5 Our Custom Home Building Process: From Dreams to Reality

THE CUSTOM HOME BUILDING PROCESS

How does first choice builders walk you through your custom home building process? What's the very first step to building a custom home? What does the custom building process look like for new home builders?

BUILD A CUSTOM HOME

Some people are building a custom home because they can't find what they want on the market. The next phase in custom home building is finding the right land. Another podcast episode is actually going to be around designing a home.

THE HOME BUILDERS: STEP 1

First step is finding land and coming up with a house design. If they already own land, then we'll do a site visit with them and ensure that all of the details are picked up and described in detail. Next step would be going through the design if they don't already have a design.

HOW TO BOTHER BUYING A CUSTOM HOME

How much do they want to spend on the project? Sometimes people will have an unrealistic budget. Our services are custom, so we don't build only ultra high end custom homes. We build custom homes that are tailored to the customers needs.

PROJECT COORDINATION

Pick as many products as you can before the project ever starts. There's a lot of timing involved with that. It actually makes our projects a lot more successful because the people are less stressed out and we're less stressed too.

PRE-PLANNING FOR ELECTRICAL JOBS

Landon: Having the selections all chosen before we break ground has been a huge asset. Proper prior planning prevents piss poor product, he says. As a builder, yeah, time is money, so we've got to keep things rolling.

BUILDERS: FINAL WALK THROUGH WITH THE CUSTOMER

After we've gotten all of our trim and everything painted up, we're going to actually do a final walk through with the customer. After that, we do a handoff. Our warranty is one year, but we're here for the long haul. It's in our best interest to have a solid warranty program.

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Transcript

Today's episode the custom home building process. 

How does first choice builders walk you through your custom home building process? What do you need to think about things that you need to consider, things you didn't even consider, et cetera and so forth. Drew, maybe kick us off with sort of the overall, the overarching picture on what it takes to build a custom home.

There's a lot to be said here, but in a nutshell, what does the custom building process look like for new home builders? That is such a vague question. Okay, how about this? What's the very first step to building a custom home? There you go. All right, so one of the most important things with building a custom home is first, realizing why you're doing it, right? Because some people are building a custom home because they can't find what they want on the market.

Some people are wanting to build a custom home because of costs. Maybe they feel like the things that are available on the market cost more than they actually are worth and they're not getting what they want for the design. And the thing is, when people are looking to build, they have a certain thing that they're not able to get anywhere else.

So they say, we're going with the custom route. Custom generally costs a little bit more because you're getting an all inclusive service. And the people that we serve are looking for that type of service to get exactly what they want because they're not able to find it.

So that would be step number one. Why do you want to build a custom home? Right? And when you realize that, then you realize, well, I need to find land, and my needs for this custom home are X, Y, and Z. And the type of land that suits that need is going to be I'll give you an example.

I have three horses and I need ten acres and no covenants. Right? Because of all these our lifestyle, we're going to have trailers parked outside and we're going to have kids running around and whatever. So the next phase in custom home building is, first, find out why you're going to do it, and second, what kind of land you need to fit, why you're doing it.

And then third, you're going to walk through a house designing process that matches and aligns with those first two things. Yeah, the house design is certainly part of selecting that land. Like, they need to be decided in tandem.

Yeah. And another podcast episode is actually going to be around designing a home, but we're not going to talk about that so much today. So when it comes to the very first step, like you mentioned, finding land, coming up with this house design, what's the first thing that people have to do? Like tangibly physically? What do they have to do? Okay, so let's say they move here.

John and Jane, they move here, they have a rental right now they have an idea on what they want. What do you do to kind of get the ball rolling for them? Yeah, so we want to have an in person meeting as soon as possible. And in that meeting we're going to break down.

They're going to tell us all the things that they already currently know about their wants and needs. And then we can then at first choice put our brains together with the employees and myself and decide what's going to be the first best step. Generally that means a site visit.

If they already have land, that's super important. We're going to decide if let's take a step back. Say they don't even have land.

They'd know what kind of house they want, but they don't have land. We'll actually help them find the land and ensure that the land is going to suit their needs. And then based off of what land we find, we'll start the design process.

If they already own land, then we'll do a site visit with them and do a walk around and ensure that all of the details are picked up and described in detail while we're on site, where the views are going to go, where the well, location has to go, the septic. Yeah, we'll really just dive into all that stuff while we're on site. And that's really the first physical step is that initial site visit I found people really get a lot of information from that.

