Choosing the Right Land for Building a Custom Home: Key Features to Look For

Introduction: Finding the Perfect Land for Building a Custom Home

Selecting the right land is one of the most important steps when building a custom home. Understanding what to look for in a lot can help you reduce construction costs, avoid complications, and create a space that supports your lifestyle. Here are key features to consider when buying land for new construction to help keep costs manageable and support a successful build.

1. Existing Infrastructure: Well, Septic, and Utility Access

When choosing land for building a home, check for existing infrastructure. A property with a functioning well, septic system, and nearby power lines can save you thousands in initial costs. Many lots with older buildings, like trailers or cabins, may have these utilities in place, which can significantly reduce setup costs if they’re in good condition.

Pro Tip: Ensure any existing infrastructure meets local codes, as upgrades may be needed if they don’t.

2. Cleared and Level Land for Lower Site Preparation Costs

Land that is already cleared—such as open pastures or fields—requires minimal preparation before building a custom home. Forested or overgrown lots, on the other hand, may need trees and stumps removed, as well as grading, which quickly adds to your building costs. Look for level or gently sloping lots to minimize additional site work. Flat land generally makes foundation work more affordable, while steep slopes may require costly grading and drainage solutions.

3. Avoiding Easements or Restrictions

Land with minimal easements or restrictive covenants offers more flexibility in where and how you can build. Easements, which allow certain uses or access to parts of your property, may affect where you can place structures. Checking for easements or restrictions before you buy helps prevent limitations and unexpected costs down the line.

4. Road Access and Driveway Needs

Good road access reduces costs and simplifies the construction process. Properties accessible by a public or well-maintained private road are ideal, as you’re less likely to need a long driveway or significant road work. Rural lots without established road access can add considerable expense.

Pro Tip: Consider any seasonal road access restrictions, especially in rural or remote areas.

5. Good Drainage and Stable Soil

Proper drainage and stable soil reduce the risk of water issues and foundation problems. Poor drainage can lead to erosion, foundation shifts, and even interior water damage. Conducting a soil and drainage assessment before purchase is wise, as it may reveal whether additional grading, foundation work, or drainage systems are necessary.

6. Building Two-Story Homes for Cost Efficiency

If you’re considering building a smaller home on your new land, opting for a two-story design can help keep costs down. A two-story home requires less foundation and roofing than a one-story home of the same square footage, which reduces your per-square-foot building costs. This option is ideal if you’re working with a smaller lot or want to preserve outdoor space.

7. Proximity to Local Building Resources

The distance to local suppliers for materials like gravel, lumber, and concrete can impact costs significantly. If your lot is near suppliers, you’ll save on material transportation, which adds up over the duration of a project. Properties located far from these resources may face higher transportation fees and longer build times.

8. Sustainable Features and Energy Efficiency

When planning for energy efficiency in custom home building, look for land that supports sustainable features. A lot positioned for passive solar gain, natural landscaping, and ample outdoor space for gardening and native landscaping adds to the property’s value and helps lower long-term energy costs.

Closing: Invest in Your Future with the Right Land

Buying land for custom home construction is a pivotal decision that affects your building costs, home value, and future enjoyment. By focusing on land with these essential features, you’re not only saving on initial build costs but also setting up a space tailored to your needs. For guidance on land selection and custom home planning, reach out to us for a consultation.

Why would you PAY for an ESTIMATE???

Why Paying for All Our Services Delivers Better Value for You

At Heirloom Builders, we strive to provide exceptional service, from initial design concepts to the final touches on your custom home. As a client, you expect careful planning, precise budgeting, and skilled execution. But many prospective clients also expect the same level of attention before ever committing to a project—whether it’s for estimates, meetings, site visits, or early-stage design discussions.

The challenge is that, while these initial consultations are valuable, they are time-consuming and resource-intensive. When we don’t charge for those services, that time still needs to be accounted for. As a result, the paying clients—those who commit to a project—end up covering the cost of services we’ve provided to non-paying prospects.

Let’s break this down in detail:

The Hidden Costs of “Free” Services

When you receive a free estimate, site visit, or budget proposal, the time, labor, and expertise that go into those tasks don’t disappear. As a business, we have to absorb the cost of every consultation, design draft, and planning session that isn’t billed. That cost doesn’t vanish—it is built into our pricing structure. What this means is that when we offer these services at no charge to prospect clients, our paying clients indirectly shoulder those costs.

If we’re spending significant time meeting with prospects who haven’t yet committed to working with us, the overall cost of doing business rises. To stay sustainable, we have no choice but to adjust our billable rates to make up for the time we invest in potential projects that don’t move forward.

