Home Designer Services in Eastern Idaho & Teton County Wyoming

Design your custom home from anywhere in the US. The $25,000 Home Designer Package from SwagerBuilds delivers a permit-ready construction document set for your Eastern Idaho or Teton County Wyoming lot — fully remote, every meeting over Zoom or Google Meet, no travel premium, no site visits included. Plans in your hands in 12 to 16 weeks, flat fee, scope locked the day we sign.

Most of the buyers we design for do not live in Idaho or Wyoming yet. They have a lot under contract in Driggs, Rigby, Jackson Hole, or somewhere else in our coverage area, and they want the plans finished before they arrive. That is exactly what this package is built for.

Call (208) 520-0636 or start your intake form to lock a slot.

What a home designer does — and why it is not the same as an architect in Idaho

In Idaho, single-family and small multi-family residential design work is specifically carved out from the state architect licensing act. Under Idaho Code §54-306, design services for a residence not exceeding three units or three stories in height do not require a licensed architect. That means a qualified home designer — someone who has been drawing, building, and detailing custom homes for years — can prepare a full permit set for your project without the architect stamp, provided the structural framing is signed off by a licensed engineer where the local jurisdiction requires it.

This exemption is why most single-family custom homes across Eastern Idaho and the mountain west are drawn by home designers rather than architects. It is not a loophole; it is the way the state statute is written. What matters to you as the owner is that the plans meet the adopted building code — the 2018 International Residential Code and International Building Code with Idaho amendments, as tracked by the International Code Council and codified in the Idaho Rules of Building Safety. A home designer with real field experience produces a permit set that clears plan review the first time. That is the whole game.

The $25,000 Home Designer Package — what is included

This is a flat-fee, scope-locked package. There are no surprise change orders in the design phase and no hourly billing. You know the number the day we sign.

Schematic design. Concept sketches, massing options, program refinement. This is where we translate your list of “must haves” and “hope-tos” into a plan that fits your lot, your budget, and the way you actually live.
Design development. Dimensioned floor plans, exterior elevations, building sections, roof plan, and preliminary window schedule.
Full construction documents. A permit-ready plan set including foundation plan, framing plan, wall sections, details, door and window schedules, and specifications.
Interior selections coordination. Cabinet layouts, plumbing fixture schedule, finish schedule, appliance elevations, and lighting locations — coordinated remotely through video calls and shared selection boards.
Schematic site plan. A dimensioned site layout showing building footprint, setbacks, driveway, and utility approaches, drawn from your client-provided survey, plot map, or lot photos. This is not a stamped survey — see the exclusions below.
HVAC design and Manual J load calculations. Room-by-room heat loss and gain, equipment sizing, and duct layout for permit submission.
REScheck / energy compliance. Envelope and mechanical compliance documentation for your jurisdiction.
Four revision rounds. Real revisions to real drawings — not one round dressed up as four.
All meetings via video call (Zoom or Google Meet). Schematic sessions, revision reviews, CD walk-throughs, and interior-selections coordination all run remotely. No in-person site visits are included in the base fee.

What the package does not include — and how to handle each item

Structural engineer stamp. Where your local jurisdiction requires an engineer stamp for framing, foundation, or lateral design, you hire the stamping engineer directly. I refer you to licensed structural engineers I have worked with for years, or you can bring your own. Their fee is paid to them.
Property survey. A stamped boundary and topographic survey from a licensed Idaho or Wyoming surveyor. My schematic site plan is drawn from your existing survey or from county GIS data — it is not a substitute for a stamped survey.
Building permit fees. Paid directly to the jurisdiction reviewing your plans.
Impact fees and utility hookup fees. Water, sewer, power, gas, and any impact fees the city or county charges are paid direct to those agencies.
In-person site visits. The base package is fully remote. If your project calls for an on-site visit — for example, unusual lot conditions or a client preference for an in-person walk-through — site visits are priced separately at $500 per visit plus travel.

