Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show

A: Construction loans release funds in stages (called draws) as specific building milestones are completed rather than paying out all at once. You only pay interest on the money that has actually been disbursed. Once the build is finished, the loan typically converts into a standard long-term mortgage.

A: No, you do not need an approved loan before starting the design process. In fact, lenders require detailed architectural blueprints, structural engineering, and an accurate construction budget before they will approve an owner-builder loan or conduct an appraisal.

A: Lenders look for organizational preparedness and risk management. Coming to the bank with a complete, permit-ready set of plans and a structured budget demonstrates that you are serious and prepared, making lenders far more comfortable approving your project.

A: Appraisers rely on precise blueprints to determine the future value of a home before it is built. Clear, accurate plan sets with explicit structural and design details allow appraisers to evaluate the full scope of the build, resulting in a more accurate and favorable appraisal.

A: Yes, lenders frequently allow you to use existing equity in your land toward the required down payment for a construction loan. If you own the property outright or have paid down a significant portion, that equity counts toward your financial contribution for the build.

Steve Tuma: And when an appraiser sees a clear and accurate set of plans, they know what’s being appraised, so they can be more specific and likely give a better value.

Interviewer: Welcome everybody to Episode 81 of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show.

With me, as he usually is, 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 you doing, man?

Steve Tuma: Good, good. We’ve got a different one today, different topic. We’ve talked about a lot — design, the panelization, building departments, the efficiencies of building a precision‑built panelized home. But we’re talking money, financing today.

Interviewer: Finally. I’ve been dreading bringing this up because it’s like so many people today, it’s like money is a big thing. But I thought, well, maybe this is the perfect time.

So I thought we’d chat about — before building a new home — what’s the financing process for a build project? I mean, financing, as I said, scares a lot of owner‑builders away before they even start. So today I’d like to go through how construction loans work, what lenders look for when they’re funding a panelized home build project, and how, as with anything, good preparation helps a lot.

In short, what sort of things are lenders looking for when making a decision on whether or not to even give out a loan on a panelized home build?

Steve Tuma: Well, here’s the interesting thing. Some people pay cash — they borrow money from their retirement funds, have a rich uncle, win the lottery, whatever it may be. Or, a lot of people, they sell a home and they have the proceeds to build their next home.

So there’s a variety of different ways that people get the money to build their own home. We’ve also had a lot of people that just build it with what they have. So they’ll say, “Hey, this year I’m going to do the foundation, get the framing up. Next year I’m going to finish the inside.” And maybe it’ll take them nine months, a year, a year and a half, two or three years — but then at the end of it they’ve got a home without a mortgage.

It might take a little longer, depending on the individual family’s financing needs or financing picture, but there are different options. So not everyone chooses to go through financing routes if they have different avenues.

But if they do go through financing — the typical bank situation — generally I’ve found that they tell me that they’ve gotten their better deals with smaller local banks. They’re just more in touch with the community, what’s going on in a community, and their charters, I believe, are just more set up to take care of people.

The USDA also has some loans for rural properties that are more advantageous for people in rural areas, to make sure people live in rural areas — because sometimes big banks don’t always work with that. And then there’s also credit unions. A lot of customers use credit unions. They just seem to offer different flexibilities. And what customers tell me, and from what I’ve experienced, is they just get better deals as well. It’s kind of interesting.

So it’s kind of in the viewpoint of the bank. Some people say, “Well, I talked to my bank — they don’t do owner‑builder loans.” Well, maybe for your financial position they aren’t, but it’s always worth asking. There are banks that customers are able to get owner‑builder loans.

And basically what it is — some banks are just concerned, “Is the person going to finish?” There’s, in my opinion, a fictitious idea that an owner‑builder isn’t motivated to build their home. I think that’s weird because owner‑builders are building their home for their own family, their own personal gain, and it’s something that they choose to do.

But what’s interesting, what we’ve seen, is sometimes banks will be a little skittish if a customer is not organized.

Interviewer: Oh, right. Yeah.

Steve Tuma: So that’s where it is. When they see our set of plans — all the different details, the thought processes, the budget that a customer can put together with our plans — they think, “They’re serious.”

Because sometimes what happens — owner‑builders will try to save money in the wrong place. They’ll be like, “Well, I’m not going to get a real set of plans. I’m just going to get a copy of this incomplete set of plans from the internet, turn it in. And then, if they give me financing, then I’m going to get a real set of plans.” Well, that just shows that it’s not thought out. The details aren’t there.

In order to have an accurate budget, you need to have a complete and accurate set of plans. And that’s where we’re able to help them — so that when they apply for the loan, there’s a complete set of plans with the details they need, so that a bank can then review the plans and say, “Hey, we know what’s being built, therefore we can get an appraisal to see how it works.”

And when an appraiser sees a clear and accurate set of plans, they know what’s being appraised, so they can be more specific and likely give a better value. And then the bank will also look at the plans to review your budget.

So someone could go through and say — you know, the bank might have different ways of calculating what they believe a foundation should cost, or what drywall should cost, or whatever it may be — to go through and verify that it’s a sensible thing.

Sometimes where people are a little skittish around financing is it’s like the bank’s looking at you in a sense of passing judgment — “Does it work?” Well, if you’re organized, you know what you’re doing, you have a well‑thought‑out plan, and you’re being realistic — that’s the type of customer a bank does want.

What they don’t want is someone saying, “Well, you know, Uncle Joe’s going to show up and work for free, and this guy’s going to show up over here, and this guy’s going to help me.” It just doesn’t make sense.

So what they want is someone that’s really thought it through. And customers are successful in getting loans. Of course there’s typical loan things like your credit score, job histories, things like that — where the bank is just looking to make sure that they have, you know, someone that’s in the right position. No one wants to set someone up for failure, including a bank.

Now, I will agree that sometimes banks are a little funny to work with. Sometimes they ask for the same documents over, or they need this, or they need that, or they need deeper information — and maybe what the person up front is telling you compared to the underwriters, the story’s a little bit different. But that’s the nature of the bank, and people just need to see that, “Hey, the bank’s wanting to make sure that they have a good loan so that a customer has the right financing to properly build a house.”

With our great set of plans, our support system, we’re able to help a customer put the details together so that their conversations and processes of applying for a loan and getting the loan are clear. So, you know, we’re here to help. We understand financing. We understand the whole scope of building a home.

So we’re always available if a customer has a question saying, “Hey, what did the bank mean by this?” or “Why are they doing this?” We can help them through the process, because sometimes it’s — if you haven’t been involved with financing a lot, you’re going down a path you haven’t seen. So it might be a little different, and we’re here to offer some clarification.

Interviewer: How much of a hand, if any, does Landmark take in even advising before an owner‑builder begins the process? Or do they need to already have that loan in hand before calling you guys? How does that work?

Steve Tuma: We’re very flexible. We’re here to help the customer for the help that they need.

So if someone’s never applied for a loan before, we’ll talk to them, give them an understanding of what the bank is likely to look for, how we help, the information they’ll need, to what degree they’ll need — from the experiences that we’ve seen.

And other people come through and say, “Hey, Steve, I have the money, let’s go. Let’s go make it happen.”

So just like your builders — sometimes we have customers that have never built, sometimes we have customers that have built multiple homes with us. So we’re here to help them fill in where they need help.

It’s one of these things that, you know, sometimes people think, “Oh, it’s the bank, I’m a little intimidated.” And it’s like — you shouldn’t be intimidated. The bank needs your business. The bank is chartered to help the community. The bank is there to give liquidity, so that you can sell your house and — if someone needs a loan — they can buy your house, then in turn you can buy a new home.

So it’s an important part of the process. I think what it is — a lot of people don’t understand it because it’s not something you deal with every day. You deal with filling your car up with gas, or getting electric in it, or going to the grocery store, or going to the dentist, so you’re used to it. But how many times do you apply for a loan to build a new house?

We understand the complete process, so if a customer ever needs help, we’re here to help them. So it’s not just, “Hey, let’s sell them a panelized home system.” It’s: let’s help them understand the process.

And through the process of financing, if they need it, understanding what the building department wants, getting the plans done right, working with civil engineers, looking at their land — make sure the house fits — helping them sort out where the utilities are, what the energy codes are.

So this is it — we’re kind of like that coach, you know, the little angel on their shoulder, to help them through the process with whatever help they need.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Tuma: And it’s an amazing process. What’s interesting is, people that understand it — they’re like, “Man, you really help.” But people that maybe aren’t as experienced understanding it — maybe they’ve watched a show or did a little bit of research — once they see it, we’re able to bridge that gap of what they don’t understand, or shorten the learning curve so it’s easier for them to understand and see how everything ties together.

See how the financing ties to your budget, to your schedule, to the cost of materials, and then how — you know — the schedule of what you want to put together so that you’ve got a successful home build.

And because we’ve done it so much, we will take the time so that a customer understands what’s going on in the process. We’re not a company that just sells you a piece of wood and says, “Hey, good luck.” We’re here throughout the process.

I keep in touch with customers even after we’ve delivered the home, even after they’ve completely framed it, just to see how they’re doing. “Is there anything we can help?” And invariably they’ll be like, “Well, I had a little glitch here, hey something here…” and we’re able to help move it along.

We enjoy what we do. It’s a lot of fun. And it’s just cool seeing — you know — helping a customer get a home. And you know, it’s kind of cool also — sometimes we’re sitting there, it’s Sunday night, taking it easy, and someone sends a message and says, “Hey Steve, here we are, it’s our first Christmas,” or, “Hey, here we are, we’re all ready for the delivery tomorrow morning.”

So we’re here to help people. And you know, we get all types of questions, and we’ve got a lot of experience to give them a specific answer to the specific question that they have, of how it applies to their building site — which I think they’ll find very helpful and important: how they ask a question, what’s the answer for what they’re trying to achieve. That’s where we can help. It’s cool.

Interviewer: Back to loans for a minute. Is there a specific type of loan that a panelized home builder would want to be trying to line up, or is there a variety of loan types?

Steve Tuma: Generally a typical construction loan. It’s applying — the bank may categorize things differently if you’re buying a modular, if you’re buying a panelized home — but generally panelized falls right within stick‑built.

So there’s nothing really that different on their application and working with the bank. It’s just generally a construction loan.

Now, I should clarify that the construction loan is where the bank is paying money out to build. So they might have a time period — nine months, a year, six months, whatever it is — and then they distribute the money according to a schedule.

The schedule may be a percentage of completion, or it might be a line item — basically saying, “Hey, once you do excavation and the foundation, we’ll issue money for that,” and then they go through the processes. So that’s the type of loan that they have.

And then once the home is done, they generally have another loan — just the typical mortgage: 10, 15, 20, 30 years, whatever it is that makes sense for the customer. That’s generally the position that they buy.

But there are some banks that do one‑close. So you lock in, say, your 20‑ or 30‑year mortgage, and maybe 6–9 months or a year’s construction where they’re putting money out, and then the balance is where you pay it back. So sometimes there’s differences in the way that the banks structure them — if it’s a one‑close or a two‑close loan.

And there are companies that specialize in construction loans only — you know, for owner‑builders and different situations — and sometimes those make sense. But the majority of customers just go to a local credit union or bank that they may have a relationship with, or maybe they find a new one.

So the banking is something that — it might take a little bit of extra work and understanding to get through it, but customers are able to do it. It really isn’t the actual application. They need to know your credit and all those things, just like you would with any mortgage. The difference with construction is you’re building something, so they need to know what you’re building, and the costs, and how the money is distributed through the building processes.

Interviewer: What about buying the land? Or is the land usually purchased first, or can it be one big deal? How does it usually work? Is the land there first before the home loan is secured, or is it usually all in one?

Steve Tuma: Well, it depends on the person — the customer’s situation. Some customers own the land — they’ve had it for a while, they inherited it, they bought it, or maybe they just bought it.

So sometimes the land is purchased through the construction loan. They’ll find a piece of land, work with the bank, and say, “Hey, we’re going to close in 60 days.” We get them all the details so that — you know, for the house — they go to financing, they close the land, and move forward. So the actual payment would be at the land closing.

And other times, if they own the land — or they own the land in name but there’s a little bit to be paid off — the bank will pay the balance off so that they’re in first‑lien position. The bank wants to be in first‑lien position so that they, in a sense, control the financing of the project.

And then they go through.

Now, to backstep a little bit, generally banks want a down payment — whether it’s 5 percent, 10, 20, whatever it may be for their guidelines. Generally it’s 10–20 percent. Sometimes there are more aggressive programs.

They’ll want the customer to put their money in first. So sometimes it’s actual cash if they need to close on the land. Other times it can be equity in the land.

So the down payment could be the value that’s already present in the land.

I don’t want to get too deep, because some of this can be complex. But basically, the bank can put a loan on land that you own. They can put a loan on land that you own but maybe owe a little bit. Or they can work on a complete piece of land that you still have to take ownership of at the closing of when you purchase the land. And then they distribute money.

There’s a lot of different ways. Some banks will also do what’s called a bridge loan. If you have an existing home with equity, they’ll work with you on the financing of your existing home to get equity to build a new home. And then you could sell your first home when you’re ready.

Now, someone’s got to be in a stronger financial position to do that. And depending upon how the bank works, there are ways to work these different bridge loans.

So things like that — they can be a little bit bank‑by‑bank, and financial position of each customer is specific, and the bank will provide different flexibilities just on what the deal is.

But the financing is a very important part of it.

Now sometimes people say, “Well, the interest rate of the construction loan is a little higher.” It’s like, well, the bank’s doing other services — they’re issuing checks, they’re doing inspections. And then, for that time period — say the 6–9 months or a year — the dollars out really aren’t that big.

And people generally only pay interest on the money that’s actually distributed.

So if they have a $400,000 loan, they’re not paying interest on $400,000. Say they’ve put $20,000 out — you pay interest on the $20,000. And say in three weeks you ask for $40,000, then you’re paying interest on the $20,000 plus the $40,000 — $60,000.

So the accumulation of the interest is not as bad as people may initially think if they don’t understand how it’s structured. Banks actually provide a very good value, and there’s a lot of good banks out there. People just have to find one that makes sense for their scenario and get it put together.

Interviewer: Well, aside from all we’ve discussed here today, tell me — just you, Steve Tuma, President of Landmark Home and Land Company — what’s the one best piece of advice you might give to a potential homeowner‑builder before they go seeking a loan?

Steve Tuma: Have your ducks in a row. I mean, really — that’s it. What are you building?

Don’t go to them with some sketch that you drew yourself. Don’t go to them with an incomplete set of plans without details. Don’t go to them with something you just printed off the website thinking that you’re saving money. It’s a garbage‑in, garbage‑out type thing.

So you want to have a well‑thought‑out process of a house that’s sensible for your financing.

Now, some people say, “Hey, I don’t understand how a bank does the financing.” You can always call them and get a pre‑qualification, which is basically where they’ll talk to you and say:

And they’ll go through and come up and say, “Hey, you’re good for X amount of money.” Sometimes they do that right on a phone call.

Just go through and say, “Hey, you’re here.” Then there’s the pre‑approval, where they’re kind of going through and gathering documents to verify that.

So if someone says they make $90,000 a year, they want to know that you’re making $90,000 a year. They’ll check with your employer, they’ll check your credit, they’ll check your bills, and then they’ll re‑verify that.

So the best thing to do is really just be organized. Just as if someone was coming to you to help you. If someone said, “Hey, can you help me next week with something?” you’re going to be like, “Well, what are you talking about?” Compared to, “Hey, can you help me next week with this, this, and this?” You’re able to help that person better.

And it’s the same thing with the bank. So if you make a claim that you have so much money, your documents should verify it.

And then, when you go in there with a set of plans — having an accurate set of plans so it’s easy for the loan officer to understand what you’re doing — they can then properly package it for the underwriters. And if the underwriters understand it, it makes sense. There’s just a better chance that you’re going to get a better loan out of it.

So sometimes people get a little frustrated. A bank will say, “Hey, can you send me these documents again?” They’ll be like, “Well, I gave them to you already.” But documents have a life. They may only have a 30‑day life — like a credit report. If for some reason the processing is a little longer, or something’s going on, they may have to pull another one, or they might have to get job verifications or whatever.

So sometimes customers might be a little frustrated, but that’s the nature of banking and the time it takes for them to go through and get things put together. Getting a good loan is part of the financial picture.

Oh, and by the way, a lot of people are owner‑builders because of the equity that they can gain while building and the money savings.

Interviewer: Oh, right.

Steve Tuma: So, for example, if someone says, “Hey, you know, this would be a $400,000 build, but they’re able to do work, do things, save money, and do it for $300,000,” the value of that $100,000 savings over the life of the loan could be $200,000 or $300,000 in interest over the long term.

So shopping the right loan is actually a long‑term financial decision that can help people.

So people aren’t just building their own home to:

They’re doing it because of the financial situation and the money savings and the savings of payments to the bank over time. So it’s pretty cool.

If someone wants to get a little deeper in that, we can get into details, or we can work with their banker to get more specific numbers. But it’s an important part of it.

Interviewer: I can see that you’ve spent a lot of time and a lot of years learning all this stuff.

Steve Tuma: Yeah. Well, it’s kind of interesting — once you look at it, you go, “Oh, that’s pretty simple.” But I can understand where someone’s sitting there going, “Okay, I gotta build a house, we gotta do plans, I gotta get contractors, I gotta do this, I gotta deal with the bank — what is it?”

But I think we’re able to put some sanity to it by breaking it down and how it goes together, how they work together, and the prioritization of what you need to take care of and the sequence of how you’re able to.

And I think that’s what’s there.

Like I mentioned before, we’re not just a panel supplier. A lot of people might find us going, “Oh, panelized homes,” or however they find us online, or through references, through friends or recommendations, or whatever it may be. We’re really helping them with the complete project of getting from the concept of building your home to making sure it’s built right.

And that is a huge value that I’m not sure every customer, when they initially contact us, always realizes — the level of support that we supply.

You go to a lumberyard — yeah, they’ll sell you a piece of wood. Maybe it’s even good for your project, maybe it isn’t. It’s: what are you doing?

So let’s look at the broad view of your house — in a sense, let’s look at the forest, but let’s zoom in and look at the plant, let’s look at the tree. Let’s understand what’s going on.

That’s the key element of it. And tying all this stuff together — it’s actually pretty exciting. When someone can sit back and go, “Steve, I’m saving $75,000, $100,000 building this house. And over the course of my mortgage it’s going to save me $200,000 or $300,000.”

So what more sophisticated customers do is — let’s just say that there’s a certain payment — the money that they save by having a lower payment by building their own home, they go invest that — in the stock market, buy another piece of real estate, whatever it might be.

So the financial accumulation of wealth over time is there. And the American dream is owning a home — and that’s where a big portion of your retirement is.

It’s kind of an amazing thing if someone really sits back to say, “Hey, this is how owner‑builders are helped, especially with Landmark Home and Land Company’s process, to see the significant pivot point and how it can help make for a brighter future for a family.” It’s pretty amazing.

It’s interesting to look back and go, “Wow, these people just didn’t get a house — a place to sleep — but how it shifted the trajectory of their life.” That’s pretty amazing. It’s one of the coolest parts of the business.

Interviewer: Fantastic.

Well, that’s going to do it for this episode of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. But before we let you go, once again, Steve, tell our listeners how they can find out more about Landmark Home and Land Company and what you guys are doing over there.

Steve Tuma: We’ve got a pretty cool website at LHLC.com. There’s a lot of information there where people can look at it, get ideas, contact us, and find out specifically how it applies to their project — for their piece of land, for the home that they want to build.

Our website is LHLC.com. So again, that’s LHLC.com.

There’s a variety of videos on there. These podcasts are on there. Discussions on how we help, the materials we supply, our customization capabilities, and other details.

And the cool thing is, there’s thousands of plans. So someone could go through there and say, “Hey, I want a Victorian, I want a farmhouse, I want a ranch.” Go through a selection, pick a house out they like. They can send us an email, we’ll get them details and pricing. And then, if it’s something that kind of makes sense for them, we can continue the conversation at their convenience and get into the details of:

So we’re very customer‑service oriented, and we enjoy what we do. So we’ll take the time to go through and make sure that a customer understands what it is, so that they can make the decision and understand the value that Landmark Home and Land Company supplies to owner‑builders.

By the way, owner‑builders are called self‑builders, do‑it‑yourselfers — there’s a variety of different words — but we’re here to help people. And we have helped professional builders as well: smaller developers, family teams that get together and build houses, or they build for other family members, or the father and the cousin will go through and do an investment property.

So we can help people and we enjoy what we do. We want to help people and talk to them and let them know what we do so that they can make their best decision to move forward.

Interviewer: Excellent, man. Once again, there you have it.

Thank you again, Steve, and thanks to all of you for listening to another informative episode of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show.

So for Landmark Home and Land Company President Steve Tuma and myself, have a great week and we will see you next time.

Thanks again, Steve.

Steve Tuma: Thank you. Have a great day.

A: During the initial call, Steve reviews your project location, local building code requirements, target budget, lifestyle needs, and chosen home style. This initial conversation clarifies whether your ideas align with site conditions and financial goals before moving into formal drafting.

A: The purchase agreement locks in a guaranteed package price for your preliminary architectural plans, custom plan revisions, final permit drawings, site-specific engineering, and delivered panelized framing package. This protects your budget against inflation, lumber price fluctuations, and unexpected drafting fees while your plans are developed.

A: Landmark handles drafting, structural engineering, and energy compliance as a single unified process rather than passing drawings between separate professionals. This ensures the structural framing, roof load calculations, foundation details, and energy performance codes match perfectly, preventing permit rejections and on-site construction clashes.

A: Wall panels, floor systems, and roof trusses are precision-built on production lines in a climate-controlled factory environment using computerized cutting tools. The components are framed, sheathed according to engineer specifications, labeled, and bundled systematically to ensure rapid, error-free assembly on site.

A: The pre-engineered components are loaded onto flatbed trucks in reverse order of assembly and delivered directly to your job site. The bundles can be unloaded and positioned near your foundation using a standard forklift, gooseneck forklift, or small boom crane, keeping the site organized and ready for immediate framing.

Steve Tuma: And that’s what I call doing the homework up front. We’re designing it, making sure it’s right for the customer’s needs and sensibility of building it.

Interviewer: Hello everyone, and welcome to Episode 80 of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show.

With me as usual 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’s it going, buddy?

Steve Tuma: It’s a great day again. It’s always a good day to talk about panelized homes and how we can help people.

Interviewer: It’s always a great day. It’s always sunny and happy. When is there not a good day to talk about building homes?

Steve Tuma: Exactly. Today’s a better one though.

Interviewer: The past few episodes of the podcast we’ve talked a lot about concepts and the basics of panelized home building, and I thought we’d continue that today by having you dig deeper and take us step by step through the process of just how a panelized home is built and constructed.

And of course, no one on the planet is better qualified to take us on that journey than Steve Tuma.

Are you good with that?

Steve Tuma: Yeah. It’s a lot of detail, so we’ll probably give a quick overview, and then as customers call in or work with us on getting plans going and the whole process, we can get into the finer details. But yeah, definitely — this is one with a lot of information.

Interviewer: Excellent. So I thought we’d do this as a, like I said, journey‑type thing. Imagine that me — I’m a customer, and I’ve decided to work with Landmark. I give you guys a call and say, “Okay, let’s do this.” So walk us through this. What happens during that initial call?

Steve Tuma: Well, that initial call is pretty interesting because initially we’ll talk generalities of:

So those are the general ideas that we’ll discuss, to kind of fine‑tune the process and bring the details together so that we can get a grasp on what’s exactly going on with what the customer wants to do. And then we can sort out the best way to help them.