How This Impacts You

As a committed client, you shouldn’t have to pay more to subsidize the services we provide for free to non-paying prospects. Yet, this is exactly what happens when companies offer upfront work without compensation. Ultimately, it leads to higher project costs and hourly rates for you.

Why Paying for All Services Results in Better Value

By paying for all the services we provide from the start—whether it’s budgeting, estimates, design, or site visits—you’re investing in a more transparent, equitable process. Here’s how it benefits you:

1. You Get Better Accuracy and Precision
   When our team is compensated fairly for the time spent on every task, we can focus entirely on your project without being stretched thin by multiple unpaid consultations. This means we can dedicate our best efforts to ensure the accuracy of cost estimates, the thoroughness of site assessments, and the quality of design and planning.

2. Lower Overall Costs
   Since we won’t need to inflate our hourly rates to cover non-billable hours spent on non-paying prospects, you’ll pay fairer rates for the work we do on your project. You avoid hidden markups and unnecessary overhead built into inflated rates.

3. You’re Prioritized
   When you commit to paying for all the services you request, you become our priority. We can give you more focused attention, faster response times, and a deeper level of involvement in your project because we’re not balancing our time between paying and non-paying clients.

4. Faster Project Start and Completion
   Projects progress more efficiently when time spent on planning and estimates is compensated. You’ll find that projects move along at a better pace when the preliminary stages are treated as part of the paid work, ensuring no bottlenecks caused by "free" consultations or budgeting delays.

A Smarter Way to Invest in Your Dream Home

We understand that the construction process is a significant financial investment, and you want to ensure you’re getting the best value for your money. By choosing to invest in our time and expertise from day one, you guarantee that every hour we spend on your project is working toward the highest quality outcome, without unnecessary costs inflating your budget.

At Heirloom Builders, we believe in providing value, transparency, and exceptional craftsmanship for every client who trusts us with their home. By compensating for all the services we provide, you not only receive superior results but also ensure that your project is built on a foundation of fairness and quality.

If you’re ready to invest in a process that delivers value from start to finish, we’d love to work with you. Reach out today to start the conversation and discover the difference of a truly committed building partner.

Steep Metal Roof Anchoring System and Work platform

This is the platform and anchoring system we used to safely install the ridge cap and anchor in to a 10/12 steep metal roof. Once we installed all the metal panels, we lost our anchor point and needed to build a jig that could be easily moved down the ridge as we installed the ridge cap trim. Standing on the lower 2x4 to install, this jig worked great. I hope this drawing helps.

Building with Straw Bales

I grew up in Lynchburg, VA, climbing trees and building forts in the woods behind our house until I was 16 years old. My dad, Mike Parker, is an architect, and took a job at First Citizens Bank in Raleigh in 1997 and we moved to Wake Forest shortly thereafter. I went to high school at Wake Forest-Rolesville HS and graduated in 2000, with a strong urge to be outdoors and explore the world. I went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, got a degree in Biology in 2004, and moved to Yosemite National Park to explore the wilderness and study wild edible and medicinal plants. I got a job building high end custom mountain homes in Lake Tahoe, CA and learned the skills of building a home from the ground up. I did this for 6 years, and learned a lot from a few master craftsmen. In 2006, my ambition got the better of me, and I bought a $300,000 tear-down house in the overpriced real estate market of Lake Tahoe, thinking I would remodel it, start building some assets, and maybe turn it for a profit. In 2008, the market collapsed and I was almost instantly upside-down in a gutted home. I worked tirelessly to finish remodeling the home in order to sell it. It took almost four years to remodel, and every penny I could make to pay for it. I sold the house for less than I paid for it, and barely escaped a terrible financial situation. 

At that point, I was broke, spent, and really eager to get back to a life in North Carolina, where I could grow food year-round and be closer to family. I moved to Silk Hope in 2011 - because 10 years prior, while in college, I had experienced the good-natured, free-thinking community of Pittsboro and had been intrigued ever since. Revisiting old friends in Silk Hope when I moved back, I rediscovered the beautiful and fertile land that is here in Chatham County. I quickly realized that this was the place I wanted to build a homestead and someday raise a family. 

