Frequently Asked Questions About Building a New Era Home

A semi-custom home starts with a proven floor plan and gives you room to personalize the layout, finishes, and selected features without starting from scratch. A fully custom home begins with a blank page, which usually means more design time, more decisions, and more price variability. New Era Homes focuses on semi-custom homes because that approach gives buyers much of the personalization they want while keeping the process more efficient and the pricing more predictable. If you want a closer look at the difference, see Semi-Custom Home vs. Custom Home.

A New Era home is a strong fit for any homebuyer who cares about value, not just price. Real value sits at the intersection of price, durability, longevity, and customer satisfaction. New Era Homes focuses on products that support that value proposition and pairs them with a highly qualified workforce that knows how to install them the right way. The result is a home filled with thoughtful amenities, built with proven construction methods and quality products, and designed to deliver strong long-term value.

No. Owning land is helpful, but it is not required to start the process. If you do not already own property, New Era Homes can help you understand what to look for before you buy. That includes zoning, water rights, fire restrictions, government restrictions, availability of water, power, sewer or septic, HOAs, and CCRs. New Era Homes also offers a no-cost evaluation of a potential property to help uncover issues that could prevent you from building the home you want.

Both. New Era Homes offers more than 28 floor plans designed to maximize construction efficiency and help reduce overall cost. Because these plans have been built many times, the team has already worked through the questions and details that often come up in a custom build. That experience also makes it easier to provide a fixed construction price with confidence. New Era Homes also has in-house drafting and can make modifications to fit a customer's needs, whether that means adding a third garage bay, enlarging a room, adding a bathroom, or extending a deck. The advantage is that customers can personalize a plan while still benefiting from the built-in value engineering of a proven design.

One of the biggest differences is that New Era Homes offers a fixed price for the home up front. The construction price does not change unless the customer requests a change order. Many people assume building a new home means dealing with major cost overruns, but that is not how New Era Homes operates. Another difference is consistency. Every home is managed through the same building system and built with the same level of oversight. There are no rotating A, B, or C subcontractor teams. Every home gets the A team, ensuring a consistently well-built home from one project to the next.

Yes, and New Era Homes prefers to do that before you spend a significant amount of money on land. Lot evaluation matters because not every property can support the kind of home you want to build. In parts of Deschutes County, for example, some properties are approved only for short-term RV use or may not support an on-site septic system. City lots can have setback requirements that affect the size and layout of the home. These are common issues, and New Era Homes offers a no-cost property evaluation to help make sure the land works for your intended use before you move forward.

Every property has tradeoffs. City lots are often easier because they usually have access to utilities like power, water, gas, and sewer. But they can also bring higher permitting and hookup costs, sidewalk and approach costs, HOA and CCR requirements, and smaller lot sizes that limit the type of home you can build. Suburban and rural properties usually offer more space, flatter topography, and lower permitting costs. The tradeoff is that site development can cost more. You may need to extend power, drill a well, install a septic system, or build a longer driveway. Rural properties often cost more to develop up front, but they may come with little to no monthly water or sewer costs later.

Yes. New Era Homes regularly builds on rural land and acreage throughout Central Oregon. These properties can be a great fit, but they also require early evaluation of access, utilities, septic, wells, topography, fire requirements, and other development considerations.

Most homesites require some level of site preparation before construction starts. That often includes clearing and grubbing the building site and driveway, trenching for utilities, digging out and backfilling the building pad, confirming septic feasibility and possibly installing a system, creating the driveway approach, and arranging temporary water and power.

Every site has factors that can affect the budget, and identifying them early matters. In Central Oregon, well conditions alone can vary widely. Some wells produce warm water with arsenic, some are deep with clear water, and others are shallow with high mineral content. Each condition affects cost. Trees can add grubbing costs, create root-related issues, or require clearing for fire-safe buffers. Slopes and soil conditions may call for drainage systems or custom foundation work. Power may be much farther away than expected. Septic design depends heavily on site-specific conditions and can vary widely in cost.

The price of a New Era home assumes a flat, level lot with access on all sides. It includes the home itself from foundation through completion, covering the full scope of construction. It also includes exterior concrete walkways, patios, and the garage apron.

New Era Homes describes the total cost of a home build in three buckets: (1) the cost of the land, (2) the cost to develop the land, and (3) the cost to build the home. The price New Era Homes provides is the third bucket, the actual construction cost of the home. Land cost and lot development cost are separate because they vary from property to property. New Era Homes has staff dedicated to identifying development costs and securing bids from trusted long-term contractors, so the work is priced accurately and completed correctly.

