Central Oregon Custom Homes,
Built the Right Way.

Open-book means you see every real number on your custom home build. Every subcontractor bid, every material invoice, and every change order is posted to a live project portal you can check any day of the week. Our fee is a transparent line item, not margin buried inside other costs. At 44 North Homes, this is the only way we work. The thinking is simple: a custom home is one of the largest financial decisions a family makes, and homeowners deserve to know what they are actually paying for. Open-book also keeps decisions grounded — when a finish costs more than expected, we can walk through the trade-off honestly instead of hiding it. It is not a marketing slogan. It is a structural commitment to how the business runs.

Either works, and roughly half our clients come to us before they own land. Theresa, our principal broker, walks prospective lots with clients across Bend, Redmond, Sisters, and Sunriver, and we read the site for what it will actually cost to build on. That means looking at solar orientation, tree cover, snow load, well and septic feasibility, and ridgeline setbacks before any earnest money changes hands. The other half of our clients arrive with a lot already in hand, often a parcel they have held for years. Either path is welcome. The early conversations cost you nothing — we would rather spend time understanding the land first than push you toward a build that the site cannot support cleanly.

Most 44 North Homes builds run 14 to 20 months from the first lot walk to handoff. That timeline breaks down into roughly 3 to 5 months of design and permitting (longer in Deschutes County during peak season) and 10 to 14 months of active construction. Larger or more complex homes — projects with significant site work, custom millwork, or remote sites — take longer, and we tell you that honestly during the first conversation rather than at month 18. We share a written schedule before we break ground and update it weekly through the build, so you always know whether the project is tracking, ahead, or running long. Realistic timelines protect the budget; aggressive timelines invite shortcuts.

We work across a range of budgets and scopes, from approachable first custom homes through larger legacy projects. Before we break ground, you will see a full line-item budget built from real subcontractor bids on your specific plans and lot, not a per-square-foot rule of thumb. That grounded number is the conversation we want to have. Per-foot quotes given before plans exist are essentially guesses, and they are how budgets quietly drift. We will tell you early whether your number and your wish list line up, and where to adjust if they don't. Site work in Central Oregon — well, septic, driveway, snow load engineering — is the line item that surprises people most often, and we surface it up front rather than after permits.

We build across Central Oregon: Bend, Redmond, Sisters, Sunriver, Tumalo, Terrebonne, Madras, La Pine, and the surrounding communities of Deschutes, Crook, and Jefferson counties. Each town has its own rhythm — Sisters means snow loads and forested setbacks, Sunriver means wildfire defensible-space rules, Redmond means high-desert sun and wind exposure. We have built in all of it, and the lessons live in every plan we draw. If your lot is farther afield (the eastern Cascades, the Ochocos, the Crooked River canyon) ask us. We will be honest about whether the distance and the site complexity work for the way our team operates. Travel costs and supervision time are part of the open book, so you'll see them clearly before deciding.