Your Home Building Coach with Bill ReidBefore You Sign on That Land: What Builders Wish You Knew
Buying land for a custom home feels like progress. You found the lot. You made the offer. You closed. Now the real planning can start.
Except if you bought the land before you tested what it can actually support, you may have just made one of the most expensive mistakes in the entire process.
Chad Eslinger, owner of Eslinger Homes in Lake Oswego, Oregon, and founder of Construction Flow, has three projects on pause right now. Different homeowners, different budgets, same fundamental problem. They bought the property before they priced what they wanted to build on it. And now they're stuck.
ABOUT CHAD ESLINGER
Chad Eslinger is a second-generation builder with twenty-nine years of experience. He's built over 150 homes, completed 75+ remodels and additions, and developed hundreds of residential lots in the Lake Oswego, Oregon area. He bought the family business in 2006, right before the market collapsed, and built it into a practice where most of his work comes from architect referrals. He also created Construction Flow, an application designed to walk homeowners through every phase of a build before they're standing in the middle of it, and he hosts the Construction Flow podcast.
Find Chad:
For Owners https://getconstructionflow.com/
For Pros: https://constructionflowpro.com/
https://eslingerhomes.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ChadEslinger
chad@getconstructionflow.com
THE THREE PROJECTS
Project one. A couple blending families wanted a home large enough for both sets of belongings. They bought a lot they knew. It was near where the wife already lived. They were aware of a sewer extension, but the estimate they inherited from the seller turned out to be half of what it actually cost. The lot is a long way off the road, which added storm sewer complications the city has been fighting them on for over a year. They brought Chad in at schematic design, which was smart. He gave feedback as the architect drew the plans. But every meeting where they tried to value-engineer, they added more costs. The plans are now one hundred percent done. They handed them to the homeowner, the homeowner wrote the architect a check, and in the same sentence said "we're pausing." They've held the land for multiple years and may never build.
Project two. A couple retiring and moving cross-country to be near their son and daughter. They bought land next door to the kids before doing any due diligence on utilities. It's in the country, so septic and well. The well on the property turned out to be 5,000 feet from the building site—an irrigation well. Their goal was to match the price of the home they sold in South Carolina, a budget reverse-engineered from a resale number rather than from construction cost. They designed the plan. The numbers came back higher. They paused to shop other builders. The bids came back the same. Six months later they re-engaged and discovered the county permitting process will take 150 to 200 days because of farm zoning restrictions. They could have been running that clock the entire time they were sitting. They've held the land for a couple of years and still don't know if they're building.
Project three. Currently unfolding. A homeowner meeting with four or five builders. Chad had just priced a similar home for the same architect, so he had a number to start with. The homeowner is worried about overbuilding. The plans are finishing right now, and according to the architect, the homeowner is asking for more complexity to be worked into the drawings. The stated budget hasn't moved. Most projects work through this. These three haven't. And the pattern is identical.
THE PATTERN
People buy land because it's exciting. It's tangible. It feels like commitment. And in many cases, they're making an emotional decision. One couple wanted to be near family. The other loved the neighborhood. Emotional decisions are fine. The mistake is making them without the one piece of information that changes everything: does this lot support what I want to spend?
The reason homeowners don't bring builders in earlier is they think it locks them into a relationship before they're ready. They want to make sure they're getting fair pricing. They want to keep their options open. What they don't realize is the value they're missing. A builder brought in during due diligence would have flagged the sewer extension cost, the storm design issues, the well location, the farm zoning restriction, the foundation cost from the topography. On one of these projects, moving the house twenty feet forward would have saved three hundred thousand dollars. The homeowner chose not to. They wanted the longer driveway. That project is paused.
WHY THE ARCHITECT-BUILDER RELATIONSHIP MATTERS
Most of Chad's work comes from architect referrals, and he works with the same architects repeatedly. That relationship has value homeowners don't always see. When an architect and a builder have worked together on twenty-five or thirty projects, they can read each other's minds. They know how the other one details things. They know what the plans mean even when every detail isn't drawn. A cased opening that's supposed to align across three rooms doesn't always have a section showing every condition. If the builder knows that architect's work, it gets priced right the first time. If they don't, it gets missed, and the homeowner walks in during construction and says "I had no idea that's what I was getting."
The relationship also means faster answers when problems come up during construction. A good architect is busy. They're going to prioritize the calls from builders they work with regularly. That responsiveness is part of what you're paying for when you hire a team that already knows each other.
WHAT SCOPE OF WORK ACTUALLY MEANS
Scope of work is what goes into every single line item in the house. It's not just "box beam ceiling." It's what kind of box beam—three-part crown or simple? Stain-grade or paint-grade? How is it built up at the edges? There are fifteen ways to do a box beam ceiling, and if the builder isn't part of the design conversation, they're guessing which version you meant when they priced it.
The same applies to every material and every detail. Does the water pressure need a reducer? Is the paneled wall a big feature or a small note? Scope of work is both what's being done and what materials are being used to do it. If you can't clearly tell what's being priced, you're headed for a dispute. The more thorough the scope, the better. And the best way to see it is to walk a finished home the builder has done and have them point out what the details actually look like in three dimensions.
BUDGET CHECKPOINTS DURING DESIGN
Bill and Chad both operate with budget checkpoints during design. Schematic design ends with a milestone decision: do we move to design development? Design development is where you spend most of your time specking out finishes—windows, doors, tile, stone, cabinetry, MEP systems. If you blow through that milestone without testing the budget, you wake up at the end of design with an estimate that's two or three times what you thought you'd spend. Budget checkpoints prevent that. They also give you a chance to vet contractors while you're still designing, which means by the time you're ready for final bids, you've already interviewed people and seen their work. You're not picking up the phone and checking reviews.
WHAT HOMEOWNERS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR
Some homeowners raise their hand and ask "what am I responsible for?" The ones who don't ask are in worse shape, because they think they're done and they walk off while the home gets built. You're the General Manager of this project. The architect designs it. The builder builds it. You make the decisions. And the earlier you understand that, the fewer surprises you'll have.
THE TAKEAWAY
A budget isn't real until it's been tested against a real site and a real scope of work. The cheapest time to test it is before you bought the land or paid for the plans. If you've already bought the land, bring a builder in now. Pay them a retainer if you need to. Five thousand dollars for forty hours of consulting during design can save you three hundred thousand in the field. That's not theory. That's one of the three projects Chad just described.
CROSS-REFERENCES
Episode 47 -Building Your Dream Home Starts With a Quality Team
Episode 66 - Budget Checkpoints: How to Control Costs During Home Design
Episode 70 — Finding the Right Builder
Episode 71 — The Three Returns Framework
Episodes 55-67 — The construction contracting arc
ASK BILL A QUESTION - Call or text 530-289-6368
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Free Story: The Tale of Two Homeowners
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Mentioned in this episode:
The Awakened Homeowner Book
The Awakened Homeowner Book
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