From our perspective, it's such a simple thing to do and it takes maybe you're out there for a half hour and that's it. But you walk around and you're describing all these things and if they've had a plan, then you're looking at it and you're showing them. Oh yeah, by looking through this window, you're going to see these things.

And that's actually been a super valuable first step for us. People are like, you know what, this has been worth our time to come out here and visit with you and build a picture. Yeah.

Well, it seems like if you're not in the industry, you don't have really the ability to have come up with that visual, put the plan and the lot together or angle the windows towards the views. Everyone can stand back and say, I want the views to look this way, but there's so much more to it. Well, if you do that, you might have to dig this dirt out and that'll be added cost and then your driveway will be sloped too steep or your septic actually has to go here for this reason.

And there's all these little moving parts. So having someone who has the experience not only with real estate in general, but also with custom home building is clearly super valuable. Yeah.

So I would say after we've done the site visit, one of the most important things, the next step would be we start going through the design if they don't already have a design. Most of the people who come to us do not have a design. So we can just run with that idea for now that this person comes to us without a design because we could have a conversation, go 100 different directions, right? So let's just pick a direction.

And the direction is that the customer comes to us and says, we have land and we have no design. And so what we're going to do is we're going to take all this site visit and we're going to assemble all of their wants and needs, and then we'll get together with an architect or if their budget doesn't allow. So we'll actually refer them to some online websites where they can pick and choose plans.

And then we'll help them decide what their plan should be based off of their wants and needs and budget and land. So that's the next step, right? Deciding on the design and the house plan. After we decide on the house plan, so we have a questionnaire that we use.

We send it to the customer before we meet them in person and they answer all these questions, which gives us all the information we need to decide which type of house they're looking for. And then we'll go doing a site visit. So between the land, the geography of the land, the location of the land, subdivision it's in, and the questionnaire, we're able to actually formulate a really good idea of what kind of plan they should have if they don't already have one.

That really helps a lot. Okay. So really kind of getting them, you're sort of painting a picture on what they're envisioning when they're wanting to build this custom home.

What's the main the analytic questionnaire is not even that extensive. It's like some ten questions or whatever, but they're real critical. What's the main purpose of the house? Are you going to be entertaining? Are you going to be raising children? Do you have dogs? Yeah.

We don't want to ask questions that are like, what type of drywall do you want? Right? They don't care about that. What we need to do is nail down the overall picture so then we can decide what type of drywall to put in. Right? Right.

Okay. For example, if someone says, oh, we have six dogs and they're all indoor dogs in their labs. Right.

A more hyperdog that's scratching the floor. So we're going to choose the flooring accordingly and say, we don't recommend this type of flooring because it's going to get demolished by your six labs. We would recommend this type of flooring.

It's going to hold up a lot better. Yes. So after you have done this site visit, you've got your questionnaires, you have a general vision on what they're wanting to do.

You have an idea on what they're trying to accomplish in tandem with all this. I would assume that your budget is probably one of the main driving factors. How much do they want to spend on the project? Yeah, that's actually a huge part and we do find that out early on as soon as we can.

Because sometimes people will have an unrealistic budget. Not because they're unrealistic people but just simply because of they just don't know. Right? We've recently had somebody call and say hey, we want to spend $800,000 and we need a 5000 square foot house.

On the surface you'd think that seems probably doable, especially if you're not in the industry. But at $300 a square foot, as you know it's going to cost a lot more than that. So the budget is very critical and especially if they haven't bought the land yet because a lot of times people will come in and say we have a budget of X and that includes the land and the house.

Generally when we bid a project we're only bidding the house. We don't supply the land as a norm. We have in a couple of instances but it's more like a special request or a special circumstances that we do that.

And so okay, your budget is 800,000, for example. Does that include the land or do you already own land and you need X amount of bedrooms and you go through this whole questionnaire where you're able to figure out exactly what you can get for the money. And our services are custom, right? So we don't build only ultra high end custom homes.

We build custom homes that are tailored to the customers needs. Right. Some people might need more customization in one area or another.

Perhaps they want to dump a lot of time and effort and money into say a really nice kitchen and they don't care about the rest of the house. Some people are just going for maximum square footage and they don't really care so much about the higher end finishes. Right.

