Once the excitement of deciding to build my next home died down, a game plan was needed. So instead of immediately checking out land and what it might cost - I jumped straight to the house itself. Prefab/modular or conventional stick built was where I started, and arrived pretty quickly that prefab or modular was right for me. I went through every vendor over the course of a year, created a top 5 list (I'll share that in a later post), bookmarked floor plans, and pictured myself in each house I liked. I even went as far as firing up my long dormant Pinterest account and started pinning styles, colors, finishes, furniture and even landscaping.
Then I finally realized, this was all good and fun and serving my end purpose, but it really all has to start with land. If you have time to do everything in parallel, that's awesome, but with limited time, finding land should be priority. Land determines how large a house can be built, how expensive a foundation will be, how close you are to basic services, the area or neighborhood and your new commute to work. The old saying in real estate is 'location, location, location' - that all starts with land.