It’s also, “Where are they building?” Because if you go build a house in Iowa, the codes and details are generally different than if you do something in like Florida, or New York, or California, or Texas, or any of the other states.

So we like to get an understanding of what it is so we can fine‑tune how we can best support and help a customer develop their project and move the project along.

So that’s basically what we do. And then from there, we get into discussions on their timeline — when they want to start, what type of foundation, types of windows, types of roofing systems. Do they have different ideas for heating and cooling, and all those details.

At some point they’ll say, “Hey Steve, let’s start. Let’s do this.”

So we have a simple purchase agreement — kind of outlines the cost. Oh, by the way, we give a guaranteed cost for the house package. So that’s pretty cool. People can rely on that for:

Then we put the package together for them so they’ll have the plans to submit for permits. And after the permits are issued, we then put the home package into actual production.

So that’s it.

Now, as far as how this all starts — there’s the actual production of the panelized home package, and then there’s also the, “How do you actually build the house?”

So the actual construction of the panelized home package is done in our production facilities, where basically what we’re doing is creating a more efficient process of stick‑building. Okay, so it’s not a modular unit where two halves come out or four different pieces come out to make a unit. It’s more like an efficient stick‑building process.

So they’ll make the wall panels in a production facility so that every panel is pre‑made — so basically, when assembling a home package, they’re putting wall panel one up, wall panel two up, wall panel three, going around. Instead of conventional stick‑building where they’re getting the wood, cutting it, measuring it, putting all the details, making a wall there and then assembling it.

So it’s a better‑controlled atmosphere, building it off‑site. And what that allows us to do is also have the assembly on‑site considerably quicker. Some people say it’s half the time, maybe even a little bit quicker.

The roof system is built with roof trusses, like conventional stick‑built roof trusses, and then we supply the materials for any floor systems, the roof sheathing, sub‑fascia, bracing materials and other details. We’re basically supplying the complete wood structure of a home.

Again, the key to it is that it’s a more efficient method of stick‑building, so we can go through and do truly custom design. We’re not limited by the production facilities like in modulars, where they have to go down a production line and the units have to be rectangular within certain specifications.

We can go through and do a truly custom home. Whether it’s something of a more simple design — like the typical American ranch home — or something where someone wants to get into a late‑1800s Victorian, or you want to get into mid‑century modern homes, prairie‑style designs, very modern designs — we can work with all those designs to go through and completely architecturally and structurally design the home package so it’s easy to assemble on site.

This is the point that I’m not sure customers completely understand — the amount of work it takes to properly design a home for any stick‑building or our panelized system:

A lot of people think there’s this magic button where plans just magically appear. No — we’re actually going through to make sure the house will go together. That allows for quicker assembly on site. Your stick framer is not out there deciding what a house will look like.

The reason I say that is people don’t always understand that not all plans are the same. So someone could have a set of plans that looks good, but the details aren’t there. We’ve actually had plans where people have purchased them — wherever they got them, whether it’s online, or some local person drew it up, or someone did it — where the details to build the house are not there.

And the customer will say, “Well, hey, but my building department approved it.” I’m like, well, your building department is not looking for buildability and “Does it make sense?” They’re looking for general code concerns: Is it safe? Does it comply with the codes? Are the hallways the right width? Is there space around toilets? Do you have egress windows?

That’s what they’re looking for. They’re not always looking to make sure that your beams fit within floor systems and give you the architectural feature.

And that’s why sometimes people say, “Oh, building a house — it’s a lot of work, there’s always changes.” It’s like, well, sometimes there’s a lot of changes because it wasn’t planned right. And that is what we work to avoid.

We want to do the right set of plans, where it is thought out, so that when they’re framing, they’re assembling — they’re not out there doing changes, adjusting things. Because those changes and adjustments adjust your schedule, and they also affect your budget. People don’t realize it. It doesn’t have to be a list of constant changes when you’re building a home. A well‑thought‑out home — you should be able to minimize those.

And that’s what happens in our process, where we’re kind of — what I call — doing the homework up front. We’re designing it, making sure it’s right for the customer’s needs, the land, the code issues, building department, and sensibility of building it — make sure it’s an efficient design, whether it’s a simple home or a very complex home.

And those are the things that are really cool, because people see — whether it’s a simpler home or a more complex home — how it just goes together. So the framers can frame, instead of having to sit back and go, “Hey, what’s going on here? The plans aren’t clear.”

So people don’t understand that not all plans are the same, and there isn’t necessarily a standard of care in the industry. We happen to go to a higher level of standard of care to make sure that the plans are complete, so:

It’s very clear on the plans, so you don’t run into situations of, “Uh oh, who did this?”

It’s interesting. A lot of times people say, “Well, I had this person do plans.” And I’m like, “Great — let’s look at them. Let’s see if the details are there.” And invariably, they’re not. That’s why we’re here — to get it put together.

Because ultimately we give a guaranteed price so a customer understands what’s being supplied and the cost. That is a tremendous benefit to their budget, timeline, schedule — and also avoiding headaches.

So there’s a lot going on in these last five minutes, so people may want to rewind it. But basically what I’m saying is:

That’s a very key element in the whole process that we have.

So basically our planning allows for a panelized home package which is very precision‑built, exactly what you want, and to an exact specification — so you know exactly what you’re paying for. And that’s the cool thing about it.

Now, the actual building of the home on site — so we covered kind of a quick overview of the design and the panelization process in the production facility and what we supply. But the actual building on site is very similar to a conventional stick‑built home.

So, installing a foundation is the same. We’ll have the complete set of plans for your foundation, which is of extreme help to people in understanding the cost of the budget, make sure that the house fits on the land. It just minimizes the risk of issues.

But then we supply the panelized home package that the framer just installs — the components — instead of necessarily having to cut materials to make walls or cut materials to make roof systems. So that’s what we’re able to supply.

And then the actual installing of roofing, windows, fascia, soffit, siding, plumbing—

Interviewer: Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves, because you’re giving us a lot of information real quick — which is a good thing, but I’m sure like you said, people are going to want to go back. But we can kind of backtrack ourselves here.

So we have our plans and our permits — they’re all in order. Then the land has been chosen with a lot of guidance from you, to make sure the land is going to fit the house and vice versa. And then those plans — they go to the factory, and that’s where construction begins, correct?

Steve Tuma: Yes, of the panelized package. Exactly right.

Interviewer: So the assembly there in the factory — they’re pretty… if I walked into the factory, it would look to me like they’re building a house.

Steve Tuma: Oh, exactly. Exactly.

Interviewer: Okay.

Steve Tuma: You’d see wall panels. It’s just in a controlled atmosphere inside of a production facility, instead of out in the weather or on a sloped piece of land, which is harder to build.

Interviewer: Right. And it’s not robots. There are guys in there hammering away, right?

Steve Tuma: Yeah, there are. There’s guys putting materials in the saws, those saws cutting the materials, labeling the materials so that they can say, “Hey, that was stud number three for wall 15.” So that’s all labeled. And also for the roof trusses, those materials are also put together, cut, put together so everything’s there.

So in a sense, when you say the actual putting together — there’s a flat table where they’ll lay out the pieces for the walls, put them together, and then nailing guns will go through and nail the sheathing on there to create a wall panel. So there’s an automated process to it, but there is still human involvement in kind of setting it up.

Interviewer: And the thing is — it seems to me, people can get a little put off by certain… like, if you say, “It goes to the factory,” that’s what I mean. People need to understand that these are houses. They’re wooden houses. So any way it’s constructed, that’s got to save a lot of time.

Like, let’s just say weather — if you’re inside in a factory and there are carpenters and they’re building a house, that’s got to save a lot of time and a lot of potential for a hurricane coming along and slowing you down.

Steve Tuma: Right. Oh yeah — I mean hurricanes, things like that do happen. They do kind of come up. But basically what it does is it gives the framers control of putting the home together, because they don’t have to sit out there and do a bunch of calculations as much as stick‑building.

They’re just basically looking at our assembly plans, which show:

All the details for a particular house.

I said that in the wrong order, but it’d be:

The key to that is: each truss is labeled. Each wall panel is labeled. So they can see where it goes. And we supply an assembly sheet that shows where each component goes, but also what each component looks like.

It’s amazing. It sounds kind of complex, but I think once people see the plans, they’re like, “Wow, this is easy.” It all kind of goes together pretty well.

Interviewer: Why do you suppose there aren’t more people doing it this way? I mean, this just seems logical to me.

Steve Tuma: Well, it’s kind of one of these things — the evolution of business. If you look at building homes and you went back to homes from the 1700s, early 1800s, the building processes are very, very similar.

I mean, when you look at the time that it takes — say, compared to a computer business, it seems computer businesses can change overnight, where homebuilding… if you took a house from the early 1800s, the structure’s very similar.

The difference is more in the engineered materials. Back then, if they needed a beam, they’d go cut a tree down and you’d end up with some beam — whatever, a 4×10 or 6×6 or whatever it was they cut. Where in today’s world, you might build up 2x materials, or go LVLs or glulam materials to make different beams.

But the general structure of:

Now, sheathing — back then, they might have not added a lot, or they’d come up with a 1x material or 2x material to make wall sheathing. Now it’s going to be like OSB or plywood. But if you looked at it in general, it really hasn’t changed over a couple hundred years.

So what we’ve done is we’ve made the efficiency of it come together.

So yes, it makes sense. If you look at pretty much everything in the world, the processes have gotten better to manufacture something or create something — whether it’s a car, whether it’s a rocket, whether it’s clothes — the systems get better. But building, in a sense, is still a little bit of an old trade.

And just the way knowledge gets distributed — kind of person‑to‑person, on site — it’s just a different process.

Interviewer: Got it.

Steve Tuma: And I think it’s also one of these things — as labor gets expensive, quality of labor is theoretically down. This process allows people to understand and control their building process and budget, and minimize the need for very expensive labor on site.

So you kind of need one main framer and then a couple laborers to help put it together. People don’t have to be out there being mathematical geniuses and doing stuff. Everything’s thought out. It’s just, “Put this wall here.” You’ve got to square it, plumb it up, make sure it’s fine — but it’s not as complex as it would have been 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago.

Interviewer: Sure. Yeah, once you go through it — that’s why I wanted to do this episode where we go through step by step so people could understand exactly what it is we’re talking about here.

Builders are different today. If you rewind 40, 50 years ago, a builder might have actually been the guy — he’s putting the foundation in, he’s putting the walls up, he’s putting the roof on, him and his team. A lot of builders now are more general contractors that are hiring other people to do it.

Steve Tuma: Right, right. More specialized.

So it’s just more complex codes, just the way the labor force is, the way volume of business is. So the actual way that a general contractor works now compared to decades ago is considerably different.

Interviewer: So then, when it’s put together, everything has to eventually go onto a delivery truck, right? A big — I would imagine big, like a semi‑truck.

Steve Tuma: Right. That’s exactly what it is. So we deliver them on flatbed trucks — just the semis that you see every day on the highway. The truck goes directly to the building site.

We predetermine a delivery‑time range. It might be like, “Hey, Tuesday in the morning between 8 and 10 the truck will show up.” The truck driver calls the customer when they’re on the road just to fine‑tune details and kind of tighten up the time. And they deliver it.

Then our customer’s framing crew unloads the truck. They generally use an extended‑reach forklift. We suggest getting fork extensions, as it’s easier to pick up the components.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Tuma: And then take them off the truck and set them on the ground.

Now, the components — the wall panels — are bundled together. They’re stacked like pancakes and banded together. So they’ll lift a group of walls, maybe 6 to 10 wall panels in a bundle, pick it up, and put it down.

And then roof trusses are banded together. They’re lifted off the truck and put into place. And then our loose materials are actually bundled, just like you’d see them at a lumberyard, and put in place.

So the key to it is: our assembly plans will let people know, “Hey, this is what’s in bundle one. This is what’s in bundle two,” and they can locate the bundles properly around the building site.

Interviewer: For easy access.

Steve Tuma: Yeah. There’s a lot of thinking in here, and it really, really helps, because the amount of time it will take to assemble a home package like this is way faster, under a better, more controlled, less‑waste environment than if it was stick‑built.

Interviewer: Yeah. It seems like your contractor becomes like a quarterback. He’s the one that has to go cut everything and say, “We’re going to work on this section first.” Or are there different people come in…

Steve Tuma: Well, the actual cutting part — for the floor system they might have to do some, but it’s more the assembly.

So our customer, in a sense, in our process, is kind of the quarterback — and then the contractor is the one that would follow all the plans to put it together.

And what’s interesting is a lot of contractors maybe have never done a panelized home. Afterwards, they’re like, “Wow, that was fast. They like it.” Sometimes they’re not familiar with it or people haven’t heard about it, but after they do it, they’re like, “That was fast.” And they start seeing how that benefits their business, because they can make their money, do their job, and go do the next project.

Interviewer: I would imagine that they must like it a lot.

So, all right — so it’s on the flatbed trucks and it’s ready to go to the build site. Is there — as a customer, a homeowner‑builder, let’s say — how do I prepare for the delivery? Is there anything I need to do to prepare for that truck before it arrives?

Steve Tuma: Well, basically you need a crew to unload, and then an extended‑reach forklift. Some people manually unload — I don’t suggest it. It’s a lot of work. And you’re going to need the equipment anyway to start framing.

So what we do is we set the delivery date at a time that works for the customer and their crew. The truck pulls up. The crew then uses the equipment — some type of forklift — to unload the materials and place them around the building site at a location that makes sense for the assembly of the home package.

The key to that is we can stagger deliveries. They don’t have to take everything all at once.

Interviewer: Ah, that’s interesting.

Steve Tuma: Yeah. So some people, if they have the space, they’re like, “Hey, let’s take it all at once — then it’s there when our crew needs it.” Other people say, “Hey, we have a little restricted delivery area, so let’s take the floor system first, first‑floor walls, second‑floor walls,” whatever it may be. And we work with them to make sure that the materials are there according to the schedule that works for them, so that the assembly process goes through quickly.

You know, it sounds like a lot going on, but it works pretty smoothly. We stay on top of it and we communicate very well with our customers so that they have an understanding of what’s going on and what help they need.

Interviewer: Yeah. But as you’ve been explaining this and laying it out, it’s gotten really clear to me exactly what’s going on. I’m sure people would just appreciate knowing the process, you know.

Steve Tuma: Yeah. Well, someone out there is saying, “But what if it rains? What if it snows? What if this happens? What if that happens?” And amazingly, we’re able to manage it.

Weather forecasts are pretty good. We can work with people on delivery timelines that work. So it’s pretty rare that we actually get stuck in a situation where weather is something of a really negative force. I mean, yeah, things will rain or whatever, but we’re able to work with customers to make sure it’s safe. We want it to be a safe and efficient building process. So we’re here to help.

Interviewer: That’s great. I mean, it’s just — this is one of the most fascinating episodes for me. I don’t know, because it’s just so — you’re laying everything out so well that it’s like, I know everybody else is doing what I’m doing, and that’s — the visuals are in your mind, you know.

Steve Tuma: Yeah.

Interviewer: It’s good.

Steve Tuma: Like you said, “Hey, let’s slow down on the details,” because up front I was probably giving the broad stroke. But there are a lot of details. But, you know, we know what we’re doing. We help the customer get up to speed. And amazingly, a lot of customers have researched this — they understand it.

Interviewer: Oh yeah.

Steve Tuma: So we’re just tightening up the loose ends, like:

So a lot of that is just the communication of working together as a team to getting it taken care of. And it goes smoothly. It’s pretty amazing.

We’ve got a well‑thought‑out process. And we also listen to what the customer needs. So if they have a special need, we’ve done it.

We’ve also run into customers that are in unique situations — their access is on a mountainy, hilly road, or they’re on an island. I’m not saying a peninsula — a lot of people call peninsulas islands. I’m saying island, literally surrounded by water. So how does it get on a barge and over to the island?

Sometimes there’s trucking restrictions on when a home… or a truck can get into a subdivision. Sometimes there’s weather concerns or scheduling concerns, or whatever it may be. But we’ve got a proven system. We’ve been doing it 32 years, so we understand the pitfalls and what we can do to make it of great benefit to our customers.

Interviewer: Okay, so I’m going to bug you just a little more here. After the walls are up, the roof structure is in place — what’s next?

Steve Tuma: Well, generally the building department will inspect it, make sure everything’s fine. And if people follow the plans, they should be. It’s pretty rare that I get a call about an inspection issue. If they do, we’re completely available to help the customer through it, whether it’s something on our side or just an oversight on site.

But generally once it’s framed, the customers then go to what will be like the “dry‑in” stage, which is:

…to seal it up from weather.

They’ll do that, and then they’ll start maybe putting the fascia, soffit on, the siding, and then start on the mechanicals on the inside.

Generally the mechanicals — they’ll do heat first; heat is usually the least flexible, then plumbing, then electric — to go through and finish the inside, and then put the insulation in. The interior finish, which is generally drywall — but a lot of times people can use wood or whatever other materials they come up with. Metal — we’ve had people do metal — or masonry walls inside, whatever the designs are.

And then they go through, you know, put doors in, cabinets, and then flooring. So the process is just like a stick‑building home. It’s just the efficiency. It’s just the efficiency that we’re able to put together.

And by our great set of plans and the design and the precision construction of our panelized packages, that it makes the efficiency of it.

And the best thing is that our customers, as owner‑builders — or if they hire a general contractor — they can look at the plans and understand what’s going on and feel comfortable that the details are there that they need to build.

So it’s pretty amazing. We’ve got a lot of projects going on, and it’s pretty rare that we get a customer‑service call. It’s more me saying, “Hey, how are you guys doing? Can you send me a picture? I want to see what it looks like.” So it’s pretty cool.

But if something does come up — whether it’s an issue on site or possibly something that might involve us — we’re always available to help customers through the process.

Interviewer: Wow. This has been — like I said, this has been one of my favorite episodes so far. I always said, “I wonder if I could just sit down with Steve and just ask him to go point A to point Z and see how straight a line we can go.”

Steve Tuma: Well, that was the 20‑ or 30‑minute version of something that’s spread out over a little bit longer. So if people have questions, we’re always available to review — and how it applies to their project. And that’s the thing — we adjust our processes to what the customer needs.

So, for example, if you were building a house in a historic area that might have thinner streets or different access, we might have to have different delivery processes than if it was in a city area where there’s very tight access or the lots are just tighter — there isn’t space — compared to if someone was building in the country with 30 acres.

Interviewer: Understood.

Steve Tuma: Yeah. So there’s a lot of details that we can help a customer with. And every home’s been delivered. They’ve all worked out. The customers get their deliveries.

So even if someone has a more unique situation, or something that sounds more unique to them, we’re more than happy to work it out. If they need an extra truck for some reason — sometimes we’ve run into situations…

We have one going right now in West Virginia where it’s an old estate. The man, when he was 15, decided that when he retired he was going to have 300 acres — continuous acres — so he could go build his final home. He found 300 acres. He put it together in an old community, because usually there aren’t big pieces of land available — they’ve been cut up over time.

We found out a problem. He found out there’s a county bridge that could only hold a certain load. It’s a mile or two away from his land, but we kind of checked, “Hey, how do we get in here?” And we found out that the county had to do a little bit of work to the bridge — and they are — to keep it moving along.

So it’s kind of interesting what you run into when you think you’ve seen it all, and then one day it’s like, “Wow, here’s something new.” But that just shows the level of flexibility and understanding that we offer to help a customer build their home. Pretty interesting. It’s amazing. It’s pretty cool.

Interviewer: Well, that’s going to do it for this edition of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show.

But before we let you go, Steve, let the listeners know how to find out more about Landmark Home & Land Company.

Steve Tuma: Well, the best thing to do is check out our website at LHLC.com. Again, that’s LHLC.com, like Landmark Home & Land Company.

They can check out our website. These podcasts are on there. We’ve got some videos. We’ve got details on what’s included in the package, specific details for different states — just kind of processes of how we can help.

And what a lot of people do is they submit an email directly to us. They can also find a plan on there that they like and say, “Hey, I like this plan. Can you tell me about this and that?”

Or they can give us a call at 800‑830‑9788. Again, that’s 800‑830‑9788. They can work with Mike on preliminary ideas — finding out what needs to be taken care of. And then once they’re ready to move forward, it gets transferred over to me.

And then I will go through the process and get people taken care of with the right paperwork so everything’s clear on what we supply and what we’re doing. And then I work with the customer through the project completely. I don’t hand a customer off to someone else for design or engineering or energy codes. I work directly with the customer to make sure that everything’s taken care of.

So I get to know my customers very well. They get to know us and how we help. It just helps in the communication, the ease, and then navigating any concerns along the way. We try to make it very smooth and seamless and enjoyable. It’s a lot of fun.

Interviewer: Awesome. Well there you go, everyone.

Thank you again, Steve, and thanks to all of you for listening to the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show.

So for Landmark Home & Land Company President Steve Tuma and for myself, have a great week and we will see you next time.

Thanks again, Steve.

Steve Tuma: Yeah, thanks. This was really interesting. It’s a different angle than what we typically speak about. It was cool. Thanks.

A: Building a home allows you to manage the construction process, perform sweat equity, and eliminate builder markups, which can reduce your initial mortgage balance by $100,000 or more. Over a standard 30-year mortgage term, saving $100,000 on the initial build can compound into over $250,000 in long-term interest savings compared to buying an existing home.

A: Building new guarantees that your home is constructed with modern, highly efficient insulation, windows, and mechanical systems that lower long-term maintenance and utility costs. It also gives you total control over the floor plan layout, room sizes, and specialized lifestyle features rather than compromising on an existing structure’s layout.

A: Yes, owner-builders can choose to build in phases by financing the site prep and panelized shell package to get the home “dried in” during the first year, and completing the interior finishes as cash becomes available in subsequent years. This phased approach allows homeowners to achieve debt-free homeownership over time.

A: Yes, because being an owner-builder is primarily a project management and coordination role rather than physical carpentry. By organizing trades like excavators, foundation crews, and framers, individuals with no prior trade background can successfully manage the build and pass all local inspections.

A: No, first-time owner-builders of all ages and financial backgrounds successfully complete custom homes, with ages ranging from 21 to 83 years old. Working with an experienced design and panelized package company allows older homebuilders to customize layout details specifically tailored to their retirement lifestyle and family needs.

Steve Tuma: Now, our partnership with customers — it goes deep. We work a lot together, talk to a lot of them every single day. We get to know each other like family and work together. So there’s no sense in, you know, quote, “blowing smoke” to get a sale.

Interviewer: Hello everybody, and welcome to Episode 79 of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show.

With me, as usual, 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, what’s going on, my friend?

Steve Tuma: Just another day helping people build houses. It’s actually really the design process and helping them get everything set up to build, which is where we really help our customers. They don’t always realize that up front, but that’s really where it comes into play — the support of building a house.

Interviewer: I know you work hard, but I can’t imagine having a better job than yours if it’s what you’re into — and you seem to be into building houses a lot.

Steve Tuma: Well, it’s kind of amazing. We get a lot of thank‑you notes or people leaving positive reviews for us and different things. But once, I got a construction‑paper — you know when you were little kids, the teacher would give you construction paper and you’d cut out a little bear or a car or something and make your own little piece of art?

This lady’s children put it together and said, “Thank you for helping my mom build us a house.”

Interviewer: That’s great.

Steve Tuma: And I was like, “Wow.” I still have it. To see the impact of a new home that a family designed, understood, knows why they’re doing it — working the budgets, the trials and tribulations of just getting the project going — to see the end result and how they look back and how it’s affected a family is incredible.

