Show Notes:
Off Grid Kit Home Design and Building!  Sun, Breezes and Natural Benefits of home design! Organic Design concepts.
Transcript:
Interviewer: Greetings everybody and welcome to Episode 39 of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. With me as always in his special president seat 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 across the nation and worldwide since 1993, and that man is Mr. Steve Tuma. Steve, how is it going, my friend?
Steve Tuma: It’s going great.
Interviewer: Now, everybody is going to be envisioning you sitting on some kind of throne.
Steve Tuma: The pedestal.
Interviewer: Game of builders.
Steve Tuma: Yeah. Well, yeah. We try to help people have the knowledge base so that they understand how we are trying to help them and what we are doing to help them.
Interviewer: Right. Well, it makes sense. You’re the guy that they’re going to come to so you’re the one that needs to have the knowledge and you seem to know what you’re talking about after 39 episodes.
Steve Tuma: Yeah. Well, also, been doing this this since 1993 helping people design and build their homes.
Interviewer: Yeah, not podcasting but building.
Steve Tuma: Right.
Interviewer: So, we are going to talk today about something that we touched upon from time to time. And that’s the phrase, owner/builder. And a lot of people probably wonder exactly what we are talking about. It may seem like it’s sort of self-explanatory but we are going to get into it today. So why do people own or build? Let’s get into that to start with.
Steve Tuma: Well, it’s kind of interesting because own or build, we’ve been talking about it so it seems kind of specific to us. But a lot of people call it self-build. There’s a variety of different words that can be used. But the owner/builder can go range from the person that’s just managing a crew to build and it could also mean the owner is building, digging the hole, pouring the foundation, framing the house. We’ve had customers of all ranges like that. Some of them hire a contractor to build it. Some of them act as the general contractor so they coordinate the building but they don’t actually do any of the building processes. We have some families of friends that get together and they do the work out on the home that they know and then they hire people to do other components. And we have had customers that literally build the whole home. They’ve got friends or family that can literally do the whole process. So the idea of owner building is just – I would generalize it to the point of someone wants to know what they are doing, why they are building a home, they want specific details, they want to know it’s done to a certain degree, and a lot of times, they just don’t want to pay someone for what they can do themselves.
Interviewer: Right.
Steve Tuma: They want to have an involvement. They might be a little skittish as to the margins that contractors can make and they say, “Hey, why should I pay someone for what I can do myself?”
Interviewer: Right.
Steve Tuma: Sometimes it’s financially driven that you can get more of a home for the same price or you can save money building it. Others just desire. People have just always wanted to do it. We do have some families that work with every adult in the family to get a house, do a new house every year or two. Others just build a house and in two, three, four, five, ten years, they move out and want to build again. It’s just kind of something that people want to do. So that’s what and owner/builder is. It’s someone that wants to, in our perspective, someone that wants to have an involvement in the building. Now, a lot of people think that hey by going on a contractor, you give the job and the headaches to someone else. It’s not true.