Five Phases. One Team. Everything Visible.

Yes, and roughly half our custom-home clients arrive without a lot. Theresa, our principal broker and manager, works alongside clients from the very start: walking prospective parcels in Bend, Redmond, Sisters, and Sunriver, comparing them honestly, and helping you understand what each one will actually cost to build on. Reading the site is one of the most important things we do, and it costs you nothing in the early conversations. We would rather invest time getting the land right than push toward a build that the site can't carry. Once a lot is identified, the design conversation becomes far more grounded — we can speak to actual sun angles, actual setbacks, actual driveway costs, instead of imagining a generic plan that may not survive the realities of the parcel.

Five things matter most when evaluating a Central Oregon lot for a custom home. First, solar orientation — south and southwest exposure helps with passive solar gain through long high-desert winters. Second, tree cover and wildfire defensible-space requirements, especially in Sisters, Sunriver, and the wildland-urban interface. Third, snow load — the Cascades and Sisters area can require significantly engineered roof structures. Fourth, well and septic feasibility — many Central Oregon lots are off municipal water and sewer, and not every parcel will perc. Fifth, setbacks from ridgelines, view corridors, and HOA envelopes, which can quietly shrink your buildable footprint. We walk through each of these with you during a site visit, and we will not let you fall in love with a lot that the realities of the site won't support without expensive surprises.

In Deschutes County, plan on three to six months from a complete plan set to an approved building permit. The window varies based on the jurisdiction (Bend city limits, county unincorporated, the cities of Redmond, Sisters, or Sunriver), the season (winter and spring move faster than summer), and the complexity of the review. Septic and well-water permits run on their own clocks and need to land before the building permit is final. We manage the full submittal — county application, structural engineering, energy calcs, septic feasibility, fire department review where required, and any HOA architectural approval — and we share a written timeline so you know which milestones are on track. We also tell you early when a review cycle is dragging, so the schedule and the budget stay aligned.

We design in house. Kris, our project and design manager, leads the design work and stays involved through the build, which means the home that gets drawn is the home that gets built. There is no handoff between an outside architect and a separate construction team where details get lost in translation, and there is no markup on a design fee. One team carries the vision from concept sketches through framing through finish, and one person is accountable for both the look of the home and how it will actually be constructed. For clients who arrive with their own architect, we collaborate gladly — but the in-house option exists specifically to keep design intent and construction reality aligned at every decision point.

Every 44 North Homes build comes with one year of workmanship coverage on the home itself: cabinets, flooring, heating and cooling, framing details, finish carpentry, and the other build elements we stand behind. Manufactured items — appliances, windows, water heaters — are covered through their manufacturers' warranties, which typically run longer than one year, and we coordinate those claims on your behalf rather than handing you a phone number. We also offer a no-cost first-winter and first-spring check-in for every home we build, where we walk the property and address any seasonal items (caulking, weatherstripping, exterior touch-up) before they become real problems. The same team that built your home is the team you call in year three. Continuity is part of the warranty.

Yes. We offer a no-cost first-winter and first-spring check-in for every home we build, and most clients take us up on both. The Central Oregon climate puts a new home through real cycles in its first year — heavy snow loads in January, ice dam risk in February, snowmelt and runoff in March, the first heat-and-dry stretch in summer — and small adjustments now (caulking touch-ups, weatherstripping, exterior wood checks, gutter clearing, HVAC filter changes) prevent the larger problems that show up in year three or year five. The visit is also a chance to answer the dozens of small questions every new homeowner has after a few months of living in the home. We treat handoff as the start of the relationship, not the end.