And then not just the first house. Some families go through — we have one brother and a cousin, I think we’re in 19 houses with them. I have other people that become investors and put rental units up. It’s amazing to see what happens.

Interviewer: That’s got to be a lot of fun.

You know, for this edition of the podcast, I wanted to dive into another one of our comparison topics and give you a chance to explain the pros and cons of different types of homebuilding and different types of houses in general.

So if you’re good to go, let’s get into that.

Steve Tuma: Yeah, yeah. This is going to be an interesting one. Let’s talk about it. Let’s see where it goes.

Interviewer: Yeah. Let’s talk about the differences between building your own house and buying a structure already built. You run into this a lot: “I could buy a new house or an old house, or I could build one.”

Give us the background and pros and cons on both of those options.

Steve Tuma: Well, it’s pretty interesting because what I’ve found is, some people just buy existing and some people just want to build new. So there might be a variety of pros and cons, but what I’ve found is: generally, people that want to build, want to build.

The idea of buying a home — the theory is that you can just move into it. But generally, an existing home needs some type of work, whatever type of work it is, or you’re taking a home that’s there — you can’t adjust it or make it to exactly what it is. So the chances of you finding the exact home that’s absolutely perfect for you is probably pretty limited.

And you also don’t know the condition of it, as well as how it’s been maintained. If it’s an older home, it might need some help — but chances are, mechanicals, insulation, windows, or other things just aren’t as efficient as a new home, which is going to have the better details for it.

So I would say a lot of people go through and build because they know what they want. Sometimes it’s a life’s personal challenge — they’ve been wanting to do it since they were a kid. Other times it’s a financial decision, because the affordability of homes — it’s a big thing in the news now; things are expensive.

So if someone can do some of the work themselves, coordinate it, they can save a lot of money, get some equity in the house. And if they’re financing, what people don’t realize is the savings of $100,000 or $200,000 or $300,000 on a house, compared to adding to your mortgage — what that compounds out to.

I don’t have the exact calculation, but if you save $100,000 on your mortgage — if it’s $100,000 less by building your home than buying an existing — over the course of a mortgage that might save you a quarter of a million dollars.

So it’s not just the “get the house you want” — that it’s energy efficient. It’s also a financial move.

And there’s also the flip side: sometimes people build a bigger, nicer home with the same money than if they went through buying existing.

But that’s the key as to why people build — they know what they want, and they want to do it. And a lot of times people say, “Hey, when I build it, I know how it’s getting built. I know that it’s being built right. There aren’t shortcuts. I can check it myself. I can make sure it’s specified right.”

So I would say a lot of it — some people just lean one way or the other. But the people that want to build — it’s in them. It’s been something they’ve been thinking about. There’s a personal pride. They enjoy it.

And a lot of it — it gets people into homes that otherwise they wouldn’t be able to financially afford. We have some people that save the money — they sell a house, it’s retirement funds, it’s rich uncles, it’s loans. Other people say, “Hey, I’ve got enough to get it dried in. I’ll do that this year. Next year I’ll do the inside.”

And some people might say, “Oh, that’s a lot of work.” It’s like, “Yeah — for two years, to not have a mortgage, that’s pretty cool.”

So there’s a lot of motivations as to why people build a home. Some of it, like I say, is the quality. Some of it is they get the house they want. And a lot of it is the financial position they’re in — that they’re able to put it together.

I’ve only had two people say, “Hey, if it goes over a million or two, I don’t worry about it.” Most people, whether it’s a $200,000 home, $500,000, $700,000, $1.5 million, $3 million, whatever it is — they’re watching their money.

So the guy building a $2 million home is watching the money just as much as a person with a $200,000 home.

And that’s what we’re able to do — give them a set and guaranteed cost for our portion of the project, so that they have better control and understanding of the project that goes into it.

Also, if someone’s buying a home, you don’t know what you’re getting. A lot of people say, “Oh, I’ll buy and renovate.” And yeah, that’s great — you don’t know what’s behind a wall until you get into it.

So I think there are inherent challenges with each one. But a person that wants to build… they just want to build. It’s their thing. And we’re here to help them anywhere in the country.

Interviewer: Is there a time where you’ve just said building a house may be more worth it — or better for you personally — than a panelized home or another type of home? How often do you just tell people, “Look, we can really work with you, but in this case maybe building a house is worth it”?

Steve Tuma: Well, I think it’s always worth it in the long run. I’ll tell you why.

It’s new — less maintenance. In areas of fire, houses will be built with materials that are fire‑resistant. It will be more energy efficient anywhere in the country. It will be more comfortable. It will be a situation where you’re going to get more of the house that you want. You can design the house you want — make the garage bigger, the bedrooms bigger, whatever it is. Browse our home plans for layout ideas.

Is it worth it? There’s a lot of ways to look at it. If you’re looking for the cheapest, cheapest payment — there are ways to do that with a house. If you’re saying, “Hey, I want the value so that my family has what they need to live properly, or for a certain lifestyle…”

If there are people that like the outdoors — we’ve helped a lot of people in the mountain ranges or lake and waterfront where it’s a lifestyle home to say, “Hey, we kayak a lot, or we bike a lot, we rock climb, we’re in our airplanes.” We’re helping some people build homes where their airplanes are in their garage.

So to be able to have that quality of life and get what you want is a big, important thing.

So I think a lot of it depends: if you’re purely driven by the cheapest price, there are ways to design homes that are very, very affordable and you have everything you need. If you’re someone that says, “Hey, I want to be able to fly into my house and then walk out the backyard and go paddling down a river” — we’ve done a couple like that, literally in situations like that, where the person has that lifestyle. We can work with them and get it designed.

What’s weird about it is, it sounds expensive — like, “Oh, a house with an airplane and all this stuff,” or whatever special needs. People restore cars. They have craft rooms. They have baking rooms. They have wood‑shop rooms. They have get‑together rooms for the family.

There’s always a way to make it work, and it really comes into understanding the design of the home.

So when you say, “Is building a house worth it?” it’s like: what do you want?

If you’re someone that says, “Hey, just give me a place for myself and my dog to sleep,” that’s a different priority than someone that says, “I have family get‑togethers, we’re all runners or hikers, we want to live in a community.”

So where do you want your payback?

That’s the thing that someone has to determine — where it’s worth it. With a new home — less maintenance, more maintenance‑free, more set for what’s going on in today’s world: fires, hurricanes, different things like that.

So, in our understanding, what people tell us is: you get more of what you want for the money you choose to spend. And I think that’s the value.

But yeah, are there some parts of the country… if someone said, “Hey, I just want a cheap house” — like, someone told me they bought a house for $89,000 somewhere. You’re not likely to build a 1,500‑square‑foot home to today’s standards for $89,000.

So if you’re in one of those areas where someone says, “Hey, I want to build a new home for $89,000” — it’s not likely to happen. But those communities are few and far apart.

But if someone were to say, “Hey, I’m building a home, whatever, say in Colorado, or California, or Florida, or Iowa, New York” — we’ve got a lot of projects in New York of people getting out of the city on weekends and building — you’re getting the house you want. That is the key.

Just like when you go out for dinner — you don’t just walk into a random restaurant and say, “Give me food,” and hope someone gives you something. You’re like, “Hey, I want a chicken sandwich with guacamole on it,” or something. And that’s what you do.

And that’s what we’re able to do with the house — get you what you want. And the key to it is: understand it up front so you know what you’re getting into, so you can decide if it makes sense for you. That’s what it’s about. Make sure you spend your money and spend your time for something that makes sense for you and your family. That’s the key point.

Interviewer: But it sounds like you’re easily able to navigate the questions concerning financial tradeoffs. There is a difference between building and buying a home that already exists.

Steve Tuma: Oh, there is — because they’re two completely different situations. But where’s the long‑term benefit in this?

If it’s a financial decision, moving in with equity is always really cool. Saving that amount — if you have a mortgage, having a lower mortgage is better. But it’s also likely to be maintenance‑free — you don’t have to do a bunch of repairs.

So the financial freedom is there, but also not having to spend your weekends fixing the furnace every time it gets cold outside. There’s a huge value to having the comforts of life right.

In today’s modern society, people are busy. The kids are at the ball game, daughters are dancing, kids are in school, grandparents need some help, you’re traveling for work. Who really wants to come home and have to fix the furnace? It’s better to know that it works and it’s energy‑efficient, and you’re getting your dollar — for the money you put in to heat or cool your house, you’re getting the most out of it.

So it actually gets into a lifestyle choice, which I think is why people go through and say, “Hey, I want to build. I see the long‑term benefit.” That’s why they do it.

Now, obviously, if you want to go build in the middle of Manhattan, you’re not likely to find a piece of land to say, “Hey, I’m going to build a house there.” So some communities — you’re kind of restricted.

But our customer base — if they do live in Manhattan, they’re building an hour or two into different parts of New Jersey or New York. We have people in Florida building their vacation or winter homes. We have a variety — some people are doing investment properties in different states. So we’re able to help people and do it.

The key to all of this is not just saying, “Hey, buy a house.” The key to it is us helping the customer understand how we can help them with the process so they have a true understanding of the project, so that they can choose to move on on their own and then get into a project that they understand the cost, they understand the design, they understand the elements of getting the home built.

The overall support we provide at Landmark Home and Land Company I think is extremely valuable to our customers. That’s what they tell me.

Interviewer: Is there ever a customer — just isn’t a good candidate to build their own home? Do you have to ever bring people down to earth in that situation?

Steve Tuma: Well, every once in a while. I think what it is, is sometimes people don’t have a full grasp as to what’s involved.

So sometimes there are people — I think they kind of understand it themselves — that, “Hey, if they don’t have the time,” or, you know, “their life cycle just doesn’t work,” it doesn’t go.

But it’s kind of amazing. We have people — some people retired in different countries — that are building homes. They get a local person, or they fly there every once in a while, they have a trusted friend or family member do it.

Other times, people will put a motorhome right at their lot and live there.

So what a lot of people do is they’ll call in and just ask. We’ll give them the answers, so then they can make a decision of what makes sense for them.

Usually people that are, in a sense, biting off more than they can chew — they understand it. But it’s worth talking about, because there’s a lot of stories out there. With the internet, there’s a lot of amazing information out there — and a lot of it’s amazingly misleading.

So we’re happy to talk to people to find out what it is they need, give them a real picture from our 32 years of real, everyday experience with projects around the country, so that they can understand what they’re getting into.

Because it’s actually amazing to see people that have built some of the most beautiful homes — have never built a home before. Or they don’t even understand carpentry. Because a lot of it is really just a management project. It’s a job coordinator. It’s a project manager — which people do every day in their life. They manage their own job, they manage their own household, they manage their own family.

It’s just a perspective of getting the right people to help you. And we’re a beginning step of that — to say, “Hey, if your family’s not in the trades, you’re not in the trades yourself, but you have a strong understanding to say: I can manage an excavator, I can work with a foundation guy, I can work with a framer, I can work with a cabinet supplier” — it’s there. A lot of people do it.

And the pictures that I’ve seen of some of these homes are beautiful — they’re well‑built, they all pass the codes, they all pass inspections. And the pictures — if I showed you a picture of a customer that had never built, wasn’t in the trades; someone that if I explained the person, you’d be like, “Oh, they’ve never built a home.” And then I showed you someone that might be the image of a more “builder type.” You wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

Interviewer: Landmark has a real honesty too. I mean, you guys are known for that. You’re able to lay out the pros and cons of building your own home as opposed to buying one. I mean, you don’t shy away from telling people what’s probably best for them in the long run.

Steve Tuma: No. Our partnership with customers — it goes deep. We work a lot together, talk to a lot of them every single day. We get to know each other like family and work together.

So there’s no sense in, you know, quote, “blowing smoke” to get a sale. It’s a relationship. It’s very important for an owner‑builder to work with a good company like Landmark. But it’s also very important for us to have a very good customer.

Because if people don’t understand what they’re getting into — if they don’t have the aptitude, desire, whatever it is — it can be a little bit painful. We’d rather avoid it.

So we’d rather have the little heart‑to‑heart talks up front to explain it, so people understand it. Because once people lay it out in their mind and have an understanding of, “Hey, I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to do this, we have a support system to get through,” it’s amazing.

The number of people that have never built a home that then come back — whether it’s a year later or 10 or 15 years later — and do it again is actually surprising, percentage‑wise, how many people do that.

And then how involved these people get in building their home. They want to do it. It’s a passion.

I’m not really into watching TV, but it seems like everywhere there’s a house‑flipping show, there’s this thing, a house thing. It’s just something that people want to do. And we’re here to help them.

But put a real reality check and a focused set of glasses on there. Everything’s not the “rosy glasses” thing — it’s a lot of work and understanding that needs to happen. But we’re here to help people get into that position if they need the help, so they understand what they’re dealing with.

It’s pretty cool.

And, by the way, we’ve had people — all different types of people, different backgrounds, different financial backgrounds, different educational backgrounds. So it’s pretty incredible to see a cross‑section of the types of customers we’ve had to help — to see that it is really for everyone. Anyone could do it.

I think the youngest customer we had was 21 — the oldest is 83. And the greatest story — one story — he called me up, he was 83; he was 82 when he started. He said, “Steve, I’ve been married to my wife since I was 18. I told her when we got married I’m going to buy her a house.” He said — or he said, “I’m going to build her a house.” He said, “I better do it at 83 before she kills me.”

And there’s just great humor in that. But he followed through, and we worked with them to really, really detail the house out for them, so that when the grandkids come over, the grandpa could go with the kids and show them how to fix their bike, put air in the tires, do different things, check the oil in their car.

And then the mom — the grandma — she loved baking pies, but she wanted a certain window setup where she could see over the two acres in Prescott, Arizona to see the grandkids running around and the grandfather playing with them.

So the lifestyle thing of what we were able to put together for them, as a retirement home where they wanted, and achieve the design for their lifestyle was incredible. He was 83, never built a house. He did it. Beautiful home.

Interviewer: It’s never too late, man.

All right, well that’s about all we have time for for today’s edition of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show.

But before we let you go, Steve, as we do every episode, please let the listeners know how to find out more about Landmark Home and Land Company and what it is you guys do over there.

Steve Tuma: Well, we help people design and build their own homes. The best thing to do is check out our website at LHLC.com. They can check out the website, go through all the plans, go through our videos, these podcasts, different details.

The best thing to do is just submit an inquiry through there. You can send us a direct email. You can look at the plans and pick a specific plan, send an inquiry, and we’ll go straight through there.

And if they want, they can call me on my direct line — my direct cell phone, 708‑205‑2043 — and I’ll help them through the process and talk about seeing if new homebuilding is good for them. It’s fun. It’s kind of fun. It’s really fun.

Interviewer: And there it is, another episode in the can.

Thank you again, Steve, and thanks to all of you for listening to the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show.

So for Landmark Home and Land Company President Steve Tuma and myself, have a great week and we will see you next time.

Thanks, Steve.

Steve Tuma: Yeah, this was a fun one. Let’s help some more people.

A: Beyond the purchase price, you must check for hidden site development expenses such as soil stability, floodplains, steep slopes, zoning setbacks, and utility distance. Land that appears cheap upfront often carries expensive construction challenges like bringing in power from half a mile away, installing special foundations, or clearing old buried structures.

A: Sites with expansive soils, high water tables, or steep mountain terrain require specialized engineering like pilings, helical piers, or engineered fill to support the structure safely. Identifying these conditions upfront through a geotechnical report prevents unexpected structural failure and budget overruns during excavation.

A: If your land falls within a designated floodplain, local building codes will require specific flood-elevation engineering and specialized foundation designs, such as raised piers or flood vents. Factoring flood requirements into your site plan early ensures your home meets municipal codes and remains disaster-resistant.

A: Zoning setbacks dictate how close your house can be built to property lines, roads, and neighboring structures. If your lot’s buildable footprint is too narrow for your chosen design, the floor plan must be customized and reshaped so it complies with local regulations without sacrificing essential interior space.

A: Low-cost urban infill lots can hide underground obstacles from past demolitions, such as old concrete foundations, buried oil tanks, or active gas lines. Investigating the property’s history and checking underground utilities prevents hazardous discoveries and costly clearing expenses during site preparation.

Steve Tuma: Generally, customers are excited — “Hey, let me get my plans.” And I’m saying, “Hey, that’s important. Let’s make sure the house fits on the land. Let’s make sure things work.”

Interviewer: Hello everyone, and welcome to Episode 78 of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show.

With me again today 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, what’s shaking, amigo?

Steve Tuma: It’s another great day. You know, it’s funny — you say “what’s shaking,” and we’re going to talk about land today. That could be stuff with earthquakes and earthquake engineering, but it’s a good day.

It was a really interesting week. A lot of customers getting very detailed into their home plans — specifics of exactly how they want the house. You know, nothing standard: “I want my kitchen like this, I want my hallway like this,” and it was pretty interesting. And you know, some land things — I think we’re going to talk about land a little today.

Interviewer: That’s what I want to talk about. Not so much about the actual building process, which is usually what we’re talking about, but an aspect of building that we don’t get enough time with, I don’t think — and that’s the land itself.

Are you good with that?

Steve Tuma: Yeah, yeah. This is a really interesting topic that a lot of people don’t really get into the details of. They say, “Hey, it’s close, it’s in the right school district, or it’s got a view.” But, you know, within that there’s a lot of stuff to check out.

Interviewer: Well, you’re always interesting, so I don’t see why today would be any different. But to start with, give us some insight into the obvious questions a new homeowner‑builder might have — things like, well, how best to choose land to build a house on in the first place. Let’s start there.

Steve Tuma: Well, generally people look at a community or neighborhood, or land with certain features. You know, if they’re doing a retirement home in the Rockies or the Sierras, they might want a certain view or certain trees or certain access — or certain access to leisure sports.

But then, you know, a lot of the concern is just: “Hey, where do I want to be?” So if it’s a newlywed family, a couple starting a family, they might be like, “Hey, I want to make sure we’re close to work or we’re close to good school systems.” If it’s someone retiring, it might be like, “Hey, I want to take advantage of fishing,” or whatever it may be. Other people building in cities might have different concerns on what’s there.

So the customer generally is always looking at, “Hey, where’s the land that I like — for the convenience, lifestyle, close to work, whatever it is.”

What I think some of the details that we need to review are: what’s kind of the hidden features of the land? What are the “uh‑oh” moments? Or, hey, what are things we should look at in land that can determine…

Because sometimes you could have two pieces of land that appear to be the same — a flat piece of land here and, across town, there’s another flat piece of land. It’s convenient to school, it’s convenient to work. But are there details of that land that make it harder to build on?

And those are the things that I think people don’t think about or don’t understand, or they can’t get accurate information.

So that’s the stuff that’s there:

Because if you’re going to a city that’s 100 and some years old and you find a lot that’s never been built on, chances are something happened to it.

Interviewer: That one dollar can turn into a nightmare.

Steve Tuma: Well, that’s the thing that I’m saying. So this isn’t to scare people — it’s just to give them an understanding of, “Hey, the school district’s important, close to work’s important, close to family and any other things in life are important,” but also: what’s in there?

And what are the soil conditions in any lot? Is it something where there are water‑table issues? Is it something where there are expansive soils? Different things like that.

Also the terrain — if you’re building your retirement home in the Colorado Rockies and you want a beautiful view, you’re likely to be on a sloped piece of land or close to it, or something that isn’t exactly flat.

So it’s one of these things where you’ve got to look at the cost of building and the challenges of building on the side of a hill or a mountain versus flat land.

So there’s a lot to look at.

Now, here’s the thing — I don’t want to scare people. I want people to understand, “Hey, you should build a house where you want to,” but we should have a discussion of what’s going on.

And another one that’s been popping up lately a lot are floodplains. Right now we’ve got a couple of houses where people are building in areas where the family has been forever and there’s never been a flood — but then they find out that FEMA’s labeled it with a floodplain. And suddenly it changes your foundation or access to the lot.

So these are all things that could be checked out. Some people might say, “Oh, that’s a lot.” It’s a lot because they’re not familiar with it. But when we work with someone, we can go through, explain the process, let them know where to go check things out, and then we can design a home that makes sense.

So the bottom point of this is: there’s land that’s a very good value. Sometimes you have to see if you’re just lucky to get a deal, or if there’s a reason why the land costs less. Because sometimes land costs less because it’s harder to build. So they discount the land to make up for it.

Now that’s not necessarily the worst thing — you just have to understand it. It’s like any other risk in life. You just have to understand what’s there.

Oh, I forgot — zoning and setbacks. Does your house fit on the land? If you have a lot that’s 50 feet wide but your house is 49 feet wide, most communities won’t allow that. So we’d have to figure out a different house to fit on that land.

The key to all of this is, we have an understanding of the broad scope of:

So if a customer has a piece of land or is thinking of purchasing a piece of land, we can work with them to sort out how to make it usable for them.

Interviewer: Sure.

Steve Tuma: And customers generally have an idea of the house — but if there’s a little flexibility, we can work with it.

Right now I’ve got a customer in North Carolina, bought a piece of land in the community. The house is three feet wider than the zoning will allow. Fortunately, by the nature of this design, we can shuffle a couple of things around and he’ll still keep the general design he wants, and it’ll fit on the land that he has.

It was hard for him to find the exact piece of land, so we’re able — because of our custom design, understanding of the complete project, the engineering, the energy codes, all these things — we can work with people to make things happen.

Interviewer: So when you get a customer who says to you, “Hey, we already bought a piece of land, or it’s been in our family and we want to build on it now” — is that the process that starts first? Obviously, if they’re going to build on this, you need to know everything about the land itself, right?

Steve Tuma: It’s one of the components of it.

Generally customers are excited: “Hey, let me get my plans.” And I’m saying, “Hey, that’s important. Let’s make sure the house fits on the land. Let’s make sure things work.” Because we don’t want to get way deep into the design — have a beautiful kitchen and living room — and then find out the house is too wide for the lot.

So we want to check a lot of those details up front. And what’s cool about it is: we work with owner‑builders and understand the ins and outs of owner‑builders, and a lot of them understand, “Hey, I should check this out.” Some of them need a little more help, and if that’s the case we’re here to help them through the process.

There’s a lot of stuff — a lot of words that people haven’t heard, like geotechnical report, geology report, water tables, hydrostatic pressure, just stuff like that, which is big stuff. But it’s kind of like going to a doctor — you don’t need to know how to solve a cold; you just need to know the situation and get the help to go through. And that’s where we can help.

So yeah, if someone’s got land that they inherited, bought, it’s been in the family forever, or somehow acquired — tax sales, whatever it may be — we can work with them on navigating through the thing.

And that’s part of our process up front, just to help people understand the project — to make sure the house works with the land and make sure it makes sense to move forward. We want to work with people that are paying attention and understand and want to see the process to make sure that the house is built right.

Interviewer: Yeah, of course.

But, well, this leads to another question — has anyone ever called you where you go, “You know, you’re in a swamp. That’s just not buildable”? And how do you explain what bad land and good land is for building — aside from how beautiful an area is? How do you choose that?

Steve Tuma: Well, stuff like that — the first part of your statement there: “Hey, if someone has it” — yes, we have had people.

We had a family that had a piece of land on the East Coast, Northeast, where they found that their land was in a wetland. Now, if you and I walked on the land, it would be like, “Hey, this is grass. There are a couple of funny‑looking plants here.” Well, they were kind of water plants. So that area, because it was common, they actually worked with us to get a low‑impact foundation.