But I think once you have those first three steps you're in a good position to have your house drawings completed. And when the house drawings, let's say you find them online and you just happen to find the right design you find online and the selection process would be next so that you have the plans and you know, the budget and location and all that. We need to start figuring out all the selections you have inside the house.

Fixtures, flooring and I mean you could name them all, right? What type of flooring, what type of fixtures, what type of plumbing, electrical, what type of drywall finish, what type of HVAC system. And we go through the whole house. There's tons of them, tons of different selections to make.

We'll actually have a project coordinator who will walk you through that whole process so you're not doing it alone. And record everything on our online portal. So you don't have to necessarily keep track of it yourself.

You'll have access to the full selection process online, basically like building a shopping cart. Right, exactly. And plus, you have somebody to rely on to give you advice and hey, this is going to be too expensive, it's not going to fit in your budget, or I don't recommend this product because we've seen this happen with it.

We've had bad luck with that product and we've learned the hard way with this thing, or we've had really good luck with these things here. To have that first hand knowledge of people who have built houses and know the products is I mean, it's worth a lot. You could spend thousands and thousands of dollars on products that are not going to work for what you need.

Yes. And that's not to say that there's, I think a common, like, you know, misconception is that, oh, I use this and this is all I ever use, everything else is bad. I think that's not necessarily true.

A lot of people there's a need for each product and it has its own place. It doesn't mean that it will work for every situation, but it also doesn't mean that it can't work for many situations. And one thing that's true is there are certain brands that you trust.

It might be a product that you've never used, but you know the brand and that helps a lot by itself. Right. I trust Delta fixtures.

I don't care if you pick this line or if you pick that line. I know that you're going to get a high quality fixture when you use a Delta plumbing faucet. Right.

And so there's brands I'm not going to use, too, and I'll flat out say that to the customer. No, I would never use that. We've had bad experience with that.

They don't back up their product and they've broke whatever the instance might be. Right. And people are looking for that too.

People want that guidance and advice because they don't have that experience with the product. They see something on Pinterest or whatever. They have a concept in their mind drawn up and they don't necessarily know the ins and outs of the product itself.

They just know what the end look is like. Right, yeah. And so it's really important for a custom builder to be like, hey, I can achieve that same look for you, but not with that product.

We want to go with this product. Exactly. So after they've gone through this selection phase, let's talk a little bit about the project coordinating and how our project coordinator, Brian, helps them out in that.

I know we touched a bit on guiding them with products and advice, but when it comes to the actual selections, actually ordering the material, your shopping cart is full and now it's time to purchase everything. There's a lot of timing involved with that. There's perhaps there's sales that go on and this sort of rolls into the project.

Let's talk a little bit about that. How does the timing work from selections to ready to launch a project and how the project coordinator is still involved in that. Yeah, so we want to pick as many products as we can before the project ever starts.

We're going to have plumbing fixtures. We're going to have windows and doors and trim and all these things picked before we even break ground. And the reason is, if we're under construction, let's just pretend that we're at the framing stage and we don't know what plumbing fixtures we want.

And we're like, well, we're just going to plumb it this way because we need to keep the project going. For example, countermount faucet. You can run the pipes out of the wall or you can run them up through the floor for the water supplies.

If you have a I don't know what you're doing. I was just shutting his mic. You can run the pipes up through the floor or through the wall down below the sink.

Right. Well, then you get to trim out and they're like, oh, we really like this faucet. It's a wall mount faucet and it needs to be mounted up above the vanity because we want this cool vessel sink in our bathroom.

And that's no longer an option. You got to either cut out the drywall and tear out the vanity, cut out the drywall, replum it, or settle with a counter mount faucet. So that's just one example of why you need to pick your finishes before you ever even start.

Another example of why you needed to pick the finishes is if you are in the process of deciding what you want to do for your finishes while the project is going, you're under a lot of pressure. You have to make decisions, and the decisions need to be made right now because the house has to move forward. And what can happen is somebody may not know what they want and so they get panicky and make a decision that they regret.

And so we found the best success to just say, okay, this is our selection process. We're going to walk through all of these items and we're going to get all these things chose and then we're going to break ground. So we have a little bit of time before we ever break ground.

