Thinking About Building on Acreage?

Local Builder Hosts Free Educational Seminars

With people spending more time at home, and many working from home, the real estate market is seeing more interest from people wanting to build on acreage properties. In the past buyers were more likely to postpone building their dream home due to cost, commute, and the complication of the process.

“Building a home on acreage is rather challenging with a lot of moving parts,” says Ryan Styger, Vice President of Land Acquisition for Garrette Custom Homes. “It’s amazing due to building permits how complicated the process is. Some properties you can’t build a house on. There are so many factors like zoning and other things that can limit use of a property like flood plains, wetlands, and sensitive areas.”

But now changes to lifestyle along with historically low interest rates is creating a new pool of serious buyers in the market for acreage properties.

“Many people are working from home and spending more time at home so they are thinking more about how they want to live in their home,” Styger said. “Also we’re seeing lower interest rates than we’ve seen in years which allows customers the opportunity to purchase more of a home than they could have before.”

To meet this growing demand, Garrette Custom Homes has been giving free seminars to answer questions and help demystify the process.

“One of the main reasons people attend our seminars is for educational purposes,” Styger said. “Just say you start looking for parcels on Zillow and you come across one you like but how do you know if you can actually build on that property?”

The upcoming New Home Building Seminar hosted by Garrette Custom Homes will be at 10 a.m. on August 1. This informational session will be virtual.

The seminar is informative for people who have just started shopping or those who already own property but haven’t built on it yet.

“People attend because they are interested in purchasing acreage property but don’t know where to start,” Styger said. “Others come because they already who own property. They found their dream property in the perfect location but the timing wasn’t right to build or they couldn’t find the right builder.”

Styger says what sets Garrette Custom Homes apart from other builders is their full service experience.  They have a one-stop shop design studio, in house design team and even handle all your permits.

“We have a permits department that is staffed to figure out the entire permitting process,” he said. “Other custom home builders are good at building homes but are not set up to handle all of the permits.”

He says the seminars, which are now virtual, occur about once a month and include a presentation followed by a Q & A session. “A lot of great questions come up with a lot of amazing and worthwhile interactions.”

The seminars are free with a total estimated time commitment of around 90 minutes. Anyone wanting to register for the next New Home Building Seminar can go to garrettecustomhomes.com or @GarretteCustomHomesNW on Facebook to ask for the meeting link. (Note that the seminars are not posted online. People are encouraged to register and attend the virtual seminar to get all the benefits available in real time during the session.)

Garrette Custom Homes is a Pacific Northwest builder specializing in custom homes, single level homes, acreage properties, and subdivision lots.