The main difference is the fit and finish. It is similar to buying a vehicle with different trim levels. The core vehicle is the same, but the amenities change. The same idea applies here. Heritage is a very well-appointed move-up home. Premier is a step up with more amenities. Both include the same structural components, siding, insulation, windows, and major systems.

The most important step is choosing an experienced general contractor with a long track record of successful customer-involved custom builds, not just spec homes. It is also important to stay within your allowance budgets. That sounds simple, but it is where many projects go off course. Almost every part of a build has good, better, and best options. Many budgets are built around the good option, while customers naturally gravitate toward the best option. That gap is one reason many custom homes end up 20 to 40 percent over budget. New Era Homes reduces that risk by offering strong options at a set price up front, which helps customers stay on track.

The smartest upgrades are the ones that are difficult or expensive to change later. That usually includes siding, insulation, HVAC, electrical systems, windows, and roofing. Finish materials are easier to change down the road, including flooring, countertops, cabinets, paint, faucets, and light fixtures.

New Era Homes' plans are designed to prioritize building efficiency, helping keep construction costs down. The most cost-effective approach is usually to start with one of the standard floor plans. That said, New Era Homes can customize those plans to fit individual needs. The goal is to work with the designer to blend customer requests into an existing plan without losing the efficiency principles that make the homes such a good value. Larger changes are possible, too, but they move the project into a higher custom price point.

New Era Homes has an in-house draftsperson who can adapt existing plans to better fit a customer's needs without the added cost of hiring an architect for a fully custom design. The company offers reasonable modification services for customers who want changes to an existing plan. The limitation is a completely one-off custom home design.

The right layout usually comes down to your stage of life, household size, lot size, and long-term goals. Families often need more square footage than empty nesters. Two-story homes can be a smart choice when you want to separate adult and kids' spaces or maximize square footage on a smaller city lot. Single-story homes usually need a larger footprint and therefore a larger lot, but they often have broader resale appeal. A popular option today is a single-story split-bedroom design, where the primary suite sits on one side of the home and guest or secondary bedrooms are on the other. That layout gives everyone more privacy.

Yes. Because New Era Homes has an in-house draftsperson, plans can be modified to create special-use spaces tailored to the way a customer lives. That has included sewing and quilting rooms, gyms, man caves, pottery rooms, woodworking spaces, large garages for car collections, RV garages, and even an airplane enthusiast space. The Declaration, one of New Era Homes' newer plans, includes a multi-generational wing. The company also builds in many aging-in-place features, including grab bar backing, wider hallways and doorways, ADA-height toilets, and low-threshold floor transitions. Options such as zero-threshold showers, handheld showerheads, built-in shower benches, and single-lever faucets are also available.

Construction is the most visible part of the process, but it is actually the final stage of a longer build journey. Before construction begins, there are several major steps: finding and buying land, securing lot development bids, selecting a house plan, building the overall budget, choosing options, qualifying for financing, finalizing plan changes, signing contracts, obtaining a construction loan, completing permitting, and preparing the land for construction. The home itself typically takes about seven to eight months to build. The steps leading up to construction often take another four to six months.

This can be one of the hardest parts of the process for a buyer to manage alone. Each building department has its own requirements, and many now require electronic applications with plans and engineering documents. At the same time, each site has its own code issues, utility requirements, and construction standards. New Era Homes has specialists on staff who handle permitting and site-prep coordination to make sure everything is completed correctly and in the right sequence. The owner can be as involved as they want, but they do not have to manage the process themselves.

New Era Homes uses online construction management software that gives customers real-time access to scheduling, photos, messages, documents, and change order requests. In most cases, updates happen daily, and alerts can be sent directly to the customer's mobile phone.

Yes. New Era Homes has worked with hundreds of customers who lived in other states during construction. Some fly in at key points to review progress. Others do not return until the home is complete. New Era Homes' online construction management software has made that process much easier by providing daily updates, photos, and videos that help bridge the distance. The staff also understands when and how to involve each owner, so you feel informed and comfortable throughout the build.

Every New Era home includes a no-cost, in-house limited warranty. That matters because New Era's own staff handles warranty work. Many builders rely on third-party insurance-backed warranties, and those programs are often structured to limit claims. New Era Homes takes a different approach. The goal is to make sure the home performs as intended, and if something needs attention, the same company that built the home is responsible for addressing it.