Sometimes what they do is they’re like, “Hey, if you only impact this much, or if you mitigate it — if you create whatever issues with 100 square feet of wetland, put 200 square feet of wetland someplace else.” So there are ways to get around it — if the building department allows for it, and other departments that are there.

It’s really just a choice, because some of these homes are in beautiful places — but people have to decide what they want. Because sometimes when you get in a low‑impact foundation or you’re just building in some of these areas, the costs go up because it’s not typical.

So we can do it. We’ve run into situations like that. We just have to understand the parameters. And then if someone’s working in an area where it’s a little more complicated, it might just take a little longer to get through the design, the approvals, the different things like that to make it happen.

And by the way, this isn’t just a matter of, like, in a wetland or different soils where it’s like, “Hey, take care of the wildlife.” It’s sometimes also the foundation:

Different situations that hold the house up.

And that, I think, is where people will appreciate our help — going through and resolving the overall issue, instead of getting snippets of information that aren’t helpful in solving the problem.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Tuma: We’re going to try to get you from A to Z, not from A to B and then you have to get from B to C to D and go nuts in the process.

Interviewer: Well, it’s just — again, we talk about this all the time — one of the things Landmark is known for is preparing plans. I mean “plan” doesn’t mean just the actual paper plans, but planning the entire build. Planning the build site is a big thing.

Steve Tuma: Well, what a lot of customers tell me after they get into it — and they use different words, but it’s essentially the same thing — it’s like, “Steve, you were like the engine of making this happen. You went in, attacked the problem, and got it taken care of.”

So a lot of people will go through and they’ll search “panelized homes,” “home kits,” “owner‑builder homes,” “self‑built homes,” whatever it might be — and they’re thinking, “Oh, I’m just buying some wood to frame my house.”

No — we’re helping them make it work: the design, so it’s right, work through homeowners associations, work through your own design concerns, make sure it fits the land, work with you to make sure it fits the budget you’re trying to hit to get it going.

So we’re helping solve a lot of answers with our one‑stop shop — to get you from A to Z, not from A to B, type of thing.

And that’s what people, as we go through and help customers, start realizing — that, “Hey, this isn’t just buying wood. This isn’t just calling a lumberyard and seeing who’s the cheapest to buy from. This is: let’s make sure the house is designed right, make sure it works with the land, make sure we have a solid team to help us through this.”

That’s really the value that customers don’t realize up front when they’re looking for us as a panelized home company. It’s really our ability to help design it, get it put together. And I think they’ll find it’s exceptionally rare to nonexistent that there’s a company like us that exists — but we just have fun doing it. It’s actually really cool.

It’s the part where there’s extreme value in working with Landmark Home and Land Company, because we have the ability to help you through the project — not just supply you a pile of wood and say, “Good luck.”

Interviewer: Yeah, it’s a different attitude.

You know, we were talking about earthquakes earlier, just kind of jokingly. But that’s an important thing. And not just earthquakes — in different parts of the country they have different sort of disasters that come along. And I would imagine that site plans can really, up front, help deal with the preparedness for most types of disasters wherever you’re building. Right?

I mean, some stuff you just can’t stop — you can’t go stop a tornado as such.

Steve Tuma: You guys aren’t there yet.

Interviewer: Right — I don’t know that anyone is. But the thing about it is there’s other stuff — like hurricanes, earthquakes, and different things.

There was a hurricane in Mexico Beach, Florida a few years ago — five, ten years ago, I can’t remember the exact timeline — but there was a hurricane. And I remember there was a family I was working with and they said, “Well, you know, these houses have been here since the 60s and 70s. Why do we have to do hurricane engineering?”

You know, there it is — knock on wood — hurricane goes through and blows it through. The only houses that stood up were the newer ones that were engineered, and they understood the design parameters. So those people are out there having a cocktail in their house while the rest of the neighbors are basically just going through their houses that were blown over.

So the thing about it is — it’s just like a site‑planning thing, a budget thing — you just have to understand the parameters. Then we can work with people to get it put together.

The reality of a lot of this is, sometimes stuff does cost more. To build a house in South Florida that’s hurricane‑proof — or resistant, I should call it, you know, the hurricanes are getting bigger and bigger — is going to be a lot different than if you were building a house on a flat piece of land in the Midwest, where they generally don’t have hurricanes. They might have leftovers of hurricanes, or tornadoes, or things like that — but there’s different features in the home.

So the reality is: having an understanding of the situation. Because we’ve had people that say, “You know, this land has been in the family for 100 years. My grandpa never built on it, my parents never did, but I am.” Or the kids now are getting together.

There’s a value to doing it, but using that land properly, designing it right so it gets put together and is enjoyable — that’s the key situation.

What’s really interesting is, we’ve helped a lot of people after the fires, earthquakes, hurricanes rebuild houses — to see that they like the value in making sure it’s put together right. Because they’ve lived through something, so they want to know it’s built right, the house is positioned right — keep it out of a flood area.

And we’re fortunate that our customer base has an understanding that, “Hey, in a flood area you have to do certain things. In a high‑wind area, you have to do certain things. In a high snow‑load area, you have to do certain things.”

So it’s pretty cool to help people. Some people have zero understanding — they know something needs to be done, they just don’t know what. But that’s the key: we don’t just look at your house as, “Hey, here’s a bunch of panels, put it together.”

We look at it as: What are you trying to achieve? You have a piece of land, or are thinking of buying a piece of land. What’s your end goal? Is this a retirement home? Is this your first home? Is this something where you’re really, really budget‑conscious? And what are you trying to achieve in the home, so we can get it taken care of?

And that’s actually the really interesting part of this business.

And it might sound intimidating to people, but once customers get into it, I think they’re kind of intrigued by it, because owner‑builders want to be involved with building their home. So to go learn something new and know that it’s taken care of properly is something that’s pretty cool.

Interviewer: You know, something that just strikes me — these are, this episode is a lot of real simple, kind of basic things. But your enthusiasm for this always shines through. You have fun doing this, don’t you?

Steve Tuma: Oh, it was interesting. Last night I was like, “Oh yeah, I’m going to try to get out early — five or six — on a Friday.” And I was like, “I’m going to do this.” Well, I think about 9:30 I’m like, “Man, I did a bunch of stuff.”

What you end up seeing is, by taking the right thoughts and the right understanding, how much better you can make a house — and how you can do things to make it affordable, or more affordable, for something to happen.

So last night, we’ll go through it — I did a couple of plan‑check reviews, where the building department came back with some questions. We just had to resolve a couple issues, get it off to the designer.

We have another house — a lady in Michigan, Cheryl. She’s building a house in Michigan, she says her last home, and is detailing everything. Like most customers, she has a controlled budget, but she wants certain features.

And some of the features — she was very interested in having an exact space between windows. It couldn’t be bigger and it couldn’t be smaller. And I’m like, “Why are you so stuck on this one dimension of one foot seven inches?”

She said, “Steve, I want the view, but I also — the way I cook, I want my knife holder to go between these windows, because it’s just where I grab.”

So, to me, what initially was something that I wasn’t quite sure what the quest was — after you see it, it’s like, she’s really tuning this house up for her lifestyle and her enjoyment.

And when you see that, it’s kind of like the positive feedback, where you feed off of each other. The customer says, “Hey, that’s pretty cool,” and then I’m like, “Okay, now I understand what you’re doing,” which helps me help with:

Whatever it may be, to achieve a particular goal that a customer has.

So I think we’re a little different because customers tell me, “Steve, you answer the phone, you have answers, you’re very proactive on it,” where people are surprised. Because in today’s world, all of us are consumers, and you can work with a lot of companies that claim to have all these awards — and then you call and you’re on hold forever, and it’s hard to talk to people and get real help.

But here, we look at it as moving along. And the real advantage is, we give a set and guaranteed cost. So if someone needs a little help, a lot of help, a whole bunch of help — we’re there, and through the project.

It’s not like an attorney or an architect where it’s like, “Well hey, I answered the phone, that’s 200 bucks. I’ve got to act busy and tell you something that took me 15 minutes took 10 hours.”

We give you a cost for getting through the project, which really helps people with their budget and understanding.

And we’ve worked with all different types of people in resolving these issues — whether it’s a budgetary thing, a site‑condition thing, a code thing, a personal item that they want, or a natural thing — fires, earthquakes, hurricanes.

So yeah, I guess we’re getting a little philosophical on the whole, “Hey, we’re talking about land,” but that’s an important part of it — how are you going to use the land, and is the land the right piece of land?

Now, as an idea here, just because a piece of land might have a challenge, it doesn’t mean that you still can’t build on it. We just have to understand it and get through. And in some areas, a lot of land has issues — it’s just the nature of it.

So — but we’re prepared. The chances of a customer bringing us a problem we haven’t seen before is extremely limited. But if that happens, we have the resources to figure it out.

Interviewer: So even your answer about your enthusiasm was enthusiastic. That’s pretty cool.

Steve Tuma: Yeah.

Interviewer: So that’s just about going to do it for today’s edition of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show.

But before we let you go, Steve, let the listeners know how to find out more about Landmark Home and Land Company and what you guys do over there.

Steve Tuma: Well, we help people design and build their own homes — owner‑builders all over the country, around the world. We work with smaller contractors that want to go do small developments, multiple homes, or even individual families that just choose to put a rental property up.

We’ve had a lot of customers that — they built a house with us five, ten years ago, and then they’re like, “Hey, I want to do an investment place,” or, “My kids got married, I told them they should put up a four‑plex and live in one, and get it going — live for free.”

The best thing to do is check out our website: LHLC.com. Again, that’s LHLC.com — Landmark Home and Land Company.

Check out our website. We have a bunch of plans, different ideas on what we supply, some videos. All these podcasts are on there if people want to listen to them.

And you can email us from there. You could pick a plan out, send it in with some questions. We’ll get you pricing and help you with ideas on how to get your project going.

And then they could also call in at 1‑800‑830‑9788. Again, it’s 1‑800‑830‑9788. Mike will answer the phone and then we’ll go through and help from there.

Interviewer: Fantastic. And there you have it.

Thanks again, Steve, and thanks to all of you for listening, as always, to the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show.

So for Landmark Home and Land Company President Steve Tuma, and for myself, have a great week and we will see you next time.

Thanks, Steve.

Steve Tuma:

Thanks.

A: Most major owner-builder mistakes stem from a lack of upfront planning rather than construction errors. Failing to thoroughly research land conditions, site grading, utility connections, foundation requirements, and heating choices before starting leads to unexpected delays and expensive job-site change orders.

A: Ground conditions cannot be accurately judged just by walking on a piece of land. Hidden challenges like soft or expansive soils, high water tables, misjudged slopes, and FEMA floodplains dictate specific foundation designs and site preparation work that can significantly alter your budget if not identified through soil tests and site surveys early.

A: Complex rooflines with multiple ridges and valleys, excess exterior wall corners, and extra-tall ceilings (20 to 30 feet) drive up construction costs significantly. Complex geometries increase labor and material expenses across every phase of construction, from excavation and framing to roofing, siding, electrical, and plumbing.

A: Depending on your lot’s location, you may need approvals from zoning, planning, public works, water/sewage departments, health departments for septic, and local architectural review boards or HOAs in addition to your primary building permit. Working with a cohesive set of plans ensures all site, engineering, and architectural requirements align for smooth municipal approval.

A: Detailed blueprints force you to finalize decisions on structural framing, window types, electrical outlet locations, deck dimensions, and HVAC layouts before breaking ground. Having every detail specified on paper allows local subcontractors to provide complete, accurate bids and assemble the home efficiently without guesswork or costly field adjustments.

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

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

With me today, as expected, is the President and Founder of Landmark Home and Land Company — the company which has been helping people build their new homes where they want, exactly as they want, nationwide and around the globe since 1993 — Mr. Steve Tuma. Steve, how are you doing, sir?

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

Interviewer: That’s good.

Steve Tuma: Yeah, and another one expected tomorrow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You minimize the risk of something not being thought out.

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

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

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

Different things like that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s the reason?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is that something you find holds true?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, that may or may not be true.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some building departments don’t exist.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It hits everyone. So it just compounds.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Interviewer: Excellent. And there it is.  Thank you again, Steve, and thanks to all of you for listening to the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show.

So for Landmark Home and Land Company President Steve Tuma and myself, have a great week ahead and we will see you next time.

Thanks again, Steve.

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

A: Reliable construction budgets cannot be calculated using generic per-square-foot estimates, online cost charts, or AI guesses. To get an accurate line-item budget, you must have a complete set of permit-ready architectural plans so local subcontractors can evaluate exact material and labor requirements to provide firm bids.

A: Hard costs refer to physical materials and labor on the property, such as excavation, foundation concrete, framing lumber, windows, roofing, and mechanical systems. Soft costs encompass the non-physical pre-construction services required to build, including architectural floor plans, structural engineering calculations, site plans, and municipal permit fees.

A: Subcontractors often provide high or inaccurate estimates if an owner-builder brings them rough napkin sketches or incomplete plans. Quality sub-trades prioritize serious projects, so presenting a detailed, permit-ready plan set proves you are funded, scheduled, and ready to build, resulting in faster and more realistic bids.

A: Owner-builders save the most money by eliminating the 20% to 30% profit markup typically charged by general contractors. By acting as your own project manager to schedule sub-trades, manage material deliveries, and perform tasks you are skilled in, you create instant equity and reduce long-term mortgage interest.

A: Owner-builders frequently underestimate site-specific and code-driven requirements, such as window performance ratings. Depending on a room’s location, local building codes mandate specific features—such as egress sizing for bedrooms or tempered safety glass near stairways and water—which carry different costs than standard off-the-shelf windows.

Steve Tuma: You know, we’ve been doing this 32 years — almost 33 years. We’ve seen an amazing amount of things. But every once in a while, you get a curveball. The thing is, we have the resources to get you the answer of how it applies to your particular project on your building site.

Interviewer: Hello everyone, and welcome to Episode 76 of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show.

With me today, as he normally is, 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’s it going, pal?

Steve Tuma: It’s going great again — another day of helping people figure out how to build houses. We’re getting more and more customers that are coming back and doing some duplexes or investment properties.

Interviewer: Well that’s good.

Steve Tuma: Yeah, which is cool. Some new customers, some that built with us years ago that are like, “Hey, it’s time to do an investment property.” It’s kind of cool. It’s similar in process, and then other times it’s a little different, depending on codes or where they’re building or site conditions.

Interviewer: Return customers can never be bad.

Steve Tuma: It’s always fun. It’s just kind of cool when you get a call out of nowhere and they say, “Hey Steve, remember me?” I’m like, “Yeah,” reminisce for a while on the houses, and move on to help them with their new projects.

Interviewer: Better than you saying, “No, I have no idea who you are.”

Steve Tuma: Yeah, no!

Interviewer: I thought we’d talk today about a subject that’s on the minds of potential homeowner‑builders — and just about anybody these days, actually — and that’s the question of cost. The cost of living in general is so high these days, but for our purposes I thought we’d talk about the cost of building a home.

Can we do that?

Steve Tuma: Yeah. Well, it’s kind of interesting because a lot of people want to be an owner‑builder because of the savings. They can do some work so they don’t have to pay for someone else to do it. And then also, that savings — if they have a mortgage — saves considerably on their mortgage and the interest they pay over the life of the loan.

But yeah, costs are varied. It’s a unique economy. There’s a lot of things going on. But there is still a great opportunity, because houses in general are appreciating and doing pretty well.

So a lot of people will call up and say, “Hey, how much does it cost to build a house?” or, “How much does it cost to build this?” And there’s a lot of variety — or variables — in the elements of the cost:

So what we always suggest is that people work with us to get a real set of plans and go get estimates from local contractors and find out what the details are.

I use the word real set of plans — complete, that we’ve drawn up — because sometimes people just want to sketch something on a napkin and bring it to a contractor and say, “Hey, how much is it for this?”

And it’s kind of like garbage in, garbage out. If the guy’s got to guess for you, he’s probably going to guess high — or most likely just not take you seriously.

Subcontractors don’t make money off of providing bids, especially when they sense that people are just pricing around to keep themselves busy and feel it out. Quality contractors are in limited supply. So you want to make sure when you go to a contractor you have:

Then you’ll actually get a number that’s more realistic — and probably more accurate — to help.

So that cost — we tell people, get a set of plans and go get it quoted. We can always do rough targeting based on general square footage or details, but it’s always good to get a cost.

One thing I want to caution people about is, some people go online and think that ChatGPT and all these other AI programs have every single answer in the world. They might have some answers, but the accuracy of it is not there.

So I would not suggest using general books, some internet site that has general guidelines of costs. Things can vary significantly in:

So it’s best to work with a contractor to get the actual costs.

I’ve never seen a book be accurate in quoting costs. I’ve never seen an internet site that’s accurate. So we always suggest people get a real set of plans, get into it, be committed to the project, and let the subcontractors know that, “Hey, I’m doing this. I’ve got this project that’s going on at this specific address, and we intend to start and finish in a certain timeline,” and let them know that you’re financed or funded and move forward. You’ll find that the contractors are more responsive.

So it starts with a set of plans. At that point you also know what you want, and it leads our customers to think it through. When you’re drawing the plans up it’s like:

So you can actually give the subcontractors the information that they need to provide an accurate quote.

I know that’s not the easy answer. Sometimes people want to have the easy button or the magic button on a computer to do that. But it is one of those things that it’s best to:

And then you work on getting the estimates back — probably more accurate estimates and quicker response when they see that you’re actually doing something and not just asking for a bid out of curiosity.

So you want to show that you’re organized, you know what you’re building, you have a timeline, you’re funded to do it, so that they can move forward. And that’s the best thing.

I understand sometimes people say, “Hey, I have no place to start.” Well, that’s when they give us a call. We can work through things and kind of mold a little bit of a plan together so that a potential customer understands how to move forward.

Interviewer: How early in that process can you actually put together an owner‑builder cost breakdown? Is it an itemized list, or how do you do that?

Steve Tuma: Well, what we do is we work with the customer to get general ideas. So if someone said, “Hey, I want to build a house in Orlando. How much does it cost? What’s going on?” — we can go through, look at general cost ideas, get a general budget number that they believe they want to spend, and then you just kind of fine‑tune it from there.

So we work with them to get the plans, and we can get them a line‑item list of what they need to go get estimates. But we always believe it’s good for the customer to understand what they’re building and go get those estimates themselves.

And then in that process you’re also vetting the contractors that are:

So there’s a little bit more to it than just the budgeting. It’s developing your team. And that’s an important part of it.

Interviewer: Yeah, of course.

So also, at Landmark you guys — well, your expertise has got to be pretty helpful to show people how to save money building a house. It’s not just about throwing money at a house, but how to save. Let’s talk about hard costs versus soft costs, and where do you come in in advising a potential customer where to — not cut corners — but to save money overall?

Steve Tuma: Well, the hard costs are like the actual things — the foundation, the windows, the roof, stuff that makes a house. A soft cost would be things like permits and the actual plan services, engineering, different details that aren’t a physical item on the property.

So what we do is, our one‑stop shop is we combine it. We’re able to provide a value for the whole:

…tying the whole project together to get it put together — instead of someone hiring individual architects, structural engineers, energy code people, site plan people, surveyors… all these things, which add up.

We’re able to put it together as a package, which makes it a lot easier for the customer to:

And it also allows us to support the customer best, because we’re designing it. Therefore we can make sure it can get built right. And that’s the key element.

A lot of people think that, “Oh, any set of plans is okay, let me get a cheap set of plans.” Well, the cheap set of plans is probably going to be the most expensive thing you bought because it’s unclear. So that’s why we put it together.

You ask about hard costs and soft costs — we’re kind of combining it because we’re doing:

…but then making sure that we build the proper panelized package — which is part of the hard costs — into it.

So the budgeting can be interesting because some people have a better understanding of it, some people have less. But overall, our customer base — people have been researching this. They’ve been thinking about it for a little while, so they have an understanding.

What we can do is help guide them in a direction that makes sense. So I may not know the exact cost difference of going with a cement block foundation versus a poured foundation, but we can get them the details necessary so that when they talk to the contractor, they have the right information so that the contractor can then follow through, provide the accurate quote that makes sense for the project.

The idea is, with a good set of plans — you know, the soft costs — you’re able to let the contractors know what’s being built so you can avoid change orders and headaches and scheduling problems down the road.

But we’re here to help people. We have a little sheet if someone needs it — we could give them the general breakdown of what’s included, talk to them about the ins and outs of doing things.

Windows are a perfect example. A house may have two or three different‑size windows; it may have 30 or 40 different‑size windows. And sometimes people will say, “Well, I just went online and got the price of the windows.” That may be okay, but in certain cases you need egress windows, you need tempered glass, or you need different sizes and you need performance values for the energy calculations.

So you want to work with, in that particular example, a window person that understands the use of the window. Because if you put a window, say in the garage — just a regular window for some light and some ventilation — that window, even though it may be the same size, could have different features than if that same‑size window was used in a bedroom, or by a stair, or in a location where it would need to be tempered.

Interviewer: So is there a general area — because you were just talking about hard costs versus soft costs — where people underestimate expenses? Where they think that they’re going to be able to build something a little cheaper than the actual reality? And how do you deal with that?

Steve Tuma: Well, sometimes the underestimating part isn’t necessarily underestimating — it’s that they just don’t understand. They’ll say, “Hey, I got this particular window; it was on sale.” I’m like, “Okay, but does it have the right features for what you need?”

Like I mentioned — if it’s a bedroom, you need egress. If it’s by a staircase or by water, it needs to be tempered. So sometimes it’s not always an intentional underestimating — it’s not realizing. And that’s where we come in to help.

When people say, “Hey, do I need an egress window in a bedroom?” Well, there’s different conditions where you do and you don’t:

So sometimes it’s the innocence of moving forward, where we’re able to help them learn and understand to go do it.

And what’s interesting is people enjoy it. That’s why they’re building their house — they want to learn. It’s their nature. They want to save money. They want to understand. They want to know that their money is being spent properly. And that is one of the real key elements to it.

I always tell people — since we work with owner‑builders — do work that you’re confident in.

If you know how to frame a house, frame it. If you know how to run wires, go ahead and do it. If you know how to paint, do it.

But don’t go watching YouTube videos on how to do your HVAC system and think you’re going to save something. You might get it installed — but is it operating right? Is all the ductwork right so that the HVAC system can do its job?

So we tell people, you’ve got to be honest with yourself. If you can truly build your own home — and we’ve had customers that have literally done everything — we’re all up for helping. But if you’re someone that hasn’t done it, it’s fine.

I don’t want to scare people away with comments like that, because we’ve had a lot of people that have never built a house — I don’t think they’ve ever built a birdhouse. But what they do is they then manage the project, which is also a significant savings because the general contractor fees are saved.

So what they’re able to do is then manage it, and then manage good subcontractors to get it taken care of.

So it’s really a reality check.

Now, a lot of people would say, “Well, that’s a big problem.” The reality is, our customer base — we talk to them, we help them through, they understand. And if they’re up for it, they continue the project. They’ve researched, they understand things.

So everyone has a different level of knowledge and experience, but it isn’t necessarily that they’re not capable of moving forward. Everyone just has to find their sweet spot, where they can do the project themselves.

Like I say, we’ve had some people that have literally touched every part of the house. We’ve had other people that are more managing the project. We’ve had other people that are in the trades — they do what they know how to do or they’ve done it before, and then they hire people to fill in the rest.

So there’s a certain situation where that becomes part of your budget — the reality of what you can do, and then also what you need other people’s help to do.

Interviewer:  With YouTube — you just mentioned that — people do think, I think, a lot of people overextend themselves with what they’re able to do. A pro can make it look easy.

