08 and even now with, with, uh, you know, the COVID, you know, a couple of years ago, uh, there, there’s more and more people involved in what I call heirloom houses where the land has been in the family for a long time. So the family—and the family could be two, three, and sometimes four generations—are working on a design or, oddly enough, unfortunately, we’ve had two where chalets were burned in the mountains up in the Western States and the family’s rebuilding the home that grandpa built way back. But it’s got to be to, you know, modern things. The family might be bigger. The family might not be in a formal dining room now; that might be in a big great room. Right. So we’re working with a variety of projects where it’s different generations of the family that are involved. So it’s a little bit of, hey, let’s make sure grandma and grandpa can get in early, but hey, let’s also make sure that there’s a spot to the side where the little kids can get a little loud. And so the—sometimes that’s floor planning. Sometimes that’s going through and saying, hey, let’s put some insulation in the grandparents’ walls between the grandparents’ room and, you know, other parts of the home. So it’s kind of interesting. And sometimes, like say in the case of like a fire rebuild, sometimes there’s very strict guidelines. Like you can rebuild the exact same footprint or the exact same square footage, you know, that we have to work with. Other times it’s, you know, it’s an open platform to design whatever you want.
Interviewer: Yeah. So well, that’s going to wrap it up for this edition of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. But before I let you go, Steve, as we usually do here on the podcast, tell our listeners how we can contact Landmark Home and Land Company and how we can find out a little more about the company and about how, you know, people can become a home owner builder.
Steve Tuma: Well, these podcasts I think are great. You get a flavor of how we can help. I think you said this was episode 56. There are more of these podcasts, but there’s also our website at LHLC.com. It’s kind of the initials—Landmark Home Land Company. So LHLC.com. There’s a variety of plans, just different conversations on things. You can email us there. And there’s a phone number—1-800-830-9788. 800-830-9788. And Mike will work with you from there. I kind of take over when someone’s coming along and wanting to do the plan details, but that’s the best thing. Look at the website, get ideas but we are always available. You can call Michael, work with you in the initial stages, talk to you about your land, your project, what your kind of vision is. And there’s nothing wrong with calling, you know, some people call because they want to start today. Other people are planning two, three, four years out. So, you know, there’s nothing wrong with taking time to understand the process and we’ll work with people, you know, if they’re going to do it a few years out also because the big pre-planning is also important. Sometimes it takes people, you know, to find the right land or there’s something going on with zoning or whatever in the process. So that’s the best thing. Look at the website, give us a call, and we’ll do everything we can to walk you through the process.
Steve Tuma: And yeah, remember the planning up front will make it easier for people.
Interviewer: That’s right.
Steve Tuma: The building process. And that’s why we’re here to help you.
Interviewer: And there it is. I want to thank all of you who’ve been faithfully downloading and listening to the recently become listeners of the program. Welcome aboard. And well, that’s going to do it for us today. So for Steve Tuma and myself, here’s wishing you a positive and productive day and week ahead and we will see you next time. Thanks again, Steve.
Steve Tuma: Yeah, thanks. This was a lot of fun. Thank you.