I found work in construction almost immediately upon moving back to NC, and started Heirloom Builders, Inc. at the end of 2010. I've always been interested in building things with wood. I developed a real passion for building fine homes and custom cabinetry while living in California, so I chose to continue on that path when I moved home. I set up shop in Silk Hope. And started building cabinetry and took on every challenging project that I could get my hands on. A lot of the larger projects that I work on require custom beams for large open spans, or particularly unique and beautiful woods for custom cabinetry. My friend, Leif Diamant, who helped me get started in Chatham County, turned me on to a bunch of logs from a neighbor's driveway clearing. At that point, since I had been living out of my truck for 6 months, and working all the time, I had saved enough money to buy a small portable sawmill. So I did. This gave me the opportunity to mill those logs from the driveway clearing and start accumulating wood to build my own house.

Ever since I was a kid, I've been building things with my hands. I love the idea of simple. And love even more the idea of efficiency. I learned about building with cob at a festival in California and thought it seemed pretty cool. I took a cob building workshop a couple years later and realized how much work it is to build with cob. Shortly after, I heard about building homes with strawbale walls. So I took a strawbale building workshop in California. I was sold. It made so much sense. You can build the walls of a home, with the help of some friends, in a couple days. With waste material (straw). It's cheap, easy, fun, and amazingly energy efficient. The walls of a strawbale home are almost 2 feet thick, and super-insulating. 

When I took out a 30 year loan to buy a house in California, I crunched the numbers to see how much money I would spend on that home over the life of the mortgage. Over double! Once I realized that I would pay the bank more money in interest than the home was ever even worth, I never wanted to take on a mortgage again. Building my home with straw and timbers that I milled myself seemed like the answer. 

In North Carolina, and especially Chatham County, straw bales are cheap and easy to come by. So they make the perfect wall system for a house. The idea is simple. A post and beam frame, built just like a barn, with strawbales stacked like bricks in between the posts, to create the walls and insulation, in one step. 

A well-built house has a big hat and dry shoes. That means it needs a strong and durable roof with large overhangs to protect the walls and windows from wind and rain. It also means a house needs a well-designed foundation to hold it up over time and keep destructive bugs and rodents out and surface rainwater away from the walls. This is easy with a little thought and advanced planning. The idea is to build a roof with 3 foot overhangs all the way around and use metal roofing. I like metal roofs because they last the longest and catching rainwater is a lot easier (and cleaner). The foundation should be elevated at least 8-12 inches above grade, to prevent the possibility of surface water making its way into the home.

When we build with straw bales, we have to realize that this material is organic. It can deteriorate over time if we're not particular about keeping the bales dry. We put treated 4x4's on top of a concrete foundation to elevate the bales off of the concrete. This prevents moisture from wicking up into the bales. We think of the wall as a system. It needs to breath and be independently stable on its own. So we prevent water damage at the bottom as described, and allow for ventilation at the roof. We produce a lot of moisture inside our homes, showering, cooking, and drying laundry. No matter how hard you try to keep water out of the walls, it will get in. The key is to allow the wall to breath that moisture out. We use breathable insulation above the bale walls at the roof vent and a breathable earthen plaster to finish and seal the strawbale walls themselves. A strawbale home with earthen plaster breathes so much humidity from the indoor air, that air conditioning is rarely needed. When you design a home to use natural resources, and build it as a working system, you spend much less on energy to maintain and condition the home over time. My strawbale home out-performs any other home I've built, and the cost is no greater than an average home.

Most of us are raised in a world where we rely completely on the system to provide our basic needs (food, water, electricity) and distribute our waste. I'm building a home that generates it own electricity, heat, and clean water. I'm growing my own food and milling my own lumber. I've learned that the system that provides our clean water, our food, our electricity, and our financial security is teetering on the edge of collapse. And in some cities, the system has already collapsed. We are too smart to leave ourselves so vulnerable. It's time that we start exploring ways to provide basic necessities for ourselves. Clearly, we can't wait for the government to do what's best for us. My intent is to explore and test alternative systems that can provide our basic needs with less energy and maintenance over time. 

I was recently featured on an episode of "America Unplugged," which focused on my mission to explore a balance of self-reliance and community. The producers did a great job of representing my philosophy and the community scene out here in Silk Hope. The episode is now available on YouTube. They also focused in on the systems of my house that run entirely on solar energy. 

I choose to spend my time and money developing ways to build homes better, more energy efficient, and not reliant on any outside sources. Every time we spend a dollar, we cast a vote. Do you put your hard-earned money in a corporate system that sends its money oversees? Or do you spend money within your local community that will gradually come back to you? 

Building homes with straw bales is becoming more common place in North Carolina. It's all over the western United States and catching on pretty fast. Straw bale construction just makes sense. You simply can't find a better value when you consider the cost, the energy-efficient nature, the reuse of a waste product in the fields, the support for local community when you buy local products, and the feeling you get inside a strawbale home. It's amazing.