Where does the do‑it‑yourselfer actually save money, and where does that person sort of start — like you said, “Just go ahead and hire somebody, because you’ll save time and money in the long run”?

Steve Tuma:  Well, where they save money is by doing the work that they understand. You don’t want to pay twice for it. So if they understand how to do drywall or electric or plumbing or whatever — go ahead and go do it.

But it’s also the savings. Where they also save is in the general contractor fee, because they can coordinate the project. And with our support and our set of plans, they have the ammunition, in a sense, to talk to subcontractors and suppliers logically, because our plans are detailed.

I got two calls today from people saying, “Hey Steve, what do I do here?” And I said, “Hey, it’s right there on page 2.0 or A3.0.” The details are there. So we’re able to help them understand each process.

So if they’re talking to a window person, a foundation person, or whatever it may be — we’ve got the information, and we will take the time for our customers to understand it. People sometimes just need a little help understanding it. It all makes sense, but putting those little final touches on there helps.

YouTube has a lot of great information. Maybe it’s something there just to open your eyes or give you ideas of what needs to be there and what you can and can’t do.

But I would say, if you went through our customer base, most of our customers are pretty knowledgeable right up front — to say, “Hey, I can do this, I can’t do this,” or, “Hey, the brother‑in‑law can help me with this,” or, “Uncle can help me with this,” or, “Friend can help me with that.”

Just make sure that you’ve got a realistic plan and you’ll be successful at it. It’s pretty rare that someone gets in trouble. People move along.

And like I say, we’re always available. So if someone needs some clarification on a foundation design or how the package goes together, we’re always available. And it’s amazing how our good set of plans, working with the customers up front, minimizes issues.

Interviewer:  Well yeah, I would imagine.

Do you think when somebody calls you, is your main goal to give them confidence that they can do this? Or what do you find when people are just kind of like a deer in the headlights, but they’ve made that move to give you a call? Is it just overall explanation of what’s going to happen, or do you feel that you have a psychological sort of bent here — just to give people confidence?

Steve Tuma:  You know, the people are confident. They’ve already made a decision to do it. I’m not going to say 100 percent, but 90‑some percent are. They’re like:

So to get to those stages, people have already thought it through. So getting someone that’s completely lost is actually pretty rare.

We’re lucky in that our website, LHLC.com, has a lot of details there, so people can get comfortable with understanding it. And we’re always a phone call or an email away if for some reason they need help.

We’ve worked with seasoned contractors — they still ask a lot of questions.

Interviewer:  Sure.

Steve Tuma:  They ask questions. Things change. There’s different ideas. There are different permit situations.

We’ve worked with people that have built 18–20 homes with us, and they still ask questions. They’re like, “Steve, I’ve done 20 homes with you. I’ve never asked you about this,” or something changes — a code changes.

Or you know, let’s take heating and HVAC. A lot more people are going to mini‑split systems. It’s kind of a technology that’s coming in. So yeah, it still does the same thing — it either heats or cools your home. It’s just a different method. So people ask about that.

More people are asking about metal roof systems. More people are asking about energy codes and how it applies to the structure. So we’re here to help, and we enjoy it. It’s cool to help people.

Because it’s really neat to see how someone goes from an idea — and then a little while later, they’re sending you pictures of a house where they’re moving in, or just about finished, or starting framing. And the people are excited about it.

I got a couple emails over this weekend and a call saying, “Steve, here it is — the snow is leaving,” or, “The drastic cold is gone, we’re putting up the roof system now.” And you see people, and they sit there and go, “With your help, I’m able to do this.”

So a lot of our customers have built homes. A lot of our customers are in the building trades. A lot of them are just people with an idea and they know how to manage it.

So we just want to work with good people. I guess they work with good people and build cool houses — that’s what it’s about.

So I’m talking a lot here, but I think what I’m basically saying is: we’re here to help fill in where the customer needs help.

If they’re less experienced or if they’re very experienced, I think we can provide accurate support for people to move the project along.

Interviewer:  Yeah. And the word comfort does go back to confidence, because when you get comfortable with anything, you’re more confident in it.

Steve Tuma:  Oh yeah.

And the thing about it is, we’ve been doing this 32 years — almost 33 years. We’ve seen an amazing amount of things, but every once in a while you get a curveball.

The thing is, we have the resources — if I don’t have the answer — to get you the answer of how it applies to your particular project on your building site. Not a generic answer, but an answer for your exact project.

And I think that that’s what people realize, because what you’ve got to watch — and everyone’s done this — you go ask your four friends, “What do you think about this?” and you get five answers. It almost leads to bigger confusion.

So in our case, we can give a specific answer and support for your exact project and the house you want. And that, I think, is extremely key — that access to real information for your project. That’s the cool part.

Interviewer:  Well, again, always informative. And every time I get done with one of these podcasts, I have more confidence. Let’s get a house going.

Steve Tuma:  Yeah! But what’s interesting, like I say, is we’ve had people build 20 houses with us, and they’ll come up with questions. We’ve had professional builders work with us and they ask questions.

So everyone’s got their own perspective, and we’re able to fill in. And I think that’s the point that is pretty interesting for people — that we’re able to support and help them through the project, whether it’s:

Whatever it is — we’ve lived it. So I think we’ve got an answer for you.

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

But before we let you go, Steve, as we usually do, let the listeners know how to find out more about Landmark Home and Land Company.

Steve Tuma:  Well, our website I think is the best place to get a preliminary review. You can see it at LHLC.com. It’s kind of the initials of Landmark Home Land Company. It’s actually Landmark Home and Land Company, but LHLC is the website.

You can look at different plans there, see different discussions on materials, how we do things, different opinions, different ideas, different pictures.

You can also email us through there. Or through the actual plans — you can send an inquiry saying, “Hey, I’m interested in this house,” and we can help you from there.

And then you can also call in to 800‑830‑9788. That’s 800‑830‑9788, and Mike will work with you to sort things out.

If someone wants to talk to me directly, I’m available. My direct cell phone is 708‑205‑2043, and we’ll do what we can to help you. It doesn’t cost anything to call in and talk to us and just kind of get some ideas together, see what makes sense.

Interviewer: Absolutely. Well, and there you have it.

Thanks again, Steve, and thanks to all of you for listening to the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show.

So for Landmark Home and Land Company President Steve Tuma, and for myself — have a great week, and we will see you next time.

Thanks, Steve.

Steve Tuma:  Thank you.

A: Modular homes are mass-produced on standardized factory assembly lines with limited customization options, strict delivery transport limits, and municipal zoning restrictions. They can also carry market stigmas that lead to higher financing interest rates, stricter bank lending rules, and potential resale challenges compared to custom panelized homes.

A: Yes, panelized homes offer complete design flexibility and can be modified during the architectural drafting process or adjusted on-site just like conventional stick-built framing. Custom room dimensions, ceiling heights, window placements, and specialized layouts can be engineered to exact specifications before factory fabrication.

A: Walls that are 20 feet tall with extensive glass cannot rely on standard 2×6 framing rules of thumb because they must withstand substantial lateral wind forces, snow loads, and shear stresses. Site-specific structural engineering ensures wall studs, headers, and connections prevent structural flexing, drywall cracking, and window shifting over time.

A: High-end owner-builders building homes valued from $700,000 to over $5 million use panelized packages to lock in guaranteed material pricing, eliminate general contractor markups, and maintain direct oversight of materials and sub-trades. Combining pre-engineered framing with custom finish selections allows builders to maximize equity regardless of their total project budget.

A: A unified panelized package integrates preliminary architectural drafting, stamped structural engineering calculations, local energy code compliance, site planning, and precision-manufactured framing components. Coordinating all design and technical disciplines under a single provider eliminates misinterpretations between separate architects and field contractors.

Steve Tuma:  Reality is you can go buy a 2×6 anywhere. Are you going to use it right? Is it going to be the right one? Is it going to be put into the right design? Is the end result of how you’re spending your money going to be in the house that you want? That’s the key element.

Interviewer:  Hello everybody, and welcome to Episode 75 of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show.

With me today, 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. And that’d be Mr. Steve Tuma.

Steve, can you believe this is our 75th episode of this podcast?

Steve Tuma:  Yeah, it’s pretty exciting. You know what’s interesting is we still have a lot to talk about. So we might have to get to 175 or 275, and then, you know, the market changes, building conditions change, customers get into more unique building situations or want different designs, so there’s always cool stuff to talk about.

Interviewer:  And Landmark’s always growing to meet those needs and desires of every new customer and old customer.

Steve Tuma:  Oh, definitely. Yeah, we’re here to help. We’ve had people come to us for all different types of designs:

We have people that need airplane hangars in their house. Some people have car collections. Some people are really into cooking or entertaining, or hobbies, or home theater. So we’re able to work with them to get the house they want — or they’re building on a site that’s just unique, or a location that’s unique — so we’re able to help. It’s pretty amazing.

Interviewer:  And today I thought we’d get into specifics. In other words, it sounds simple, but some of the most basic questions are often the most important. So I thought we’d hit upon some real basics today.

For instance, explain, if you will, the difference between — and we hear this terminology all the time — what is the difference between a stick‑built home and a modular home, and where does Landmark fall in that?

Steve Tuma: Well, Landmark’s a panelized home. So I would say the three main building methods — there are always some obscure ones, you know, people doing it with compact dirt or hay bales or whatever — but that’s kind of out there. So the more typical ones are:

Stick‑built is kind of the conventional thing where they just call it sticks — a framer would cut the materials properly, make a wall, put it in place, make another wall, put it in place, put the floor system down, stick‑build the roof system.

Panelized is a more efficient method of stick‑building, and then along with Landmark’s design, it ties it together so it’s more uniform — where we can go through, do the design, engineering, and then actually manufacture the exact house that we designed. A huge advantage.

Conventional stick‑building: typically there’s an architect or designer, and then there’s a separate contractor that has to interpret those plans and then work on different details to build it. So chances are, you know, conventional homes — especially older homes — were all stick‑built. It’s good, it’s kind of a standard. It uses materials that are generally available at any lumberyard, and you could have simple homes and you could have more complex homes.

Modular is the one that’s kind of different from both of those. Modular is when you see the two halves going down the street. Now, some of those are HUD homes or modulars — they’re different, but they’re kind of the same for the purpose of this discussion.

They’re made in modules. So if you had a ranch home, it might be two sections — 12 feet wide, 40 feet long, or whatever the dimensions end up. They’re more production line. It’s the concept of a car: you make it on a production line, you cookie‑cutter them, and you get them out. Typically very little ability to customize.

There are the restrictions of the production line, the restrictions of delivery, and then there’s also the restrictions of some places that won’t allow you to build them, or they’re very restrictive about building them. And also modular has issues with stigmas, as well as some financing concerns. A lot of banks won’t finance them, or they’re considered to be a higher risk for some reason — probably resale because of the stigmas. So it might be a little harder to finance them, and it might cost more in the interest rates.

So basically modular is more of a production‑line building where, say, 85% of the home is built off site. It’s standardized. Generally — I don’t know if they are anymore, if there really is a cost advantage. Some people say there is, or it’s not enough to really make a difference. But it is limited in what you get.

Generally, those people that I’ve noticed that buy them — they want big space at some perceived lower cost, and they want it fast. Which to me is like, okay, so you move in three months quicker, and then you end up with a modular home instead of a stick‑built home, which has been considered to be a bigger investment — a stick‑built or a panelized.

So stick — again, let me revisit the stick‑built versus panelized. Panelized is basically the stick‑build process, but we’re making it in a factory in a controlled condition. So things are square, things are put together properly, and then it’s brought out to the site for a quicker assembly.

So if you took the exact same design of a stick‑built home and put one of our panelized homes next to it, very few people — if any — could tell the difference. And really, the difference is going to be where two wall panels come together — you have two studs. Stick‑builders do the same thing, but maybe they make a wall panel a little longer.

We can control the cost. We can control the design. We can make sure that the design is exactly the way you want it to be. We can help with making it easier to get through building departments. We can guarantee our cost, and we can go through and get the details that you want in it.

So if someone looks at panelized homes as being a custom stick‑built home — that’s exactly what it is. And with our service, we tie together the design, the engineering, the energy codes to make sure it’s clear that what you design is what gets built. And also, we can guarantee the cost, which I think is extremely important, because costs can vary — by season, by economic trends, by location — a lot of things.

So the Landmark Panelized Home System gives our customer a lot more control and understanding of the project, and that’s what an owner‑builder needs. They need to understand and control their project.

Interviewer: I mean, you pretty much gave all the pros and cons of all three of those building methods.

When it gets right down to it, is there a “best” home building method?

Steve Tuma: You know what — it’s a different situation. I think there’s potentially a best home building method for different people’s situations.

So the person that says, “Hey, I need as much space, cheap — perceived cheap — less expensive. I don’t really care what I get. I want a standard plan. I want to pick it and I want to put it here.” You know, modular can be quick — if it can get permitted, if your community allows it, if your bank is willing to work with you on it. They can be quick.

So I could understand it. If someone wants to get in there quick and this and that, and doesn’t necessarily have a concern of the long‑term ramifications of the modular designs and the things that happen in financing and the stigmas, it could be a good option for them.

Now, we have a lot more people that will actually come to us and say, “Steve, I want a simple ranch home. I don’t want it to look like a modular.” So we give it a roof pitch, a front entryway, do different details, put a little dormer — do something to add character to it, so when you’re driving down the street it doesn’t just stick out.

So to answer your question, “Is there a best building method?” — I think it depends on what your goals are.

Stick‑building and panelized are very, very similar. Very similar. The difference is the modular versus the panelized.

So generally, I’ve found that the people that want modular don’t understand the long‑term ramifications. They want the perception of cheap, fast, get it taken care of. And in some cases, with specialized financing, they might be able to get into a house that they wouldn’t be able to otherwise, because that industry is working on certain things.

But what I have found is you’re either in or out with that — you either are okay with modulars or you’re not. And a lot of the designs that we work with — more complex and in different parts of the country — the modular homes just can’t do it. Or, if there’s a super specialized modular place, they’re so expensive and so much stuff is involved with it that it defeats the purpose.

So the difference really comes down into the stick‑built versus the panelized, and the end result is very similar.

If you need certain structural concerns, we can do it.

What panelization is adding to it is the production line, where we can control the quality, get things built so that the assembly on site is more controlled and quicker.

And with Landmark’s design of the panelized homes, we’re able to go through to get you the exact design, have the plans detailed to the nth degree so you know exactly what’s going into your home.

So when you combine the design, the customer service, the details we do tying energy efficiency, structural design, green codes, site plans into the process — the one‑stop shop of kind of the architect, the structural engineer, the energy codes, the site planner, the delivery of the panelized home package — it’s just easier and better for customers to go this route. Because an owner‑builder can understand and control their project and make sure they get the house they want, instead of having to settle for a builder special or a design that someone won’t change.

We’ll do complete custom homes and give a guaranteed price. I think that’s exceptionally important for customers wanting to build their homes and have control of it.

Sometimes they want to do changes, or their land comes up, or hey, in the middle of design they end up having a baby, or the in‑law has to move in. So there’s a lot of flexibility that we offer.

And I think that’s why people like it — an owner‑builder wants to build their home, know what they’re getting, and build the house they want. They’re spending their money. They want to get what they want. It’s added value.

Interviewer: Do you think new customers — have you ever had people call you that bring a lot of, I don’t want to say prejudices, but stigmas that they’ve heard about panelized homes? What are the myths of panelized homes that you would like to clear up?

Steve Tuma: You know what’s pretty interesting — we don’t hear a lot. We hear little tales that come from who knows where, especially now with AI coming in. AI can hallucinate a lot and come up with a lot of interesting stuff that isn’t even relevant in a search.

But we’ve had people say, “You can’t change panelized homes.” You can change panelized homes. We can do it in the design process. If it’s important to do on site, you can change it, just like you would a stick‑built home.

Now, there might be points where the change is expensive. If a house is half built and you decide to take your regular two‑car garage and make it an airplane hangar, it can be done. Is it reasonable? Maybe not.

So I’ve heard people say that. I don’t know where they get the idea that they can’t be done. And I think what it is is sometimes people hear a portion of an idea from someplace. And again, the internet’s full of great information — and there’s also a great amount of bad information, or information which isn’t being used in the right context.

So I think sometimes people have different perceptions that, “Hey, they cost more, they cost less,” or they do this and that.

The reality is, you’ve got to look at your individual project for what you’re getting. If you’re comparing a complete custom home and a square‑foot price to a standard box, builder‑special with no features, someone could say, “Hey, that house is cheaper.” Well, it is cheaper because it’s different.

That’s the difference of comparing your dollar hamburger to a $20 steak burger type of thing.

So what I’ve actually learned is that the customer base that we work with — they’re open‑minded and understanding, and understand certain things. They’re not here to get the cheapest house or the quickest or this or that. They’re here to make sure their goals are met.

They want to know the house is designed right. They want to know it’s energy‑efficient. They want to make sure it passes or exceeds codes. They want to make sure it’s built right. And not just code — things make sense. Different situations.

Your code only requires a certain size window, but if you have a big view of a lake, a river, an ocean, a mountain range, a city — you put a bigger window in to take advantage of it. And that’s what we do — we work with the people to get the house.

So just like in any business, there’s always someone that has a story. But in our case I think it’s pretty refined, where we’re able to customize and get the customer what they want in a home, design it the way they want, make sure it’s what they want, make sure it’s structurally sound, make sure it’s built right, and make sure the plans accurately reflect everything that’s required for the customer to build the home that they want.

And it’s also the complete customer service that we have.

Sometimes people say, “Hey, I haven’t heard about panelized homes.” Well, there have been home kits, self‑built homes, a variety of different things around. Sears did them, what — a hundred years ago. There’s a variety of different companies that do things in different ways.

The way Landmark does it is very advantageous to the small builder, the investor, the individual family, and families and friends that want to help each other do it, because we can wrap a lot of details together.

So we look at it as, “Hey, a customer needs to go from point A to point Z.” We’re helping them achieve that whole thing, instead of only, you know, “Click one of the boxes.” We’re trying to click all of them, so the customer:

So the reality is, I really haven’t heard that many myths. But I think by the time people talk to me, they know the advantages and they’re ready to go.

But we’re always here to answer questions. If someone hears something weird, or has a weird story, maybe the story they heard is weird — but it just doesn’t apply to reality or their life or their actual project.

Interviewer:  Sure. So let’s go through the three systems that we talked about — stick‑built, modular, and panelized home building. What are the comparisons as far as costs, the actual speed of projects, and the quality of the builds, in your opinion?

Steve Tuma:  Well, it’s kind of interesting, because if you took — first of all, if you did modular, a modular can’t do what panelized does. It just can’t. We can do what they do, but they can’t do what we do.

We can customize it, engineer it, run through energy codes, run varieties of different windows for energy codes, different insulation scenarios. We can do the exact floor plan design that you want on that property.

Now, going through and doing all that, it takes a little bit of time to properly design and engineer the home so it’s exactly the way it is.

If you take a modular, it’s like, “Hey, this,” and maybe you get an option of a porch or a bathroom or master suite. But generally they’re pretty standardized.

So I think if you go through and you look at what you’re getting in customization, the speed of panelization in our process at Landmark is very good.

The quality comparisons is the thing I think where it’s different. Generally, price‑pointed items — which modular homes generally are — they’re there to have the cheapest price, give you the best square foot, some perception of extreme value. I think that’s where you see that the quality difference is there.

Because in our case, a customer can go through and get what they want:

So it’s not just in the quality — it’s in the finish of what they want their house to look like.

If someone wants a tile roof, we can design the home to have a tile roof. If someone wants a metal roof of a certain design and certain color, we can design the house to have it. So it’s not just quality — it’s “What are you getting for your money?”

So modular — it’s standardized, kind of like a car. They might have a cool car with six colors. You go ask them for a different color, you’re not going to get it. Or they give you such a credit it doesn’t make sense to do it.

In our case, we can go through and engineer the cost for the price of what someone wants for the house that they want to build. We can work at it speedily to make sure that they get the design they want as fast as possible, but we are going to take time to do it right.

We don’t consider this to be a race of, “Hey, we drew the plans up quickest, and then we’ve got to change them 20 times.” We want to do it right, move it along, and think it through for:

So I think when you look at the whole package, the value that someone gets for the house that they choose to build is incredible with us, because they’re getting what they want.

If someone says, “Hey, I want a 10‑car garage,” I’m not going to say, “Hey, that’s unreasonable, you only need three.” Actually, if someone wants a 10‑car, I’d probably tell you to go 12 — you’re always going to get another toy.

So it’s kind of one of these situations — for everyone, it’s different:

They can control the quality. They’re the general contractor. Owner‑builders control:

And in many cases, our customers do it themselves. And there’s a huge equity position that they can get out of it.

So that’s the advantage also — the financial — where someone can do their own home and gain a big equity position, which is pretty nice. That equity position adds to their net worth, but it also lowers the amount they pay to the bank, which is always cool. Pay yourself the interest.

Interviewer:  Right.

Steve Tuma:  Yeah.

Interviewer:  It sounds to me like panelized homes just work really well for owner‑builders and people who — there are a lot of people who probably don’t even look into it. They just figure stick‑built is the way that everybody does it. But it sounds like the panelized system is going to work well for a lot of owner‑builders.

Steve Tuma:  Well, a lot of people are coming into it, and I’ll tell you why: they want to. It’s a childhood dream. It makes sense. And a lot of it — it’s just the financial feasibility of it.

If any family is out there and they’re like, “Hey, I want to build this house. I need this space for my kids and the in‑laws or the dog and whatever else is important to them,” and they get a quote for something outside their budget — by doing some work and being the owner‑builder and saving on the general contractor fees, suddenly it becomes affordable.

It’s a great option to still get the home you want, and a quality home at the same time. That’s why a lot of people do it.

And what’s interesting is, some of these people — you’re going to say, “Oh, this is lower‑income stuff.” We’ve had people do multi‑million‑dollar homes and then come back and do another one because they want to save the money just as much. It’s the same need to get the value and the home that someone wants. Make sure they control the design, make sure they understand what’s being built and how their money is being spent.

We have some customers that understand building — kind of just take that, “Hey, we have this much money, we want to build a house.” And we have other people that are investors or people with very sophisticated lives, where in their sense it makes a huge amount of sense for them to go build their own home.

Sounds weird, but a lot of people are doing it. We’re doing more homes in the $700,000, $1 million, $2 million, $5 million range. And that’s the interesting thing about it.

So it’s the desire to spend your money properly and wisely. Whether you have $200,000 or you have $2 million, it’s the same thing: “Let’s get the house,” because it gets to be expensive. And we’re here to help manage that and understand it.

And then, with the customer being able to control the design, the quality, the features of the home, we can work on a budget that makes sense for them.

Interviewer:  So let’s narrow this down to just — out of the three — just the panelized home build process. How does Landmark’s system work so well for people? How does it fit into the overall scheme when people are looking to build a new house and looking for a system in which to make that happen?

Steve Tuma:  Amazingly, it’s not the actual product of the panelized home. It’s the thought processes and understanding and desire to plan, desire to listen, desire to understand what a customer wants and is saying, so that we can then work together with the customer to make sure the house ends up being that way.

Okay, so let’s just relate it to a steak. Someone may know they want a certain type of food, but they may not know how to procure the ingredients, cook it, and put it on a plate in the same way that a pro — salad bar place, fish house, steakhouse, whatever it is that someone chooses to eat.

So it’s the understanding of, really, what issue are you trying to resolve?

