I originally began looking for a home to purchase in December of 2004.  I was ready to move to a larger place than the condominium that I had bought about 5 years earlier.  I soon found out that for what I was willing to spend, I was going to end up on a tiny lot with a house to match.  Next I began pricing raw land.  In St. Louis County a one acre lot with utilities was going to cost around $100,000.  I soon began looking at property to build on in the outlying St. Louis area.  I eventually found an affordable five acres of land just 7 miles south of my South County condo. 

The reason the lot was affordable, was because the only way in was through a 30 foot strip of land that led to the five acre wooded lot.  Any driveway was going to be very steep, very long,  have to cross two creeks, require 75 dump truck loads of fill and the clearing of hundreds of trees.  Sounded perfect to me!

I consulted with some friends with an excavation company to find out about the feasibility and approximate costs of putting in a road.  The cost of the road and land was going to give me 5 acres of secluded woods for far less than one acre of land just a few miles away.  I soon purchased the property.  Now that I had the lot, I was working evenings and weekends to clear the trees for the road.  While doing this, I was looking into prices of stick built homes and modular homes.  After looking at numerous modular homes by different builders, I was convinced of the quality (of most of the builders) and the cost effectiveness of going modular.

My next concern was if it was going to be possible to get the home to our building site.  By this time, my wife had fallen in love with a Fuqua home that was 54' 8" in length by 30' in width.  I figured that if we were to go with a modular home and get approximately 1700 square feet, we would need to get a shorter home and have a two story.  Benton Homes, who sell Fuqua Homes, sent a representative out to see what size home they could fit into our building site.  They said they could get a 54' 8" home into our lot.  I watched each half arrive and still am not sure how they did it! 

Once we ordered the home, it was complete within two weeks.  We had all of our contractors chosen and scheduled before we ordered the home because they build them so fast.  To see all of the contractors required, order of work and costs, see the Finance page of this website.

My wife and I have lived in our modular home now for a year and are very happy with our choice.  The house was the easiest part of putting our dream home site together.  This allowed us to concentrate on everything required when building on a non-conventional building site.