I am rated at 60% and would like to build my home on some land. As anyone went this route? Was this process difficult?

Thanks! What is a Plan Home? When your parents build the custom home, how did the VA loan help? If I want a new home, I should look into new construction?

OK a Plan Home is where they will offer you a specific floor plan and up to three exterior architectures for the house your about to buy. Typically a plan home is built as part of a larger subdivision development so that the builder can use the same experienced crew to replicate the same building a few times over.........thats how they cut the errors. Plan homes will allow some minor changes or options like say adding a bay window, adding a fireplace, adding an extra sink in a bath room but overall you cannot change the floorplan or sq footage that much. Custom home you walk into an architects office initially with what you have in your mind as far as how many bedrooms, how many bathrooms, how many living areas and approx style your looking for, for the outside (ex: english tudor, stone cottage, victorian farmhouse). The architect listens and asks questions and then produces first a scratch drawing for you. If you like he does a detailed blueprint. Once the blueprint is done, making changes along the way cost more and more until once the drywall is in they will tell you NO MORE CHANGES. I never used a VA Loan but I was fully instructed on how it works by my last builder. If you buy a plan or custom home the VA sends out an inspector once the home is completed and before the mortgage is issued to ensure VA and you are not getting ripped off and that the home is approx in value to the mortgage. VA inspector is more to protect the VA from a bad loan. In my case I would have got possibly a 1% reduction in mortgage interest by using VA vs going with the builder loan. I took the builder loan as the amount I was borrowing was not significantly large to my income and VA inspection process slows down the mortgage process a bit. If you want a new home and you really do not care all that much about having a say in the construction. You should look at subdivisions that are near completion and have possibly 2-3 homes left to sell or only the model homes left to sell. That gives you a lot of price negotiating power because the Builder wants to exit the subdivision and move on. It's like buying a 2019 car in 2020. So the Builder will be more willing to accomodate you on price and free changes. If you build a new home and your just looking at empty lots. What most people do there is they try to find a home more expensive than theirs about to be built and they build their cheaper model next to the expensive one to sponge off the value of the house next door............and yes that really works. Buying an existing house vs buying new is up to you. Generally a new home is largely maint free for the first 10-15 years unless you get hit by a storm all you need to do is keep it painted on the exterior (mine is 95% brick so not a huge expense there) and maintain the lawn. All the appliances come with the kitchen in a new home except usually they do not furnish Washer and Dryer or the Refrigerator. Depends on your budget which route you should go and what state you live in and what new homes cost. Also do research in your area who the good builders are. In Dallas, PULTE HOMES, CENTEX homes are well built reasonably priced homes. DAVID WEEKLY is nice but closer to a custom home in looks and price. LENNAR sucks, KB HOME sucks, ask around and folks will tell you. Same deal when you buy an existing home, ask who the builder was and do research on the builder and if there are a lot of complaints filed against them. On any home, don't load up on options, have a budget on options and stick with it (like a car). You can always add to the home later in life. For my plan home I was given 5,000 in free options from the builder and I added 10,000 to that. Home cost $144,000 built back in 1999......4 bedroom 2100 sq foot ranch. So I was about 10-12% on options. A few houses down some guy spent $45,000 on options to a home that coset $165,000 to build. That is excessive and he threw away most of that money. Options are extra items a builder charges for in a home. Usually you have three levels of carpeting, three levels of appliances in the kitchen, etc. Go with the med to top level on carpeting, cheapest level on appliances Lighting packages I went with level 2 insead of level 1 (med level). So you have to kind of figure out what you will probably replace later and what you wont. The kitchen appliances they supply are cheap to replace (oven, garbage disposal, dishwasher, microwave) so don't go top of line on them........waste of money. Carpeting and Flooring you want to last a while. So I did top of line on carpeting and padding and laid ceramic tile in kitchen, bathrooms vs laminate or carpeting. Later put ceramic tile with a pattern in the central hallway as that got a lot of wear with the carpeting that was there. Ceramic tile lasts forever so choose colors and patterns wisely. You can buy awesome looking ceramic tile now that looks just like white marble. Also go medium shingles on the roof. Roof replacement is probably your most expensive item don't go cheapest shingle there. Good Luck!

SPC Erich Guenther - Thank you!! You offered a lot of information. I will be doing a lot of research!! You have helped a lot of people who didn't know.