With our knowledge, we’re able to talk to someone and they’ll — you know, a typical customer might say, “Hey, I have this 2,300‑square‑foot home, big ranch, two‑car garage, it’s going to be in a basement in Iowa,” or, “It’s going to be in a desert area in California or Arizona.” But — how do we put it together?

So I think what customers have told me, especially at the end of the process, is: “Steve, the panelization is important. It’s the design and understanding of what the customer is trying to achieve and help push it along — and the support — which is the most important thing.”

Reality is, you can go buy a 2×6 anywhere. Are you going to use it right? Is it going to be the right one? Is it going to be put into the right design? Is the end result of how you’re spending your money going to be in the house where you get the house that you want? That’s the key element.

And that’s what our customers tell us a lot — is the help. I hear frequently, “Steve, without Landmark I wouldn’t have been able to do this.”

That isn’t necessarily just because we have high‑quality wood. It’s because of our understanding and desire to help through the process. We’re here as kind of a partner — a partner to say, “Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Customer, what is it you’re looking for? You have this house, what is it?”

Three days ago I spent two and a half hours on the phone with a lady designing a house, and some things — some details — that no one else had ever brought up, but were extremely important to her. And it was on how the closet doors worked and how they were presented, and the height and everything.

We spent two and a half hours working on that and other details, managing it. She worked her life to get this house, is putting it together, and she wants to make sure those details are there. Are the details going to cost her that much more? Probably not in a percentage amount. But the thing is, she’s getting the house she wants.

So I have a simple thing: I’m hoping that when customers build their home, when they drive up to it after a hard day at work, or come back from vacation, or just a trip around town, they go, “I’m proud of this. This is cool.”

That’s the end result. That’s how we know we’re successful — to make sure that they get the house that they want.

So our system of:

And then, as we get to know our customer, working with them to make sure the house is built with their priorities in mind, is a very important process to have.

It leads to satisfaction. Customers get the value out of the home, and they get the house they want. That’s what it’s about.

Interviewer:  Satisfaction — that’s good. That’s the word of the day.

Steve Tuma:  Yeah.

Interviewer:  Rolling Stones.

Steve Tuma: Yeah.

Interviewer:  Okay, that’s going to be it for today’s edition of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show.

But again, Steve, before we let you go, let the listeners know how to find out more about Landmark Home and Land Company and all the good stuff you guys are doing over there.

Steve Tuma: Well, I think the best thing to do is check out our website. We’re at LHLC.com — so LHLC.com, kind of the initials Landmark Home and Land Company.

Our podcasts are out there on a variety of platforms. You can listen to those on our website. There’s a bunch of plans. There’s details on what we supply, details of work in different states, pictures. There’s a lot of stuff there. So people can go through and find out how we do it.

And then they can send an email to us directly through the website. They can send an inquiry about a specific plan, or they could just give a call, and Mike will answer the phone at 800‑830‑9788. Again, that’s 800‑830‑9788.

And we enjoy talking to our customers, getting to understand what they need, seeing what we can do to help them, move them along. We’re here to support their project.

We want a good customer just like a customer wants a good supplier. So we’re interested in people that are interested in building a good home, doing it right, saving money, and getting some great value and being proud of their home.

So it’s really cool. A lot of people come back — they’ll help their kid, they’ll help their grandparents, they’ll do a vacation home, you know, whatever it may be. And that’s amazing.

I had a customer today — we helped him with a house 10 years ago. He told me he had $400,000 into it, sold it for $1.2 million. That’s a profit.

Interviewer:  That’s pretty sweet.

Steve Tuma:  So now guess what — his next house is free. I mean, he’s got to pay for it, but there’s no mortgage. I mean, the appreciation was pretty cool. And he remembered us — he called us, his name was still on my phone. And we were like, “Hey Kevin, what’s happening?” And we caught up for a little while.

He’s going to do a house and he’s going to do a duplex with his friend. So in his case it was a place for his family, but it was also a financial move in the appreciation and his financial plan to get some investments going as well.

Interviewer:  Good story.  And there it is — Episode 75 is in the can. Thank you again, Steve, and thanks to all of you for listening to the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show.

So for Landmark Home and Land Company President Steve Tuma and myself, have a great week ahead, and we will see you next time.

Thanks, Steve.

Steve Tuma: Yeah, this was pretty cool stuff. Let’s go help some people build some houses. Thanks.

A: Zoning approval only confirms that your home’s footprint meets local setbacks and height limits, but it does not grant building authorization. You must also secure separate approvals from building, health, water, sewer, and environmental departments before an official construction permit can be issued.

A: Architectural plans illustrate the visual style, layout, room dimensions, ceiling heights, and window placements of a home. Structural plans specify how the building physically stands, detailing foundation engineering, load-bearing beam sizes, framing connections, and shear wall fastening required by building codes.

A: Conflicts occur when architectural drawings, structural engineering calculations, and energy code requirements are developed by separate third parties without unified coordination. If a structural engineer alters framing dimensions or beam sizes without updating the architectural set, plan reviewers will reject the submission due to mismatched details.

A: Visual 3D modeling programs produce attractive conceptual renderings and realistic lighting simulations, but they frequently lack critical engineering substance. Building inspectors require fully dimensioned structural framing details, load paths, energy calculations, and connection schedules that basic rendering software cannot generate.

A: Leaving architectural and structural details undefined before breaking ground forces contractors to guess during assembly, resulting in inspection failures, teardowns, and expensive change orders. Resolving framing details, mechanical pathways, and structural loads during pre-construction planning preserves your timeline and prevents unexpected site labor expenses.

Steve Tuma: I would say don’t let the unknown of the building department be a big hurdle. Let us help. We speak their language so we can help understand what needs to be done.

Interviewer: Greetings everyone, and welcome to Episode 74 of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show.

With me today, as usual, 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, buddy?

Steve Tuma: I’m doing well. It’s been a great week, and a lot of people are doing interesting house projects — some of the Los Angeles fire homes, some people building vacation homes, retirement homes, or family get‑together homes. So it’s been an interesting week, and next week will probably be just as interesting. Looking forward to it.

Interviewer: That’s good — something to look forward to.

Today I thought we’d go over some of the finer points of permitting a new building. I’m sure you’ve found that people don’t always have a complete understanding of the terminology — like what plan sets are — or even sometimes they may be intimidated by the permitting process altogether.

Would you mind spending some time going through that and perhaps making it a bit less scary for people?

Steve Tuma: Yeah, well I understand people’s perspective on permitting, because we had an interesting thing happen just this week. A customer is building a house in the Carolinas. We call the city, we call the building department, check out their website — they don’t know what it takes to issue a permit.

They said, “Well, call and talk to the plan checkers.”

We call the plan checker. Plan checker says, “I don’t know, just send me plans.”

We talked to the inspectors. They don’t have a written process of what it is with plans.

So that could lead people to say, “Well, how do I know I’m doing it right?”

My kind of funny, off‑the‑wall question is: then how do you know what you’re checking if you don’t have a list of what’s important for that building department?

So sometimes when you call building departments, they don’t always communicate well. Their information may not be updated on the websites. Or what I’ve run into — other things — sometimes people will call a zoning department and say, “Hey, can I build a house here?” They’ll be like, “Yeah, as long as it meets these setbacks and height requirements, you can build it.”

And people interpret that as a uniform “yes,” that you can build. They don’t realize that maybe you’ve also got to talk to the water department, the sewage department, electrical people, planning department, and potentially other departments.

So what we can do is help people guide through that process for their individual building department. Because there are some building departments that literally don’t exist — you can just go and dig a hole and build a house. Others are very simple, in that they just say, “Get me plans,” without any details. Others give you kind of a list that might be accurate, but it might not have been updated, or there are other departments. And then there’s other building departments that are extremely detailed.

So I understand why people can be confused — you don’t know which one is yours.

So I would say: if people have the building department information, it’s great. If it’s something where they don’t think they’re getting a clear picture, let us know and we’ll help them through the process to go through and get it.

Because these departments — even though you think they work with each other every day — they don’t always communicate, and they don’t always give complete answers. So when a person goes to a zoning department and says, “Hey, what do I need for a building permit?” They’ll be like, “I don’t know, I’m zoning.” So they don’t necessarily say, “Hey, you’ve got to go to these other departments or get these other things taken care of.”

Now, we’ve got a lot of experience, so we can help people understand what might be there, and we can help get through the system — look at web pages, call building departments, do different things to get details together.

Overall, people have a general understanding, because customers in general are thinking about building, so they’re doing a little research. But I would say: don’t let the unknown of the building department be a big hurdle. Let us help. We’ll help navigate through it, find out what’s there. We speak their language, in a sense, so we can also help understand what needs to be done.

Sometimes they’ll say certain things like, “Hey, you need this,” but it’s really a follow‑up question. So that’s the thing that I think people need to understand. It’s just — if they haven’t done it, or they’ve only done it once or twice or in a different jurisdiction, there might be different concerns.

And then, you know, if you’re in a more sophisticated building department or in an area with different conditions, they might say, “Hey, you need a geotechnical report, you need a geological report, you need a topographical survey.” Sometimes people just don’t know what it is. But we can add clarity to it, to help them understand how it applies to their specific project. And that’s the important thing.

So none of it’s hard — at least for us, because we’ve done it so long. But none of it’s hard — it’s just a matter of understanding what it is.

So those are the things that we can do. We’re here to help people understand their project, guide them through it, and get the answers so that it’s a smooth build and a good set of plans.

And like I say, we’ve worked all over the country, so we’ve seen pretty much everything. Every once in a while the building department comes up with a curveball, but so far every single customer’s gotten a permit, and we intend to keep it that way. We just have the understanding of how to navigate building permits for single‑family homes, duplexes, multifamily, ADUs — whatever it may be.

Interviewer: So you guys are creating house plans that, pretty much as much as possible, are permit‑roadblock‑free?

Steve Tuma: Yeah — well, they’re permit‑ready because we go through and find out what the building department wants. And we actually go another step.

Some people believe you do permit‑ready plans, and other people say you do that and then you have a separate set of building plans. I just don’t quite understand why you would have two — other than the perception that you’re getting a permit quicker, but you’re really delaying the build later.

We do it just to make sure all the information is right, because it’s amazing how one little thing can be a domino effect through the rest of the project.

So we want to know that we understand:

And then also zoning things:

So we spend a lot of time looking at that.

And some of the different areas in the country that have more sophisticated building departments or more detailed zoning laws, I’ll call them — we have to do a lot of work on the site plan to make sure that everything fits, cut sections of the house, cut sections of the house through the land, make sure that the slope is right, so we’re fully set and ready to go.

I don’t want to scare people when we talk about this, but it’s what we do every day, so it’s not a big deal for us to go through. But we want permit‑ready house plans.

So we’ll go through, develop the set of plans that are permit‑ready. This includes:

Different things like that. And they vary by building site.

And we want to have a complete set of plans that, once approved, is also used for the actual building phases. The reason being is you want the building department to look at it, and you build off of that, instead of: get a permit and then do a bunch of changes that the building department may or may not agree with.

So that’s why it’s good to have the best information up front, so that you’ve got an accurate set of plans.

And people don’t always understand how an energy code can affect the structure of your home. We do.

And sometimes people say, “Well, this guy did this, and this guy did that.” It’s like, yeah, but did it blend together to make a uniform, buildable set of plans? So you’re not doing a lot of changes on site, because those changes on site invariably cost a lot more. They create a problem, a delay in your schedule, and it’s just stressful.

So why not do the homework up front to avoid those problems? And that’s the way we look at it. We look at a complete overview of the project.

Interviewer: And you don’t want to be setting up red flags for a zoning commission or a building commission.

Steve Tuma: Right. And you know what’s funny about it is, I hear people say, “Oh, this building department, they’re tough, they’re tough.”

Sometimes it’s, “Yeah, you turned garbage in and they’re telling you to do it right.”

In all the projects we’ve done in 32 years, I would say I can run into a handful of building departments that were just hard to work with, because of what I’ll call an attitude problem or a bureaucratic issue on their side.

There are some that are tough because they’re asking for extreme things that other places don’t… but there must be some reason why.

Now, I’ll agree — of all the building departments in the country, why do one or two ask for extremely weird things that no one else asks for? I have no idea. But the thing is, we’ve gotten through every single one so far. And invariably, when you look back, it’s just a learning experience that it goes through.

So we have been able to get through every single building department that a customer has requested to work with — whether it’s a simple one or whether it’s super sophisticated.

And sometimes the simple ones — sometimes they have their own challenges, because sometimes you have people in building departments that may not understand their job. I’m not here to pick a fight or create something, but sometimes you have people reviewing structural plans that don’t have the knowledge for structural plans.

But if that’s the case, and they choose to question it, we have the people with all the answers to make sure that what we supply for permits, we’re 100% confident in them.

Interviewer: Yeah. Well, people think any governmental entity is going to be a little scary, but building commissions are really there to help — even though sometimes people can say, “Wow, they’re really going overboard on this or that,” but mostly they’re there to help, I would think.

Steve Tuma: And in general, a lot of them are called Building and Safety. So there are different situations which come up where they want to make sure it’s built right structurally so it stands up, but a lot of the codes are safety issues.

We could all go on YouTube and watch funny videos of people doing stupid things. To them it may not have seemed stupid, but it’s one of these things that — a lot of it, and a lot of it’s for common sense.

I had someone saying, “Hey, I’m a skinny guy. Why do I need a three‑foot‑wide hallway?” And it was kind of funny, because at first I thought he was being funny about it, and it was kind of funny — but it was literally his understanding, like, “Why do I need it?”

It’s like, well, so you can get out in an emergency, walk a mattress down to your bedroom, different things like that.

Sometimes people don’t understand railings. And I also agree — sometimes there are codes, no matter how much you scratch your head, you just don’t understand.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Steve Tuma: But the reality of it is, there’s always ways to work through it, make it work, keep the architectural features of the home, keep what you like of the home, and make it a buildable home.

Interviewer: Right. So let’s get back to just what I would call maybe a lack of lingo on new builders. They just don’t have the — “What do words mean?” — or “What does this mean?” Even when they go on the website.

What’s the difference between — and I see this on the website a lot — architectural versus structural plans? Can you kind of go through that for us?

Steve Tuma: Well, it is interesting because some building departments think that they’re interchangeable. We had one building department that actually approved permits off of structural plans without any architectural details, and I’m like, “How did they do this?”

So it can be confusing, but basically, in simple terms, the way I think of it:

Now, some of this can overlap. Let’s just take a wall for example. A two‑by‑six wall on the exterior wall is generally structural — it holds up the house — but it will probably also be on the architectural plan, saying, “Hey, these are two‑by‑six walls.” So it’s a feature of the home, but the structure of how those studs are put together, how they’re held, how they’re nailed, how the sheathing works — that’s part of the structural plan.

So the structural plan will include more details as far as:

Different things like that.

And the structural plans also show how things are connected:

So the structure, in a sense if someone wants to look at it, gives details on how the house stands up. The architectural shows what the house looks like and then the features.

Now, sometimes things can overlap a little. I’ve seen some building departments that don’t want structural plans — they don’t request it — but on an architectural plan you would put, “Hey, these are two‑by‑ten floors,” or, “Hey, a beam is made out of a double 11‑7/8 LVL.” So they can overlap, which is why people get a little bit confused.

But, if you’re building in certain areas, in a simpler home, they may not ask for engineer‑stamped structural plans. They may just ask for details like beam sizes, beam sizes of the headers over windows, or around porches, or things like that.

Other places — more sophisticated building departments, you get into most of Colorado, California, most of Arizona, Washington State, parts of Illinois, Florida — they’ll want the architectural and the structural plans.

And here’s the interesting thing — not trying to add to confusion: you need to make sure they match.

We’ve got sets of plans that outside designers have put together, outside engineers have put together, that building departments have approved, where they don’t match. And people are like, “How can this happen? They gave me a permit.”

I’m like, well, they might have checked what’s important to them, but they’re not guarantors that your house is going to get built.

So that’s why we have this unified set of plans where everything matches:

It’s a lot of work tying those loose ends together, and that’s why our permit‑ready set of plans are ready to build off of. It saves a lot of time and headache and backpedaling.

And what people don’t always understand is, with our system we give a guaranteed price. So we’ll go through, work through the building department details as part of it. It’s not like some other services where people are going to charge you by the hour and just rack up the bill saying, “Oh, I didn’t expect your building department to want energy codes — that’s an additional cost.”

Well, it’s kind of a funny process. We do a one‑stop shop, make it easy, just take care of the customer, get it done.

Interviewer: Yeah, and have a little fun along the way. Or a lot of fun.

The one‑stop shop thing — every time we get on one of these podcasts, there are so many different ways that Landmark Home and Land Company seems to be able to help its customer from every angle. And that one‑stop shop is actually a pretty good way to describe what you guys do over there.

Steve Tuma: Well, what’s interesting about it is when people initially inquire to us, they probably find us — well, if it’s through a friend or relative or someone that recommended us, they have a pretty strong or a better understanding of what we do.

But when people first come to us, they might search “panelized homes” or “Landmark Home and Land panelized homes” or whatever to find us. And they don’t realize that they really need help in the whole permitting — matching everything up, making sure the house can get built well — and also have a real resource, with a real human — me and other people on our team — that can look at their project.

So if they have a question, we can respond to the question in relation to their exact project. So it’s not something like, “Well, in general…” No — it’s like, “Hey, let’s look at your site plan, let’s look at the house, let’s look at your conditions, and let’s get you the accurate answer for your site.”

And what’s interesting with a lot of our customer base — a lot of them will say, “Steve, I came to you for the panelization. The support and help and knowledge that Landmark Home and Land Company supplies is actually more important.”

Getting through the nuances of the building department, understanding contractors, understanding how you take incomplete answers from other sources and put it together to make it a buildable home — that’s the important part of it.

And that’s the thing that people don’t always understand.

You know, I could relate it to restaurants: if you just want a quick burger, go to a drive‑thru. If you want an experience, maybe you need to go to a place with better service, music, a view — so you could say, “Hey, both of them serve hamburgers, but what gives me the experience of enjoying the meal?”

So we kind of look at it as a complete, overall situation, where: let’s help the customer through the process of building the home, not just, “Here’s a stack of wood — good luck putting it together.”

Interviewer: Yeah. Well, again, back to the one‑stop shop — Landmark’s going to know what’s needed to get a building permit in very little time, whereas the customer himself may take weeks just to figure out what he even needs to do to get a building permit.

Steve Tuma: Oh, some of the stuff’s interesting, because these building departments aren’t always the best at communication. They’re not always the best at responding. So someone that doesn’t understand it can spend weeks trying to get a simple answer, where we’ve gone through the process.

And in general, our plans typically exceed what most building departments want. We’ve worked in some areas with extremely stringent situations, and so we’re kind of already up for it. It’s our game. It’s what we do. So we just really enjoy doing it.

Interviewer: Let’s go back to inspectors and the building departments in general. In your experience, what generally are inspectors looking for before you get started with your home build?

Steve Tuma: Well, that’s an interesting question, because inspectors might be looking for different things within the same building department.

I’ve gone to see that in some building departments, someone will say, “Oh, I can’t get this inspector. I’ve got to make sure I get that inspector.” I’m like, we’re going to do plans to make sure any inspector will have the answers — first of all on the plan check, but then also on the actual inspection at the construction site.

And that may be two different people with two totally different outlooks. And what people don’t understand is, even if they approve the plans, the inspector on site may have a different opinion — for who knows what reason.

So what I have seen is that inspectors are looking, in general, for certain situations. Some people — I’ve had some inspectors where the customers told me that they drove by at 10 miles an hour and then they texted them that the house is okay. But other inspectors go through and check every single detail.

We do a great job on our plans, which allows our customer to build it right on site. So it’s kind of hard to say that each inspector looks for “this.”

If you’re in areas with simpler building departments, they probably have a different eye than if you’re in the middle of South Florida, in Miami, in a hurricane zone, where they’re going to have more of a structural concern.

But a lot of them are looking for the basic safety things:

Just overall general things — make sure things are nailed together right, make sure the rebar in the foundation is right. I think those items are the general things they look at. But what each individual looks at is up to them.

What’s really cool about this is: through our processes, our customers learn and understand the design and what’s being done. So when they’re out there working with the contractors, or doing the work themselves, they’ve already previewed it in their mind. They understand what needs to happen.

So it’s extremely rare — like very rare — that I get a call where someone says, “Hey, the inspector’s questioning this.” Now maybe they’re questioning the way it was installed, but it’s extremely rare that they’re questioning what we have done, because we’ve done a good job at making sure that our plans are done.

We want to spend the time, make sure that the plans are done right, to make sure that the building and inspection process goes smoothly, instead of creating problems. And the best way to do that is have it on a very clear set of plans, where:

And it’s very clear, so there aren’t little hiccups or “miscommunications” or other things that go on.

So we go to great effort to make sure everything lines up and kind of preview it, to work through it. That is actually the most important part of this process, and I don’t think that everyone always understands the value of:

So that everyone understands what’s going on.

It takes a little bit of extra time, but it’s — what do they say? — an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. That type of situation. And that’s our attitude. It just makes it more enjoyable for everyone.

It’s just cool to get a picture from someone and they go, “Steve, we passed inspection. Look at this house — my dog even likes it.” You know, dogs running around, or the family’s out there enjoying the view.

Interviewer: What are some of the common reasons that plan sets or permits get rejected in general? Do you find that there are common reasons why these rejections happen?

Steve Tuma: In our case, we always go through and look at the exact list — whether your building department has a checklist. We go through to make sure that each of those items is specifically and completely answered.

We’re in the business of helping people get a good set of plans. We’re not in the business of trickling things out and saying, “Oh, that costs more, that costs more — I didn’t know they needed to know where your light switch was, it costs more.”

So we’re not in the thing of nickel‑and‑diming. We’re in the business of getting it taken care of.

So, in our case, when something comes back — like a lot of jurisdictions, like in California, it’s just normal, no matter what you do, to have at least one plan check. We have had plans go through in California and other places the first time through, and people commend us for it. It’s pretty rare — it happens, but we do.

So typically what I’ve seen in a case like that — it’s not necessarily a rejection, it’s just part of a clarification, where they will ask for something on the plan checklist, we supply it, but they need a further thought into it. Different situations.

And you can end up in a scenario where the inspector is personally doing things — especially with these third‑party inspectors, where they think they need to add to the list. And sometimes there is something that, until you have the complete plan set, you don’t see the complete situation that is there.

We had a really, really funny one. I like to look at this as we’re doing a great job helping people, but also keeping it light.

We were in an extremely picky building department in Northern California, around San Francisco, and they wanted a peephole in the front door. I’m like, “Okay.” So we’ll specifically note a peephole there. We specifically note the peephole. They later come back to say, “Well, for ADA compliance, we need a peephole for someone in a wheelchair.”

I’m like, “Okay — never had that request. Totally easy to put a peephole at a certain height for the wheelchair.”

They then come back and tell us that we need to specify the peephole size and the view through the peephole. So I’m like, “Okay, so what are we going to do, sit back and forth?” And each one of these plan checks took that building department one month to go through, and we’re dealing with a peephole — relatively small.

But I understand their concern. We’re not here to argue with them, we’re here to work with it.

So I figured, instead of getting into a back‑and‑forth and whatever the technical parts of peepholes — what they look at, what the view was on the opposite side, can people look in for safety, and all these other things — what I just told them is, I said, “We changed the door to a glass door. So if it’s a small person in a small wheelchair, if it’s a tall person — everything was there.” So we changed the front door to a glass door, which in my opinion is the biggest peephole. It’s a complete glass door.