But in the end, it actually makes our projects a lot more successful because the people are less stressed out and we're less stressed too, because we don't have to hound them. It's not a very good position for the builder to always be like, hey, you need to pick this, you need to pick this. How come you're not done really pushing? Yeah.

And that really adds a lot of stress to the project. And people are already stressed because they're spending a lot of money. In fact, more than likely they're spending more than they want to spend anyway.

Right. Because things are generally just so expensive that projects just cost a lot of money, period. And it's their house and it's the most amount of money they're going to be spending.

And so they're under pressure. And then you add all these selections on and then you have an impatient builder, right, hey, we need to keep going because if we don't, we're not going to make any money. And so we've just eliminated all that and said, okay, we're just going to choose everything before we break ground.

And you want wall mounted fixtures in your bathroom? Great. We're going to plumb it this way. And you want a built in tile shower with a linear drain.

Awesome. We can frame our floor this way, so it's a sunk in floor and you have this built in linear drain. There's a lot of things that get trimmed out in a certain way that require structural the structure of the house to be different than your standard product.

And a lot of people don't even understand what those are, but obviously we do. So it's just a good reason why we do that. I'm even thinking as an electrician, there are so many decisions that should have been made, or I can think of a dozen products offhand where the client didn't really know what they were getting.

Quite frankly, they knew they were getting a fixture on this location or there was a switch here. But here's an example. Oh, I'd really like to have a dimmer in my bathroom for my vanity lights.

Well, because of the framing and the way the bathroom was laid out with this double sink and this lot of plumbing in this wall, we have a shallower box installed to fit in the location they wanted, which won't accommodate a dimmer. And so had we known that we could have changed the location, perhaps on rough in and been able to accommodate that, now we can. So now we're going for trying to do different things and maybe we'll do a motion sensor.

Now they're having to compromise. There's a gazillion little decisions like that and it's sometimes overwhelming. I can certainly see it from a homeowner's perspective when they don't even know what questions to ask, right? So having all this stuff selected and picked out before the product even begins and even having time to just kind of mold things over.

Even if you pick out your faucet right, you still have four or five months before the thing is even going to get trimmed out. Another reason we actually started this before we break ground is during COVID everything was super hard to get. Windows were 24 weeks out.

And so we were thinking, we don't want to wait. We don't want to get to the framing stage and be like, oh, we should order windows. So what we're doing is we have everything picked out and we're saying, okay, these items here have the long lead time and we can go ahead and order the cabinets and windows and exterior doors and garage doors and these other things that actually have an extended lead time.

And because of that, we hadn't had any delays on our jobs. That was a huge bonus, which then in turn saves the customer a bunch of money because if we hadn't started yet, they don't have any money into the house or particularly with a construction loan, too. Exactly.

So their construction loan don't have any draws on it because we haven't started. And we're prepared with all of our products that we need to order that have a long lead time. And they're like, okay, we're breaking ground now.

Let's go ahead and start making some draws on your loan. If they have a construction loan and if we had been during construction and we had to wait an extra two months because windows, they're sitting there paying an extra two months of interest while nothing has happened. Right.

And our job is delayed. It's costing the customer money and time. They're not able to move in on time, and it's costing the company time and money as well.

Exactly. And as a builder, yeah, time is money. So we've got to keep things rolling, and having the selections all chosen before we break ground has been a huge asset.

This really makes me think of the old adage, proper prior planning prevents piss poor product. There you go. I love that saying, though.

Landon. Landon wisdom. That's right.

Abe Lincoln said that. No quote. Abe Lincoln.

That's the Internet for you can throw any name on any quote and just be like, oh, okay. So and so said that. I never once called back on a voicemail.

Abraham Lincoln. We've gotten through all the selections, right? And we're ready to break ground. The next phase is we're going to get all your land all surveyed.

We're going through your HOA approvals, your architectural review committee approvals. We'll be pulling permits. We get the land surveyed.

We ensure that it's on your land. We start the foundation excavation. Then we're rolling.

We're moving now. Foundation is going in. We're working on backfilling framing.

After framing, we do walk throughs with the customer. Oh, hey, we realized that whatever this wall needs moved, we would like this window made smaller. We need this window moved over a little bit.

We don't generally have much of that during the walk through as far as framing goes, because we hope to nail that down during the preliminary pre construction stuff. But every once in a while, we do. And that's the best time to take care of it because you haven't covered it with drywall.

