On Sept. 23, Stone Martin Builders launched its new Build On Your Land program, which provides property owners with the opportunity to create and design their dream home on their land.
Stone Martin Builders is a home building company based in Opelika, Alabama. With its new program, homebuyers can choose from Stone Martin’s 73 different floor plans, all while having creative control in deciding what goes in the home, down to the baseboards and doorknobs. Stone Martin calls this process "personalized production homes."
Sarah Martin, vice president of sales for Stone Martin Builders, along with the rest of the team, was inspired to provide homebuyers the chance to oversee the design and construction of their homes.
“Honestly, I think that we just saw an opportunity,” Martin said. “We have people that come in our model homes all the time, telling us they love our floor plans, but they own their own land, or they don't want to be in an HOA, or they want a little more space, so we just kind of saw an opportunity for a really great process.”
Lucy Williams, representative and design specialist for the Build On Your Land program, agreed with Martin.
“It provides a lot of options for people to customize and make their homes their own,” Williams said.
The process of building the home goes beyond just the design process. Stone Martin starts by sending each homebuyer a pre-construction guide that includes a series of questions about the property and the buyer's wants. After gathering as much information as possible, buyers will then join a call with Williams, who will walk them through the process and determine what they're looking for.
"If they already own the land, sometimes they don’t, and sometimes they do, but if they already own the land, we’ll go and take a look at their site and kind of give an estimate based on what their site looks like,” Williams said. "We’ll do what we call a test build, which is basically where I'll walk you through the process of selecting everything as if you were buying one of our homes, and we'll pick out everything, and then I'll be able to give you a full picture of the price.”
If the buyer decides to move forward after this process, Stone Martin will then make an offer to proceed, where the company takes a $2,500 builder deposit and sends out their builders to complete sight testing.
“During our test build, that’s where we're going to walk through every aspect of your home,” Williams said, “I'll find out more about your style and what your things look like that you'll be bringing and really try to tailor and customize your home to fit your needs.”
Under company policy, the staff prioritizes transparency and will help ensure pricing is accurate. Williams hopes to ease buyers’ concerns over hidden fees and costs.
“We try to be very clear and very thorough when we go through our pricing,” Williams said. “It's completely transparent. The price that we're telling you is the price that you're going to pay. There's not going to be any hidden fees or anything like that.”
The team also uses their experiences and expertise from building floor plans to help ease homebuyer's anxieties.
“Most of these floor plans we have built over and over again in all of our communities, and so we know exactly how much this floor plan is going to cost,” Martin said. “Really the only variable is the site work.”
Through this program, Auburn residents on family land can also have access to floor plans by Stone Martin Builders.
“A lot of people that we talk to, they have family land and it's really important to them to honor their families history so they want to stay on that land,” Williams said. “But they also love our plans, so it's really just being able to broaden our network of people that we’re able to serve and build for and just get to work with. I think that really is the heart of what we’re trying to do here.”
According to Stone Martin Builders, the Build On Your Land program isn’t just about completing a job. It’s about providing homes for families and empowering buyers who care about their land and home preferences.
“We really hope to offer something that not everybody is doing,” Williams said. “As Auburn does grow into some of the surrounding communities, we hope to be able to build homes that people will live in for years to come and raise their families in.”
Stone Martin Builders operates in nearly 20 cities across Alabama and Georgia and will build on your land within 15 miles of any of their current locations. For those interested in more information about the Build On Your Land program, visit the Stone Martin Builders website.
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