Pulling these items out of the package is what lets me hold the price at $25,000. The alternative is to bundle them and charge you a markup on someone else’s invoice. I would rather you pay the engineer and the surveyor the same number I would pay them, and keep my scope clean.

Payment structure and timeline

Payment. 50% at signing ($12,500). 50% at construction-document delivery ($12,500). No hidden retainer, no hourly overage, no revision-round upcharge inside the four rounds included.

Timeline. 12 to 16 weeks from the day the first payment clears to the day I hand you a permit-ready plan set. Complex plans and clients who want extra time in schematic land at the longer end; single-story mountain moderns and cabins under 3,000 square feet often finish inside 12 weeks.

Why this package instead of a full design-build?

SwagerBuilds runs full design-build contracts for clients who want one shop from lot walk to keys handed over. That is the right choice for a lot of people. It is not the right choice for everyone.

The $25,000 Home Designer Package is our low-ticket entry point for clients who want the plans and the freedom to shop bids. You get a designer with 4th-generation building experience and a permit set that clears plan review — and then you own the plans and can take them to any qualified contractor in your market. If you already know a builder, if you want to owner-build a portion of the work, or if you just want competitive bids before committing to a construction contract, the plans-only path is the honest answer.

The design-to-build credit

If you decide to build with SwagerBuilds after the plans are delivered, 50% of the design fee — $12,500 — credits toward your construction contract. That means the effective design cost when you build with us is $12,500. There is no penalty for shopping the plans first. Take your time. Get your comparison bids. If we win the build on merits, the credit is automatic.

Sample plan types we design

Not every home designer draws every style well. Below is the actual range of work this package supports. If your dream house does not fit one of these buckets, we should have a short call before you commit — I do not take on work I cannot do at a high standard.

Mountain modern. Steep-roof, timber-accented, big-glass homes for Teton Valley and Jackson Hole sites. Snow load, thermal envelope, and view orientation drive the plan.
Traditional custom. Full-cabin and full-farmhouse variants for Eastern Idaho farmland lots. Wraparound porches, mudrooms sized for real Idaho winters, actual pantries.
Cabin. Under-2,500-square-foot getaways and full-time cabin homes. Efficient framing, tight envelope, no wasted circulation.
Barndominium. Post-frame or metal-clad residential shells with fully finished interiors. These require careful attention to insulation, condensation, and interior partition framing — the drawings look simple but the details are not.
Remodel and addition. Full-permit remodel sets including existing-conditions documentation, demo plan, and new-work drawings that match the existing structural system.

The design process, step by step

Weeks 1 to 4 — schematic design

We start with a working session over Zoom or Google Meet — remote by default. You bring your program (rooms, sizes, must-haves, hard budget). I bring questions about lot, sun orientation, prevailing wind, snow drift, and how you actually cook, work, and sleep. You get two or three schematic options within three weeks. We land one.

Weeks 4 to 9 — design development

The chosen scheme becomes a dimensioned plan set. Elevations, sections, roof plan, structural intent. You approve exterior massing and the interior circulation. Two of your four revision rounds typically get used here, which is the right place for them.

Weeks 9 to 14 — construction documents

Full permit set. Foundation, framing, wall sections, details, schedules. Coordination with the structural engineer if one is involved. HVAC design and Manual J are produced during this phase, along with REScheck. Interior selections are finalized so the cabinet, plumbing, and lighting information is baked into the drawings.

Weeks 14 to 16 — delivery and permit submission

Final plan set delivered as sealed PDF and editable file. You submit to your jurisdiction; I answer plan-check comments if they come back. Included in the fee.

Remote design for out-of-state landowners

Most of the buyers we design for do not live in Idaho or Wyoming yet. A typical profile: a family in the Midwest bought a Teton Valley parcel two years ago, holds it while they finish out a job elsewhere, and wants a permit-ready plan set drawn now so a builder can pull a permit the season they arrive. They cannot fly to Rigby every three weeks for a design review, and they should not have to.

