Cost Vs. Custom

Cost Vs. Custom

Featured in BUILDER Magazine
January 2012
Exerpt:  Pepperwood Signature Homes completes between six and 12 semi-custom and custom homes each year, ranging from 2,000 to 6,000 square feet, on its customers’ lots. As the market has gotten smaller, Chris Tsonton says his company has had to “refine our game plan and how we compete,” which has meant building more homes using systems-built construction. He’s also tried modular construction and likes that he can deliver a house at a lower price than a comparable stick-built home. “That’s the beauty of it.”

However, he doesn’t get much demand for modular homes, nor do many of his competitors. Tsonton, president of his local HBA, says, “Some of the nationals have dabbled in it, but none of our real active members are doing it.”

Why? Because modular, according to Tsonton, doesn’t give customers the leeway they often want to make changes to their house plans late in the construction process, which is why they hired a custom builder in the first place.

Tsonton says that a modular’s wall and floor plans “are pretty much laid out,” and therefore aren’t accommodating enough for clients who may want to move windows and doors around. “It would be very complicated, [whereas] with stick-built houses, you’d just pull apart the framing and do it over.”