Congratulations on deciding to build your own home! One of the first decisions to make is when to build.

Unless you live in a part of the country where homes can be built year-round, you are not alone on that question. 

Before you can narrow down the “when” question, it can be helpful to figure out how you will build your home. There are several options, which can each impact your timing question:

• Stick Build: A team of construction workers descends on your building lot, supplies are delivered, and your custom home is assembled from the ground up. With a stick build, you have to be concerned about weather factors, labor availability factors, and possible cost overruns. 
  
  
• Modular Build: In this method, entire pieces are constructed in a factory environment, and then shipped to the building lot for final assembly. This is more of an assembly line process that does not allow for as much customization as a stick built home or a panel built home.
  
  
• Panel Built: With this home construction method, wooden walls and roof trusses are assembled in a factory and then shipped to the job site in segments. Houses are totally customized, and engineered efficiently.

When you’re building your dream home, you want to be able to customize it with everything that you and your family needs.

This is why choosing the proper building system or method to allow for ample customization is of paramount importance when embarking on your home building journey.

Some home building systems and builders enable configurable building, but not truly customizable. We put together this guide to explore common limitations with some home building methods, and explore how much they are custom versus configurable.

Now that you’ve made the decision to build a new custom home, you’re probably wondering what the next steps look like if you choose to go the route of panelized home construction.

Or maybe you’re deciding between a couple different methods, and haven’t settled on the perfect one for you. The panelized building process is unique to other methods, specifically when looking at it compared to the traditional stick building process.

We put together this guide so you could take a look at what each phase of the process looks like, from the first step you take to the day you move into your new home.