They then came back and asked me why we didn’t have a peephole in the door. And I had to explain to them that it was a glass door — was it really necessary to put a peephole in a glass door when you could see through it? And then they went through.

So now, that is very extreme. It’s almost funny — it’s one of the better stories that I have. But it is the nature of sometimes you end up in these weird things.

Now, I don’t want to scare people by this. This will probably never happen again. It just more shows that we have the attitude to get through it, solve the problem, and keep the process going. And that’s what it is.

We didn’t charge extra for the back‑and‑forth. It was part of our job. It’s a great little story now.

So all those experiences over almost 33 years are what allow us to have the complete set of plans and details of what building departments want.

So when you say, “What gets rejected?” — in a sense it’s usually quirky little questions that come up later, or deeper thoughts that an individual plan checker may choose to think are important for a site.

Every plan checker is different. We have actually done, in certain jurisdictions, two extremely similar houses on the same lot, going through the same plan checker, and we had completely different checklist items — where they should have been uniform, but they were different.

So it’s just part of it. And that’s why we help people. That’s why we give a set price, so that people don’t get add‑ons and add‑ons that kill their budget. We just give them a set price to get them a set of plans for the permits.

Interviewer: That actually cleared things up pretty well.

Steve Tuma: I hope it didn’t get too deep.

Interviewer: No, because it can.

Steve Tuma: The bottom line is, we’ll get through it. If you’re in one of those jurisdictions where they just throw curveballs and curveballs and more curveballs, that’s probably 3–5% of the American building departments. The rest — 70–80% of them — are regular, just people looking at plans, passing them through. And then the balance are — they have little details here and there, but they’re not necessarily out to get you. They’re just there to show that they’re doing their job.

Interviewer: Let’s talk about — let’s go back to the terminology thing again. I’ve heard you talk, and I’ve read a bit about “pretty plans” and why they aren’t equal to buildable plans. What’s the difference?

Steve Tuma: You know what’s funny is, we’re getting a lot of people that show up with plans where someone drew something up. Some of these software programs are great at doing 3D visuals, putting shading at the right place. You can say, “Hey, this is what it looks like at sunset in November,” and all these things — and they look good.

But if you look at the details — the structural, the energy codes, the architecture — they’re not there. So it’s like the pretty little picture to look at, but the substance of the building project isn’t.

And more and more people have these plans — whether they drew it up themselves and think that they’re buildable, or they paid the local person in town. They come up with these pretty plans, but the details aren’t there.

So just because they look cute, and there’s great shadows and your Ferrari’s parked in the garage, it doesn’t mean that the substance is there for the house. And we’re seeing more and more of that.

I think what’s interesting is some of these software programs are getting easier for people to purchase or do online, or the local guy puts something together. But they don’t have the substance to really build a house properly, get through building departments, make sure the construction is easy, and go through.

And I think part of it is some of those programs are so complex that you have to be a true pro to understand it.

Just because an architect gave you plans — just because you gave them a lot of money — doesn’t mean the house is buildable. I know people aren’t going to believe that, but it happens every day.

Interviewer: Is AI coming into design a lot, and are you guys running into it?

Steve Tuma: You know, it’s coming in with renderings and walkthroughs, where people will say, “Oh, I have this picture, I sketched this picture up,” and they do it — but that’s more like a hobby thing.

In our case, I don’t think AI is there for the actual design concept.

Interviewer: You don’t think anybody’s going, “AI, design me a house”?

Steve Tuma: Oh yeah, that’ll happen. That’s someone dreaming, going, “Hey, let’s get ideas together.” So yeah, I’ve had people go through and say, “Hey, I want a beautiful house on a farm with a cow in front of it and a pond and a gravel driveway.” They’ll do that to kind of entertain or give us a concept.

And that’s really cool, because not everyone can draw that up. But the actual process of formalizing:

Tying this all together, so there’s this magic button on a computer that just does it — I haven’t even heard about it.

There might be parts that are there, but a lot of these little details — when you have to take all these ideas of, “Hey, why does a beam have to be this size?” “How does it fit in there?” “Does it affect the architectural design or the customer’s desires?” — I haven’t seen AI. I haven’t even heard about it.

I think there’s just too much going on. I have talked to people about it to see if there’s some advantage, but at this point it’s still great computer processes with people that understand architecture and structural design running them.

Like I mentioned in the “pretty pictures,” there’s a lot of people that can draw pretty pictures. The idea is: make sure the house is the way the customer wants it, it’s solid, it can be built, it can be inspected, it can be passed. And that’s a whole different level of detail.

We’ve actually gotten plans where dimensions aren’t on there. We don’t know how tall a ceiling is, we don’t know how long a house is. It sounds crazy, but it happens.

So that’s why we have our design team — so we can control and understand what’s going on. Design is extremely important to permitting, building, inspections, and enjoying the home.

Interviewer: Sure. So what does it mean when — I mean, it sounds like a slogan, but it really isn’t, it’s really true with you guys — but with Landmark, it seems like your designs and the way you guys design houses, they’re designed for approval.

I mean, you guys don’t want a bunch of roadblocks put in the way by building departments and stuff. It seems like you go out of your way to make sure that the plans from the outset are ready to be approved.

Steve Tuma: Yeah, that’s exactly what we’ve been talking about. It’s not just approval — it’s also for building.

The reason why is, we’re doing a panelized home package. We need all the details on a plan to make sure the house can actually get built the way that a customer wants it, and all those details are there.

A lot of people will draw plans up and say, “Oh, they’ll figure it out on site.” I’m like, they will maybe, but will it be what you want, and how much does it cost?

And that’s the thing — we give a guaranteed price. So ours aren’t just the permit approval — it’s there to make sure that the people involved with building have all the information.

When I hear people say, “Oh, we’ll figure it out on site,” what I hear is, “You killed your schedule, you killed your budget.” They think it’s — what they’re really doing is not wanting to make a decision. Well, the problem’s just going to be worse. You’re going to be half built and then have to find a problem, and then you might have to backpedal.

How about just take the time now and solve it?  What I find is generally those people don’t understand the overall project. They’re trying to get through a problem. Well, sometimes if you get rid of a problem now, it’s twice as big tomorrow.

Interviewer: Do it right the first time.

Steve Tuma: Isn’t that a simple idea? That’s what we do. Do it right the first time. Take the time. It’s not a race. We want to keep to a schedule, but it’s not a race.

This isn’t a race so that you can go to the bowling alley and say, “Guys, I got my plans in 28 minutes.” The idea is to make sure it’s built right.

Because it’s not just permitting we’re involved with. We want to make sure the customer’s budget can work the way they want it. We want to make sure their schedule works. And we want to keep it as enjoyable as possible. Changes on site can be a headache.  So — pre‑plan.

Interviewer:  Well, that’s going to wrap it up for today’s edition of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. Steve, another very informative podcast — I want to thank you for that.

But before we let you go, let the listeners know how to find out more about Landmark Home and Land Company.

Steve Tuma: I think the best thing to do is check out our website at LHLC.com. It’s kind of like the initials of Landmark Home Land Company, but LHLC.com.

These podcasts are on there, videos are on there, discussions of what we do are there, pictures of projects. It kind of gives an understanding.

And what people can do is send us an email through there. They can look at different plans — we have thousands of plans. They can send an inquiry through the plans, or they could also give a call.

Mike will answer the phone at 800‑830‑9788, and that’s a great place to start. You can look at it at your convenience on the phone or on your computer, and then get some ideas, and then get in touch with us. We’ll work with you specifically on your project.

It goes beyond just saying, “Hey, here’s a bunch of panels.” It’s, “Hey, let’s plan your project. Let’s make sure that we get the best set of plans. You understand your project so that you’ve got an effective and enjoyable building process.”

Interviewer: Well, there you have it. Thank you again, Steve, and thanks to all of you for listening to the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show.

So for Landmark Home and Land Company President Steve Tuma and myself, have a great week ahead, and we will see you next time.

Thanks, Steve.

Steve Tuma: Yeah, thank you. This was interesting. It was a good one — a different angle. I hope people enjoy it.

A: Yes, owner-builders have built homes without a general contractor for over a century by managing the project, purchasing materials, and coordinating specialized subcontractors for trades like plumbing and electrical. Acting as your own general contractor allows you to eliminate builder markups, which typically range from 20% to 40% of the total construction cost.

A: Managing your own build gives you direct control over your budget, construction schedule, and material quality while preventing unexpected change orders. By managing the process and performing sweat equity, you build substantial equity and lower your loan balance, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in long-term mortgage interest.

A: An owner-builder directs the overall project by finalizing architectural designs, securing permits, scheduling subcontractors, and managing material deliveries. Dedicated kit home companies support this role by providing the stamped structural engineering, permit drawings, and technical guidance needed to execute the build correctly.

A: Owner-builders should stick to what they know and hire qualified subcontractors for specialized trades—such as electrical, plumbing, HVAC, or foundation excavation—rather than attempting difficult tasks learned from online videos. Managing experienced trades ensures the work is completed correctly the first time and avoids expensive structural repairs or re-inspections down the road.

Steve Tuma: Well, owner builders can be called self build. There’s a variety of different names for them, but the actual responsibility is to understand and design and build the home that you want.

Interviewer: Hello everyone, and welcome to Episode 73 of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show.

With me in the studio today, as usual, 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. And that man would be Mr. Steve Tuma.

Steve, how’s it going, amigo?

Steve Tuma: It’s going great today, as always. It’s a great day. There’s always a new, exciting project, new building site, new code condition that we’re helping our customers get through and get them a cool house.

Interviewer: Cool house is cool. It’s a good thing. That’s what it’s about — not just a house, a cool house, good house for your family.

I thought today we’d broach a subject that you and I have talked briefly about in the past — but very briefly — and I thought we would shine more of a spotlight on this. And that’s diving in and building your own home, a homeowner‑builder project, without a general contractor.

Is this something you advise very often, and do you think that it’s doable in the first place to build without a general contractor?

Steve Tuma: It’s definitely doable. That’s why we’re in business. We’re helping our customers be their own general contractor — or if they choose to hire one, they can. But our customer has control of their project to go do it, and a lot of our customers literally act as the general contractor. That’s the main person strategizing, coordinating the people to build the house.

The subcontractor might be someone that’s hired, and then they do a portion of it, like electric or plumbing. But a lot of people have been building homes without a general contractor for 100 years.

Way back, Sears did their home kits. There’s been a variety of other companies. Frank Lloyd Wright had some kit homes that could be built. So there’s a whole variety of people that do projects without general contractors.

A lot of people do their own maintenance around their house, or add‑ons, or whatever situation. So you don’t need a general contractor to do it. A lot of people can do it on their own now.

Now, way back, a general contractor might have also been the builder. But in today’s world, a lot of the general contractors are people that just coordinate subcontractors.

Now, within that, those general contractors provide a service where they add a markup. I’ve heard 20, 30, 40% to a project, and that is additional cost that then goes into some cuts from our customer’s budget, or it adds to their monthly payment.

So with that much of a financial incentive there, a lot of people choose to be their own general contractor, to coordinate it, and then do some of the work that they know how to do themselves.

There are a lot of families out there where the whole family is in the building trade, so they can literally help each other build their own home and just go through the family. And then there’s other people that have never built a home but they understand prioritization and the management of a project. We have a lot of people like that as well.

Sometimes we’ll get a call from someone saying, “I’ve never built a house before — can I do it? But I manage this, I manage that.” I’m like, it becomes a management situation.

So yeah, a lot of customers build their own homes without a general contractor. We’re in business because of that particular niche where customers want to build their own home — and customers can do it. We’ve been helping them for 33 years.

And from what I can tell, kit homes — they’ve been around for over 100 years in different forms. The way that we do it, with the complete custom plans, nationwide, build on your site, the design you want — we’re probably the only one that do it to the degree, with the level of customer support and knowledge that we do, on a nationwide and international basis.

So building without a general contractor happens every single day. And sometimes it’s financially driven. Sometimes people just want to know what their house looks like, they want to know what the quality is, they want to control it. They don’t want to be eaten up by change orders.

And even with a general contractor, you have to go to the site, check stuff out — there’s issues that come up. In our case, with our customers being their own general contractor, they can control the scope of the project, the budget, the schedule, and the features of the home.

That’s what’s really cool. It’s a control and understanding of your home, as well as a considerable financial savings.

Interviewer: And it’s got to feel really hands‑on.

Steve Tuma: Yeah, but a lot of people want to do it. I mean, there’s restaurants and every house has a kitchen. People want to do it. Some people want to maintain their own car. They work in their own yard.

The owner‑builder industry — there’s big box stores filled up for people to build their own home or do their own projects. So it’s very common. And so yes, people can build their own home. You don’t necessarily need a general contractor.

And they do it because they just want to — the money savings and the control of the features of the home and the quality of their home. They want to know what they’re getting for their money.

Interviewer: It’s got to be, though, when you talk to a person about this, I’m sure you go through the pros and cons of being your own general contractor and just being an owner‑builder in general. It’s got to be a conversation that takes place quite often.

Steve Tuma: Oh yeah. Building a home — it’s a big commitment. It takes a lot of time. But there’s also the enjoyment of learning about it, knowing what you’re getting out of it.

So yes, if someone’s sitting there — I talked to someone today: “Well, should I have heated floors? Should I use mini‑splits? Should I use HVAC systems?” And what’s interesting is the customers will go back and say, “You know, I learned a little bit about this last night. It’s pretty cool. I want this type of system.”

So it’s not someone saying, “Hey, this makes sense for you.” It’s them going, “Now I know why it makes sense.”

So the con of that is: it takes time. You’ve got to be the type of person that wants to learn, that wants to sort it out, work through it. We’re always there to help someone. But it is a time and financial commitment to do it, and it can be stressful.

People generally have their own life, their own family, and then you’re building a house. So someone has to understand the time commitment.

But on the other side, it’s extremely rewarding. You look back and say, “Wow.”

To me, I’ve been helping 33 years, and it’s still amazing to me and exciting when a customer texts me a picture saying, “Hey Steve, here’s a kitchen,” or, “Hey, here’s the first wall panel going up.”

That, I think, is the amazing thing.

So the big benefit, or the pros: the financial savings, the understanding of the quality of the home, building the house you want, in the place that you want to build it, and having this all set up. It’s a rewarding thing.

One of my first customers in the early 90s said, “Steve”— it was a lady — she said, “Steve, you have to tell people that building a house is like having a baby.”

And I’m like, “OK, well let’s understand this story.”

So she goes on, she goes, “Making the baby — it’s the absolute fun. It’s the greatest thing on earth.” That’s kind of like planning the house, going, “Oh, what windows? What kitchen? You know, what’s the bathroom going to look like? What’s the garage?” That’s the fun part.

Then there’s the nine months of building it, which is like, “What am I doing? This is nuts. Hey, this is an incredible amount of work. What’s up with this?”

And then when the baby’s born, you look back and say it’s the most amazing thing on earth. And that, I think, is a sense of accomplishment when someone builds the house — that they look at it and they say, “Wow, look at what I did.”

So it’s not just the financial gain — if they’re financing, the lower payment and the savings on interest and banking fees, owning their home quicker, saving on financial costs. But it’s also the pride of:

“I know it was built right. The design is the way I want it to be. And that’s it.”

It’s amazing what the designs of houses we’re getting. We’re getting music studios. We’re getting family rooms. We’re getting recreation rooms. We’re getting people that are really into kitchens — having a very detailed kitchen. People with car collections, or they do their own work, or woodshops.

People are really designing these homes for their lifestyle. Even little home theaters that they’re getting to look like theaters nowadays. You can buy these hundred‑inch TVs, you know. And that’s the thing about it.

So if you can design the home to be just the way you want it to be, there’s a value to it. And it’s not just the features in the home — like a kitchen or a home theater or whatever. It’s the position of the home on the land that you want:

You know, whatever it may be — that, I think, is it.

So the bang for the buck when someone is their own owner‑builder is the reward of: “I got the best house I can for the money. And I learned — I learned about it. I know it’s a good home.”

That, I think, a lot of people do it.

You know what’s really cool is we’ve had a couple of customers with younger kids — like 6, 7, 10, 12 years old — and the kids are actually involved in the budgeting, the planning, the understanding. It’s kind of a life experience, whether you’re a young kid, middle‑aged, retired — whatever it may be. It’s an absolutely amazing experience for people.

So that, I think, is the big pro. It’s like: “Look at what I got for the money. I learned something, and I know I got a great home, and I got the home I wanted.”

That’s why people do it.

Interviewer: Do you feel you have to — like you have a responsibility? Or do you just enjoy doing it — but to talk people through exactly what it is to be your own general contractor? I mean, that doesn’t seem like a small affair at all.

Steve Tuma: It isn’t. But the people that do it really enjoy it. They enjoy the management of it. They enjoy what they get out of it at the end:

That’s why they do it. So it’s the end result.

A lot of people like managing and understanding and going through the details:

People like going through that. Just — I don’t really watch the shows, but there’s a billion shows on TV about “Do this to your house” and “Do that to your house.”

Interviewer: Sure.

Steve Tuma: And it’s a growing segment. People enjoy it. They want to do it — with us, which is the cool thing, because they can actually experience it themselves.

And if someone looks at the financial gain of saving, say, $100,000 or $200,000 on a house — what that relates to on a monthly payment, and then the payment through the dollar amounts through a 30‑year mortgage — it could be hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars saved.

It’s kind of an incentive. It’s pretty cool.

Interviewer: I would say saving money is always an incentive.

Talk to us like we’re all third graders here. We’ve gone through, you know, being your own general contractor — which circles back to being an actual owner‑builder, that we talk about a lot.

What is an actual owner‑builder, and what is the responsibility of that owner‑builder?

Steve Tuma: Owner‑builders can be called self build. There’s a variety of different names for them. But the actual responsibility is to understand and design and build the home that you want.

So we’re able to plug in at points where maybe customers need help. So they may know the house they want, but they don’t know how to draw the plans or how to do structural engineering or mechanical engineering or site plans.

So that owner‑builder, in a sense, is guiding the project, saying, “Hey, I’ve got a home here in California” — or a piece of land in California, or Iowa, or New York, or Washington State, Italy — you know, wherever it may be. And they’re like, “OK, I want to put this house. I want to put a 3,000 square‑foot boxy two‑story with a three‑car garage on it with a full walkout basement.”

And so they kind of direct what it is. We just fill in the blanks to kind of formalize the plans, help them through processes so they can go through, figure out the floor plan, the exterior look, the materials, the finishes, and go through and get it put together.

So they’re kind of responsible for the complete project, but we’re here to support them at points where they need help.

And a lot of customers will literally build the whole home themselves with friends and family. Other people, on the other spectrum, just kind of coordinate the building and hire people to do it.

So as an owner‑builder, you’re responsible to make sure the house gets built. But that’s why there’s the financial savings — because you don’t have to hire a general contractor, and you can do the work that you want. Why pay someone to do work that you can do yourself?

And then, if you have an ability to understand different products, you can then go through and say, “Hey, I want this type of roof. I want this type of window. I want this type of furnace,” to really go through and design the home so that you get the value out of it that you want.

And again, it’s not that we expect everyone to know every detail of this. We can fill in the blanks if they need help with this or help with that. We can help guide them through the process.

So the owner‑builder just kind of figures, “Hey, I want to build my own house. I want to save the money. I want to control the quality. I want to control the schedule. I want to know what my house is built like, and I want to make sure it gets done right.”

Interviewer: Do people ever get overwhelmed and reach out to you and just say, “I may be over my head”? Or how do you talk them off the ledge?

Steve Tuma: Extremely rare. Extremely rare.

I’ll tell you why: People don’t just wake up Monday morning and say, “Hey, let me build a house.” They watch shows. It’s kind of a dream. If you talk to the people, a lot of the time it’s been in them since they were a little kid, or they’ve seen a show, or a friend did it, or they realize, “Hey, wait a second, it costs a lot more for me to hire someone to build a house that they want, compared to me saving the money and building a house that I want.”

So the reality is, our customer base is prepared.

They understand that when you buy land, you’ve got to get land that’s buildable. They understand that building a home is going to take some time, a commitment, and be a little bit of a curveball in your schedule.

So I think we do a pretty good job of letting customers know the reality of this. It’s not all roses. It’s a lot of work. There are a lot of details. Things will happen. But that’s the reality of life. You just have to get up, move on, and take care of it.

And we’re always here if someone needs help prioritizing something or understanding what’s going on.

And we always tell them: work with good people. Good people will take care of you. We’re a very good company. We can help people plan it right, understand what they’re doing.

But then, if they have subcontractors or other people involved in the project, work with good people that are there to take care of the job so that you have good guidance in whatever trade they’re helping you with.

We’ve had people come back and do 10 or 15 homes with us. We have people that have done an individual home and then said, “Hey, I want to start a contracting business.” We’ve had people that say, “Hey, I’m going to do one every two years for investment purposes.”

So you know, the reality is of anything — you’ve got to work at it. I’m not going to sugarcoat it and say, “Hey, it’s a walk in the park with unicorns and rainbows.” When you’re in the home, you’re like, “Wow, this is cool.” It might be like that. But the reality is, it takes a lot of work.

But I would say that if you talk to our customer base, people enjoy it. There’s a reward to say, “I got my house.” And then when their payment is less, or their bank account is still strong after building their own home, there’s a big financial savings that I think, in today’s world, is very rewarding to the customer base.

Interviewer: I can imagine. So — and you know, there are little frustrations that come up.

We had one today. Someone said, “Hey, this building department sent me this list. What does it mean?” I looked at the list. We talked about it for 20 minutes, got it all taken care of. Said, “Hey, we can do these things. This is what you need to do.”

And suddenly it became an exciting situation instead of, “Oh, this building department sent me this weird list. What is this? What’s a geotechnical report?” You know, that type of stuff — where we can help them understand and frame it for their building situation.

So there’s a lot of support there. It is a lot of work. It’s hard. It’s time‑consuming. It’s demanding. But at the end, it’s rewarding.

Steve Tuma: I can imagine, yeah.

Interviewer: Are you able to see, early on in a project, when it actually makes sense for a customer to hire someone else — when that makes sense? You know, when hiring people, when you look at the overall, it makes sense to hire a general contractor? Can you see that pretty early on in the process?

Steve Tuma: Yeah. Generally, the people that want to hire a general contractor made that decision themselves, because this isn’t something, like I say, where you wake up Monday morning at eight o’clock and call us at 8:05 and say, “Hey, I just decided out of nowhere to build a house.”

It’s something that people have been thinking about. They’ve been searching for land. So what’s really cool about our customer base is our customers are in touch with reality. They know their time commitment. They know their level of knowledge. They know their desire to do it.

So people generally say, “Hey, because of this and that, I’ve got to get a general contractor.” Other people are like, “Hey, because of my budget, because I know how to do this, why do I want to pay someone to do what I know how to do myself?” They’re going to go manage the project themselves.

So that decision is typically made up by a customer.

Now, I always have a nice little heart‑to‑heart talk with them, saying, “Hey, don’t become a YouTube PhD and go learn how to do drywall on Friday night with your family, and start doing drywall Saturday. Do what you know how to do. Hire people to do what you’re not as strong at. It just makes for a better project.”

I understand that there are situations where someone’s like, “Hey, the budget’s tight. We’d like to do this. Should we do it?” And I’m like, “Well, there’s always a way to reformat your project, to figure out a way to pull money from here to there, or just sort things out so that you get the house taken care of properly.”

But it’s pretty cool that we’ve got a great customer base that is very realistic on what they’re choosing to do.