Right. Well, and I know that things often look differently, too. Exactly.

They look a lot different when you start walking or standing in a room and, wow, I didn't realize the ceilings were this tall, or, hey, maybe we should put a bigger ceiling fan up there or whatever. Exactly. And that's kind of your last chance to change those things.

After that, we're also going to be doing electrical, plumbing and heating walk throughs with the subcontractors to ensure that your switches and receptacles are in the right place. If you have special requests for, say soffit, lighting, things like that, those would all take place right after framing and before insulation. After that, the subs all come in.

Plumbing, heating, electrical, get their jobs done. Drywall flooring, we go through the rest of the building, phase through, trim out and stuff like that. After we are done with the flooring and trim out and everything like that, we actually paint everything in one shot.

We don't paint our walls before we trim out, which some people say, well, that's kind of counterproductive. You go and paint the walls. If you were to go in and paint the walls, what happens is then all the subs come through, like the trim guy and everything and he bangs up the walls.

Flooring people. So we've actually found it more productive to just go ahead and install all the trim and all the flooring and then mask everything off and paint everything at once. It adds a little bit extra work from one aspect, but it saves a lot of time because you don't have to do touch up three or four times after.

So it's fresh paint. Yeah, I can definitely attest to that. Even as an electrician, you're wearing bags that are sticking.

Electricians are the worst. They bang everything up. You got 92 screwdrivers and wrenches hanging off your hips and you're trying to swivel through doors and maybe you're carrying a light fixture with you.

And it's a fine dance to get through a house without banging anything up, especially with a ladder. But that's a really good point, actually. I've always thought like, oh, I built my own personal house and I'm just install everything.

I'm going to try to do everything in one go. I'm going to trim everything out. I'm just going to blast with all the paint I'm going to be done.

And even just my solo self, I still banged up my house pretty good. Maybe I had to move a door in and wham, there goes a piece of trim or whatever. So that's a cool thing to consider.

So after we've gotten all of our trim and everything painted up, we're going to actually do a final walk through with the customer. We'll do one ourselves first. We'll kind of blue tape everything that we feel like needs fixed and we kind of fine tooth comb it ourselves.

And then we're actually going to get those things marked off and then do a walk through with the customer. So we'll say, hey, look, we realize we have all these things. That way they don't have to stress that we're trying to hide anything, right? We want to mark as many things as we possibly can.

That saves us work anyway. So the customer will generally find a few additional things that we hadn't noticed. Or maybe it's just kind of a nitpicky thing that they care about and we hadn't really thought for ourselves was a big deal.

And then we'll go through and we try to get each guy in there for one final blast. Like the painter, he usually has a few touch up things. Maybe the plumber had missed some caulk or those types of things.

And we want to call them back one time so they can come in and wrap those things up and be done. And after our final walk through, we do a handoff. We kind of do a little maybe I should leave it a secret what we do.

I was going to say don't review. You got to leave it as surprise. Maybe we'll just leave this, come build with us and you'll find out what the house handoff is.

We won't mention anything about the Ferrari that we give out. So we do a little house handoff and the house is yours right here's. The thing is, the house is yours, but we're not gone.

We're a phone call away or we're a message away on our online portal. We have a warranty program that we set you up with and you have access to our online portal, so you can make a warranty request anytime you want. Then we're going to want to follow up, reach out to you if we haven't heard from you.

And in a few months, we're going to want to follow up with you and check in and make sure that everything's going well. We'd like to get final pictures after you're moved in, if possible. Our warranty is one year, but depending on what it is, say a big storm comes through and blows the roof off and it's like, who knows? I mean, that's an extreme example, right? We've never had that actually happen, but a case of force majeure? Yeah.

There are certain things that are out of our control, but any workmanship type of stuff, we would come back three or four years later where you're like, you know what, this is something that should have just been taken care of immediately, and we didn't realize, we're just going to cover this. I mean, our warranty is one year, but we're here for the long haul. We're not looking to cut anybody out of our picture.

And you know what? We want to build for that person again in the future. Absolutely. So it's in our best interest to have a solid warranty program.

We're about the relationship above all else. Yeah, well, that's sort of a look into. And there's a lot of stuff we kind of skimmed over.

I know, but that's a pretty good picture on how our build process works.