Let's be completely honest for a minute. Building a house on your own land is hard work. It takes a lot of time and effort for you as the owner, and not everyone is ready for that. How committed are you to your dream?

Once you've invested your deposit, been honest about your budget, and discussed your wish list of features for your forever home, it's time for your builder to start creating a plan. He'll go to the drawing board and come up with a conceptual house plan, a list of features, and a price.

When you're building on your land, you want to find the right builder for you. And in most cases, builders require a deposit before they'll even quote you a price. That's because giving you a price on a custom home requires a fair bit of work.

You've done all the emotional, difficult work of planning, tweaking, compromising, and creating the plan for your home. Your builder has been right there beside you, guiding the way. You've agreed on the plans, the details, and the dollar investment, so now it's time to start building.

Without fail, every potential client we talk to wants more house than they can afford. That's human nature, and there's nothing wrong with it. There's also nothing wrong with working hard to get the most house for your money.

Here's a secret most builders in Oklahoma won't tell you: none of the builders in our state are big enough to keep their subcontractors busy 100% of the time. Building a custom home requires a lot of subcontractors, and even builders who have multiple houses going at once won't need a plumber or a cabinet maker or an electrician every single day.

To build a custom home, you start with a construction loan. First you need to pick a bank that has experience in construction loans. You may have a favorite bank, but if they don't have a lot of experience with construction loans, we highly recommend finding one that does. It's not as straightforward as a conventional mortgage loan, and you want someone who knows the ins and outs.

The budget is a really critical part of building on your land. As we've said before, most people's dream for what their forever home will look like typically exceeds their budget. So there are always compromises to be made, but first you and your builder need to know what your budget actually is.

We recently talked to a nice couple who wanted to build a custom home unique to their specific needs. They gave us a budget that was probably $40,000 to $50,000 shy of what it would take to build the house they wanted.

In the custom home building process, it's easy to fall into a trap of hearing what you want to hear. We've seen it happen to unsuspecting buyers so many times.

When researching builders to make your custom home dream a reality, you may be wondering which builder has the best subcontractors. The short answer: They all do. That's not what makes the difference between builders.

If you've been thinking about building a house on your land, now is the time. Like many things in life, the cost to build a house keeps going up. Why? Because there are lots of factors involved in the cost to build a house. Everything from global commodities to the cost of local labor has an impact on the house you build.

Most neighborhoods have covenants and restrictions. In most cases, it's a way for the land developer to maintain some control over what's built until they've sold all of the lots. The rules keep someone from building something that devalues the neighborhood.

For many people, part of building a custom home is finding the right place to build. Perhaps you've been searching for a while and you're getting a little frustrated with the process. But then you find a great deal on the last available lot in a particular area. Lucky you! Or maybe not.

For some people building a custom home, it's tempting to try and take the DIY approach to part of the process in an effort to save money. When it comes to your house plan, though, it's really best to leave it to the professionals.

Thinking about building a custom home? If so, you may be dreaming of all the big and little things you want to have in the house. But then you're also probably thinking about your budget and wondering how to get the most bang for your buck.

Many people associate high quality with high cost, but it's not always true. In fact, sometimes the opposite is true.

Building a custom home requires making a lot of choices about the layout and size of rooms, the exterior look of the home, the materials used inside and out, and the colors for everything in the house from paint to tile to flooring. It's a lot of choices—often more choices than people realize when they first dream of building a custom home.

When thinking about building a custom home, you might also be thinking that you have to choose between speed or quality. After all, many people associate speed with shoddy work. But that's not always the case.

We all know that having a custom home built requires a significant investment of money. What many people overlook is the investment of time.

In today's age of manufactured products, we tend to think that we can write a check or hand over the credit card then sit back and wait for our new car, computer, or whatever else to get delivered.

Building a house is a complex task, but there are many builders capable of doing a good job on that task. Developing land is another thing, and it's not a skill that every builder possesses. Honestly, it's not a skill the vast majority of builders possess. But more and more builders are advertising that they will build on your land because the number of available neighborhood lots is rapidly shrinking.

In any home, there are lots of manufactured products: appliances, pipes, drywall, paint, lights, faucets, toilets, windows, shingles, doors, and much more. All of those products come together to create your new home.

The builder (or you as the customer) must specify a manufacturer for each of those items. Many people assume that a builder uses the least expensive items he or she can get away with (hence the term "builder grade"). But that's not usually the case.

Emily came to us with a house plan she created herself. It had everything she had been dreaming about, and now she just needed to find a builder who could build it within her budget. We weren't the first builder she had interviewed, and we weren't the last.

I think she kept shopping around because she hadn't yet found a builder who could build it within her budget. In her mind, she was committed to this house plan and wasn't going to stop until she got the answer she wanted to hear. Unfortunately, we gave her the same answer she had heard many times: this house plan is outside your budget.

Everyone, contractors especially, make mistakes while building a home. Sometimes it's due to poor communication, other times poor documentation is to blame, and other times it's just simple human error. But when mistakes happen, who pays for them?

That generally depends on the type of contract you have in place with your builder.

Sometimes a shop building is a nice thing to have, whether you plan to use it for storing lawn equipment, vehicle maintenance, as a garden shed, or for any other hobby or practical purpose. But if you're building a shop on your land, it's important to do it right!

Here are a few tips for what to watch out for when building a shop on your land.

When it comes to building a custom home, every client wants to know how long it takes to build a house. You may be thinking about when to put your current house on the market or trying to line up temporary housing while building the new home. Or you may just want to know when you can move in to your dream home.

Generally, six to eight months is a reasonable timeline for building a custom home, although it can certainly take longer sometimes.