And we’re there for support, and we’re also direct and honest. If someone’s doing something that just doesn’t sound right, I don’t have a problem saying, “Hey, Mr. Customer, do you really want to go and excavate for your foundation on the side of a hill in the Rockies when you’ve never used excavation equipment before?” I would tell them straight out: don’t do it.

Interviewer: Right. Of course.

Steve Tuma: Now, no one’s ever tried that — that’s an extreme example. But the point is, we do want to work with them to give them a knowledge base so that they can make good decisions for their project.

They are ultimately the general contractor and responsible for the project. But yeah, if I sense something that’s weird, I don’t have a problem having a talk with the person to say it.

It’s interesting — it’s their house, but we kind of still consider it to be ours. We want our customer base, and the owner‑builder community, to be successful. It’s a very cool industry. It’s a big part of the world.

And people have been building their own homes — well, in a sense, cavemen were building their own homes, weren’t they? They’re going out, “Hey, look at this hole. I’m going to clean it out. If I live here, now I’ve got my own home.” We’ve just evolved a little more. So that’s pretty good.

Interviewer: Yeah. Well, there you go. That’s going to do it for today’s episode.

And Steve, thanks. Another really informative episode there. It just seems like every one just gets better and better. And if I were a Landmark customer, I’d be really happy to hear some of the things you bring to the table here at the podcast.

But before we go, let the listeners know how to find out more about Landmark Home and Land Company — how to get a hold of you guys, where they can find out more information, and all that good stuff.

Steve Tuma: Yeah. Hey, just to finish that thought you just said — it’s the support through the project that’s very important, because every project is different. If someone built the same house — one this year, one next year — there’s going to be a different set of issues. Different land is different things. Different times bring up different issues. So we’re always there to help.

The best way to reach us is: take a look at our website. It’s always available. It’s at LHLC.com, kind of like the initials of Landmark Home Land Company — LHLC.com.

You can look at floor plans, listen to the podcasts, listen to videos, see different conversations on what we supply and how we do it.

You can also call 800‑830‑9788. Again, it’s 800‑830‑9788. Mike will answer the phone. You can go through, have discussions with him on what’s necessary. And then when it gets to a point where your project’s moving along, I’ll pick up the project and work with the customer completely through the whole project.

If someone wants to call me directly, just talk about ideas — my direct cell phone is 708‑205‑2043. We’re always available to help.

Interviewer: And there we go. Thank you again, Steve, and thanks to all of you for listening to the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show.

So for Landmark Home and Land Company President Steve Tuma and myself, have a great week, and we will see you next time.

Thanks again, Steve.

Steve Tuma: Yeah, thanks. This was a very interesting one. Cool one.

You’ll hear real stories of first‑time owner‑builders, repeat customers, and investors who used Landmark homes for rentals and retirement properties — including a Virginia home that survived three hurricanes and an F4 tornado with only three shingles lost. Steve shows how multi‑hour design calls, small layout tweaks (like closet doors and accessibility), and fast answers when building departments or site conditions raise issues are the difference between a stressful build and a successful one.

A: Beyond comparing raw lumber pricing, you should choose a kit home company that provides full-service technical support, custom architectural design, and site-specific structural engineering. A reliable provider coordinates state-specific energy calculations, mechanical HVAC layouts, and grading plans to ensure your package is fully permit-ready and buildable across any jurisdiction.

A: First-time owner-builders often encounter complex site conditions, local code changes, or detailed plan-check requirements that are difficult to resolve alone. Having accessible, knowledgeable professionals available by phone eliminates costly learning curves, helps interpret municipal checklists, and keeps your construction schedule moving without unexpected consulting fees.

A: Precision-engineered panelized homes are designed specifically to withstand extreme local environmental loads, including high-velocity hurricane winds, heavy snow, and seismic activity. Stamped structural engineering ensures every wall panel, fastener schedule, and roof truss connection provides superior wind-shear resistance and long-term durability in disaster-prone regions.

A: Yes, custom panelized home providers work directly with you during the drafting phase to personalize every detail, from room dimensions and window placements to zero-threshold garage entries and custom door sizes. Working through accessibility needs and personal finish preferences during pre-construction ensures your final blueprints reflect your exact lifestyle requirements.

A: Permit plans are designed simply to satisfy minimum municipal zoning and safety codes, whereas comprehensive construction blueprints include the exact structural connections, framing layouts, and mechanical details needed on-site. Building from an integrated, fully engineered set of plans ensures subcontractors have clear assembly instructions and eliminates guesswork during inspection.

Steve Tuma: It’s just our desire We don’t look at it as stay ahead of the pack We look at just do your best job every day get better every day and you end up there

Interviewer: Hello everybody, and welcome to Episode 72 of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show.

With me today, 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. It’s kind of interesting — a lot of customers are coming back from the past, doing investment homes, or a retirement home, or a home for a family member. So it’s kind of cool. I guess it’s the value of being around for 32 years.

Interviewer: That would be the value. People remember you and say, “Let’s do it again.”

Steve Tuma: Yeah, if you can keep them coming back, that’s always a good thing.

Interviewer: I want to kind of just get an overall sort of assessment of your own feelings about your company, now that — what is it — we’re going on 33 years now, something like that, that you, Landmark Home and Land Company, have been in business.

So let’s just go over a couple things about your own feelings about the last, you know, three decades, and talk about how Landmark has sort of made its mark in the world.

You guys have the reputation of going out of your way to help individuals and families build their own homes with, well, with confidence for sure and, perhaps more importantly, total control of their homebuilding project.

Let’s start off with that. And you, as the company owner and founder, you’d know very well — through your over 32, well 33 years of doing this now — how Landmark came by this reputation. And let’s dig into what you feel has earned your team the reputation in the first place.

Steve Tuma: Well, I think what’s interesting about this is all the work that it takes.

A lot of people think, “Hey, you just go buy some plans, you buy some wood, and somehow a house magically comes together,” right?

I wish that were true… but the reality is, in today’s world you need:

    Architectural design

    Structural design

    Energy code compliance

    Site plans

    Green codes in some states

    And then whatever special things a building department wants

So in a lot of places you need some very complicated plans.

Other places — there are areas in America where you don’t need permits at all. You just dig a hole and start a house, which is kind of interesting.

I think what’s happened over time is the growth in our experience, working in all these different places. It’s just an exciting challenge to us. It’s something we enjoy doing.

So when someone says, “Hey, my building department’s extra picky,” or, “They’re real jerks,” or, “Hey, they’re the nicest people on earth,” or, “They don’t exist” — either way, we want to have a good, solid set of plans that represent what the customer wants to build.

The customer is involved with reviewing the plans, making sure it’s exactly the way they want them, putting all the details together. Then we follow through to formalize it into the plan set.

And I think — you asked about the reputation and what we do — I think it’s just that we truly enjoy what we do.

So if someone has:

    A more complex design

    A building site with some curveballs

    A lot on the side of a hill

    A flood zone situation

    An earthquake zone

    A hurricane-prone area

    Or just a simple flat piece of land

There’s always something we can do to make sure the house is built right.

And I think people sense that — we’re energized and we enjoy doing this. It’s not a “job” to us. It’s kind of what we choose to do. It’s a passion, along with a desire to get better every day.

And I think that represents what Landmark is.

As the company has grown, we’ve gotten involved with more and more:

    Mechanical design

    Electrical design

    HVAC manuals J, S, D, and T

    Different code compliance requirements

It’s incredible everything that we can put together.

So chances are, if a customer needs help with something on the permits, we’ve been there, we’ve done it, and we’re capable of doing it to help them through it.

And I think that’s what customers really appreciate and understand.

A lot of people, as they go through and build, will tell me:

“Steve, it’s the company support that’s almost more important than the panels themselves.”

The customers come to us to buy the panels… but the reality is, they really enjoy all the support, because they may not understand proper design or code compliance.

So it’s actually the secondary things that they don’t realize they need — those end up being the most important part.

And I think we really supply that in a partnership type of situation, where:

    The customers get a lot of support

    They gain extra knowledge

    We’re available

    We answer the phone

    We talk to them — and we enjoy it

It’s kind of a passion thing for us.

So I think all the excitement of wanting to help is real.

What’s really interesting — we’ve been doing it almost 33 years, and I still get texts and pictures of houses that people are building every day. It’s still cool to see a picture. I actually sit back and look at each picture, zoom in on it, study it.

And it’s pretty amazing to see what we’re able to support our customers with, so that they can go build the house that they want, at the price they want, where they want to build it.

I think that’s really part of the fun.

Interviewer: You know that old saying — it reminds me: “A person who loves their work never works a day in their life.”

So you guys don’t really work much over there.

Steve Tuma: Yeah, yeah — that must be the case!

The reality of a day in our life is kind of funny, because I end up working 10 to 12 hours a day. So I probably actually do a day and a half in each day, as far as a typical 8-hour day.

But it is exciting.

It’s kind of cool when someone says, “Hey Steve, the building department’s asking for this,” or, “Site conditions need that — can you help me sort out how to work through a grading plan, how to work through drainage plans, how to work with surveyors, how to work with structural engineers?”

It’s pretty cool. It makes it easier for our customers to understand and build their own home.

Interviewer: You know, to a great degree, your customer base are people building their first house — at least their first panelized home but, I mean, quite often their first house, period.

So how often are you guys called upon to guide a customer through the overall, complete homebuilding process?

In other words — and I’ll go back to the reputation thing here — is Landmark really as well-situated as you’re given credit for? I mean, to take on any situation a new homeowner-builder might face when entering a project?

Or are you guys really that good?

Steve Tuma: Well, of course I believe we are — and we’re also improving every day.

So it’s kind of interesting to look back and say, “Hey, where were you two years ago, three years ago?” There are definite improvements.

There are new codes.

People are doing more complex houses.

People are doing bigger houses.

People are building homes that cost more financially.

So I think it’s that overall situation — we keep growing, and we keep learning.

We don’t look at it as, “Hey, there’s some prize at the end of this.”

We look at it as, “It’s what we do every day to help people understand their project.”

A lot of customers are first-time builders. But there are also a lot who have:

    Built before

    Or had a home built for them

    Or worked with contractors previously

And then they realize that, even if you pay someone to build it, it’s not necessarily much easier.

There’s that idea — “Hey, I’ll have someone else do it, and I’ll just drive by with my cup of coffee.”

You still have to do a lot of work, even if you hire someone to build your home.

So I think we’ve provided a lot of:

    Energy

    Positive information

    Help navigating the issues

    Help cutting down on the learning curve

…while being a very accessible resource for our customers, with accurate information.

If you look at the different types of customers we’ve dealt with — say, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago — it’s kind of interesting just to see:

    The increasing complexity of homes

    The tightening of codes

    The sophistication of the buyer — even the first-time buyer

And through all of that, we’ve really remained a leader in helping owner-builders understand the process.

The key to it is: we’re kind of the one-stop shop.

If someone can call me and get help — that’s a huge value. Great customer support is rare.

Versus: “Hey, let me get back to you,” or “We have our meeting next Monday.”

No — our mindset is: “Let’s get them an answer now and keep the project moving along.”

That’s the situation that we really enjoy — and that our customers enjoy — because we’re there to help them through the project.

We’re not just a supplier of panelized homes saying, “Hey, here’s your house,” and then we run.

No — we’re there through the complete process, to help the customer move their project along to whatever degree of help they need.

We have:

    Customers who are professional builders

    Customers who have never built anything

    Customers who know how to manage… but have never built anything

Wherever they are, we can plug in the way the customer needs the support.

And it’s just part of our process. It’s not like we charge extra for it, or consulting fees. It’s just part of what we do.

It’s also part of us getting to know a customer — understanding them, understanding their needs, their strengths, their weaknesses, and where we can fill in.

Interviewer: Yeah. Well, Landmark is pretty unique. I mean, a lot of the uniqueness comes from just how long you guys have been around, and your ability to help customers. I mean, you guys work in all 50 states and internationally.

So how does Landmark stay ahead of the pack, as you’ve done for almost 33 years? Is it just the services you provide to the homeowner-builder? Or what do you think makes it so unique?

Steve Tuma: It’s just our desire. We don’t look at it as “stay ahead of the pack.” We look at it as: just do your best job every day, get better every day — and you end up there. Because then, by understanding different things:

    Home design

    Panel construction and manufacturing

    Different codes

    How to tighten up processes

…that’s just part of becoming a better company every day.

Looking back at situations — “How can we improve?” — or noticing, “Hey, look at this, we can do this differently…”

So, it’s: don’t be stagnant. Don’t stay in a comfort zone. Always improve.

Kind of like life — if you want to sit at home and eat chips and watch TV all day, you’re probably going to be a different person than if you get up, work out, hang with positive people, and do positive things.

And that’s the situation we look at — you’ve got to grow every day.

And just with the volume of business, the types of customers, working in 50 states and foreign countries — you run into a lot of situations that lead to that growth.

Like, “How do you build on the side of a mountain in the Carolinas, or the Northeast, or the Rockies, or the Sierras?”

Even though they’re all mountains, there can be different situations for the way you design and build.

So it’s kind of fun. You look back and go, “Wow, this is pretty cool.”

And then, when a customer calls up — did I tell you this? — a couple of months ago, I got an email. It was two in the afternoon on a Saturday. I was taking a little break, and I looked at my email. It was from a family we helped 20 years ago build a house.

They said:

“Hey Steve, I hope you remember us. You helped us build a house in Virginia 20 years ago.”

They went on to say, “It’s a beautiful home. We’re still bragging about it to our friends.” That’s cool.

They’d had some friends over for lunch, and they figured, “We’re going to send Steve an email saying thank you.”

They wrote:

“The home has gone through three hurricanes and an F4 tornado. It’s beautiful. On the rest of our land, there were outbuildings that were blown away. The steeple from the local church was found two miles away. Our house lost three roof shingles.”

And it was just kind of cool to sit back and have someone remember you from 20 years ago and reach out to say, “Hey, thanks. This is a beautiful home. We’re still enjoying it.”

That’s kind of the ultimate pat on the back — to say, “Hey, great job, Landmark.”

Stuff like that just energizes you, because we’re going to be around a long time. We’ve got to build for those people who will be calling us in 5, 10 years saying, “Hey Steve, that was great — let’s do another one.”

And that’s really what it is — the desire to work, to do it right. And the payoff is when you get an email like that 20 years later, or a customer refers a friend or family member to work with us.

There’s something really cool in that ultimate “thank you.”

We look at it as a partnership with our customers. We want to give them a good home.

Interviewer: Well, I think that’s a passion that’s missing in American business, no matter what you’re buying. I mean, when you’ve been at something for a few decades, there’s got to be things that inspire you — that get you back to work the next morning without being bored.

You keep talking about passion, and I think things like that — having old customers come back and want to build again — that’s got to be the thing that makes Landmark also unique: the fact that you have customers from the past saying, “Man, this house that we built years ago — let’s do it again.” And that’s got to be fun for you guys.

Steve Tuma: Oh, it is. And then to see a customer come back and say, “Hey, we sold our house, made money. I want to do a side project. I want to do a little investment home. I want to do a rental property.”

You’re also helping these people get into different stages of their life.

They become investors. They make money on it. And it moves forward.

As far as getting up every day — we work long hours to get people taken care of. So there’s always that list you finish at the end of the day of what you have to do in the morning.

And it’s kind of energizing to say, “Hey, I’ve got to do this with this project. We’re doing that. We’re getting this put together.”

Whatever the situations are, it’s electrifying.

Interviewer: I’ve got to just ask — do you personally ever look back and go, “Wow — 33 years, and I’m still energized about this line of work, about this company”?

That excitement that you have — your customers, new customers, have to feed into that. I think when people call you, they’ve got to feel that. They must feel the fact that you really dig what you’re doing.

Steve Tuma: Customers tell me that. Suppliers tell me that. And I think that’s why we’ve got customers that come back. Some customers have built… I think one did 18, maybe 20 homes with us.

We’ve had investors do different projects that might be more volume-oriented, too — but it’s just the energy in doing it.

Looking back at 33 years — yeah, you do look back and go, “Wow, this is insane. This is pretty cool.”

But to see that after 33 years it’s still on a great path — doing different projects, having different support systems, having different capabilities to help customers — you just feel like you are getting better every day.

And that attitude, plus the feedback from our customers, our systems, our suppliers… it’s pretty interesting to see. You can’t not be energized by it.

I feel bad for people that get up, go to work, and hate their job. It’s unfortunate.

But the reality is, we’re lucky that we’ve developed something that’s truly a value to customers.

In today’s world — being able to afford a home or get the home that you want — this gives our customers the capability of getting the home they want, saving money, and still getting the features they want.

They’re not settling for just a box. They’re getting the house that they want. It’s pretty cool.

Interviewer: Yeah. It’s amazing, actually. Have you found that the types of homes people want to build, or the customers themselves — have things changed over… I’m sure they have, but over three decades, how have things in the panelized home design and construction business evolved or changed over the years?

Steve Tuma: I think the changes are this: people have always known what they want. What’s changed is that they’re surprised they can actually get it, once we work with them — once we do things to make sure they get that “extra something” in the house, or that “must have” feature.

The desires of people and where they’re building change in different markets.

    Someone building a house in Iowa is going to build differently than if they’re on the ocean or a lake.

    Even if it’s the same customer: if we helped them with a house closer to a city, and then they do their retirement home in the country — it can be different.

But overall, it’s one fundamental thing:

Our customers are great, hardworking people.

They want:

    To get the bang for their buck

    A house that they like

    A house they enjoy

    A house they’re proud of

So whether someone’s doing a small, very affordable design, or some mega-mansion, or some extremely unique design — it’s the same mindset:

“I’m watching my dollars. I want to make sure I get the right house. I want to make sure it’s built right. I want to make sure it’s energy-efficient. I want to make sure it’s a good long-term decision.”

That, I think, is the constant: people want value.

And as things get more expensive, we continue to add value — which I think is one of the key reasons customers come back, and new customers want to work with us.

Because the value they get out of:

    Designing the home they want

    Building it where they want

…it’s extremely rewarding, compared to buying a house somewhere else and just settling. Telling yourself, “It’s only a two-year home.”

It doesn’t work that way. People want to build the house they actually want.

So as life gets more expensive and different things go on in life, we’re able to provide a value that people can’t obtain in other places — and the support.

That’s the key: the support.

Like I say, a lot of people come to us — they come to Landmark Home and Land Company for the panelized homes. But the support, knowledge, and help through the process is a key element that I think they really value, and didn’t realize they needed.

And we supply it all as part of our product and service.

It’s pretty cool.

Interviewer: And we can go back to the reputation thing too — we talk about this a lot, but one of the things that makes Landmark unique is the customer service.

And I don’t think you can stress that enough. In this day and age, customer service just… barely exists.

The fact is, people make a phone call and they’re getting some call-center person who really doesn’t—

Steve Tuma: —Is unknowledgeable.

Interviewer: Yeah, just doesn’t have the background. The questions people ask just don’t get answered. And you guys seem to have developed that — as much as anything — and that’s got to make you pretty proud.

Steve Tuma: Oh, it does. I was just working on a project yesterday. We’ve been working with Cheryl for five, six years, and a variety of her friends. We helped a couple of her friends, and then she was finally in a position to get going herself.

She finalized the design, and I spent two hours and 35 minutes on the phone tweaking the finer details of her plan.

We went through:

    Where the kitchen cabinets are and how big they are

    Where the window is

    How the closet doors are put together

Just a lot of the minute details to really make sure that the house is hers.

That’s a key element to it. It’s not just like, “Hey, here’s a house. Pick from these three standard plans. Take it or leave it.”

It’s: “No — let’s make this your house.”

And she had a particular desire to have a certain type of closet door — a tall, floor-to-ceiling bifold closet door that she just really, really enjoyed, both the design and the access.

So we spent a lot of time specifying closet doors. It was very important to her.

And it was actually a unique experience for us, because most people are just like, “Hey, a closet door is a closet door.”

But we understood why she wanted it a certain way. So we worked with her on:

    Accessibility situations

    How the floor is put together

    The transition from the house to the garage, so there wasn’t a step

    Different structural designs for the floor system to give her the look she wanted

That was a two-hour and 35 or 36-minute phone call purely helping that one customer get through the details they needed.

Now, the longest phone call I’ve been on with one customer — helping them get through all the details — was five and a half hours.

I don’t necessarily want to break that record, but it goes to the point: if a customer needs help, we go through the process to get them taken care of.

We respond to emails. We call. We talk with answers. We jump on situations right away to help a customer through it.

We’re not a company set up with a bureaucracy of meetings everywhere.

If a customer needs something, let’s get on it now, help them through it, and go make it happen. It’s a lot of fun.

Interviewer: And it sounds like there’s a lot of — I don’t know, I’ve just watched you over the years — your ability to adapt. I’m sure there have been some changes in the way houses are built or permitted or whatever. But you seem to be able to adapt. I mean, 33 years ago there weren’t podcasts, and you jumped on this, saying, “This might be a good way to reach out to some customers.”

It just seems like you’re always thinking about the future — and that’s a good thing.

Steve Tuma: Well, that’s the thing — what we’re trying to do is make it accessible for a customer to get what they want. Emails, phone calls, podcasts — however we go — it’s the service, plus having a good design team so we can get the plans done, send them to the customer so they can review them, go through, and get everything taken care of.

So that evolution — it’s not something that we’re pushed into. It’s something we choose to go after.

It’s the personal growth of the company, and our desire to understand.

Since we work on all these different projects:

    Little homes

    Big homes

    Super custom homes

    More standard basic designs

    In jurisdictions that are extremely picky

    In building departments that are a little more lax

We want to know that we’re ready for whatever comes. Either way, there’s always experience and knowledge that we gain that helps us be better the next day.

It’s kind of amazing when you look at:

    How things were built 5, 10, 15 years ago

    The software systems

    The manufacturing systems

    The customer-service requirements

    The building department requirements

And not even just the building department — the reality of what it takes to build on a site, irrespective of what a building department thinks.

Usually what we supply is beyond that.

Our plans are there to help people get permits — but they’re also building plans.

And there’s a difference there that people don’t understand.

We’re there to get a real set of plans and support to help you build a house.

It’s kind of important.

Amazingly, people don’t think of it. Man, if I’d never built a house, I wouldn’t understand it either — but the ability to have the support to build, instead of just get permits, is very important.

Interviewer: Right. And the knowledge — people want to be able to pick up the phone and talk to somebody who knows what the heck they’re talking about.

Steve Tuma: And we answer the phone. That’s a big thing.

Interviewer: That’s key. As important as anything. Alright, well that’s going to wrap it up for another very informative episode of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show.

But before we go, Steve, let the listeners know how to find out more about Landmark Home and Land Company.

Steve Tuma: I think the best thing to do is just check out our website at LHLC.com. Again, that’s LHLC.com — Landmark Home and Land Company.

You can see:

    These podcasts are on there

    Videos are on there

    Details of what we supply

    A bunch of house plans

    Different ideas and conversations about how we help

On there, you can email us directly. You can find a plan and email us about it. Or you can give us a direct phone call.

The calls and inquiries will initially go to Mike at 800-830-9788. Again, that’s 800-830-9788.

You can make an inquiry and we’ll work with you right away to figure out the best way to move forward.

People can also call me directly on my cell phone: 708-205-2043. And we’ll do everything we can. If we’re awake, we answer the phone. That’s nights, weekends — we’re here to have some fun with some people and help them build the house.

Interviewer: That’s good. I mean, where else do you get service like that? 24/7.

Well, there you have it. Thanks again, Steve, and thanks to all of you for listening in to the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show.

So I’ll say, for Steve Tuma and myself — have a great day, and we will see you next time.

Thanks, Steve.

Steve Tuma: Thank you.