The $25,000 Home Designer Package is built for that reality. Every working session is a video call. You upload the survey (or the county GIS plot map), a set of phone photos of the lot from each corner and from the road, any subdivision or HOA covenants, and a short program document. From that package I build the schematic site plan, produce the initial floor plan options, and walk you through them on Zoom or Google Meet. Every revision round is shared through the cloud. When the CDs are ready, you submit to the local jurisdiction yourself, or hand the sealed PDF to any qualified contractor in your market for bids.

The advantages of running design fully remote are structural, not marketing:

Design your custom home from anywhere in the US. Coverage is Eastern Idaho and Teton County Wyoming; the design work can be run from any time zone.
No travel premium. You pay for design, not our drive time. The $25,000 fee does not include site-visit travel because most projects do not need it.
Fast turnaround. We are not blocked by scheduling site visits. The 12-to-16-week timeline is real, and it is driven by your decisions — not by our calendar.
Perfect for out-of-state landowners. Anyone planning an Eastern Idaho or Jackson Hole build who does not yet live in the region can get the plans done before the move.
You upload, we design. Photos, survey, plot map, covenants — that is the input package. Everything else runs on video calls and shared drawings.

If the project genuinely calls for an in-person site visit, we quote it separately at $500 per visit plus travel — but the base package is engineered so that most projects do not need one.

Market coverage — where we design

The $25,000 package is available for lots across Eastern Idaho and Teton County Wyoming. City-specific pages walk through the permit process, snow load, and local code notes for each market:

What separates a good home designer from a bad one

The word “designer” covers a wide range of skill. Someone who can draw an attractive floor plan is not necessarily someone who can produce a permit set that clears plan review the first time. When you evaluate any home designer — including me — these are the questions worth asking:

Have you spent time on job sites? Field experience separates designers who draw buildable details from designers who draw pretty pictures. Wall sections, flashing details, framing at complex intersections — these get drawn correctly by people who have watched them get built (or watched them fail).
Do you produce a Manual J with the drawings, or do you outsource it? The mechanical design has to coordinate with the architectural drawings. If Manual J is a separate contract with a separate consultant, the coordination is fragile. In the $25,000 package, Manual J and REScheck are produced in-house against the same set of drawings.
How do you work with structural engineers? The engineer’s stamp sheets have to line up with the framing plan and the wall sections. If the designer treats the engineer as an afterthought — sending drawings over the wall and hoping — you get a plan set with a lot of internal contradictions. I coordinate with the engineer during construction documents, not after.
What is your first-round plan-review pass rate? This is the question most designers will not answer specifically. A plan set that clears on first review saves you weeks of holding cost on your lot loan and construction financing.

How the $25,000 fee compares to alternatives

There are three general paths for getting custom home plans in Eastern Idaho and Teton County Wyoming:

Full architectural service. A licensed architect at 6% to 12% of construction cost. For a $600,000 home, that is $36,000 to $72,000 for design services. Appropriate for complex commercial, large multi-family, or unusual residential projects — overspec for most single-family residences.
Home designer, hourly or percentage. Ranges wildly, from $10,000 to $40,000+ depending on scope, revision cycles, and hidden fees. The problem with hourly and percentage arrangements is that you do not know the number until it is done.
Stock plans customized. $2,000 to $6,000 for a plan you did not design and cannot easily modify. Fine for a spec build or a rental; almost never right for a custom home you plan to live in.

The $25,000 flat fee sits deliberately between the stock-plan floor and the full-architect ceiling. It is designed for the client who wants real custom work, real code compliance, and a number that does not move.

Frequently asked questions

How do meetings work if the package is fully remote?

Every working session runs over Zoom or Google Meet. Schematic sessions are typically 60 to 90 minutes with screen-sharing on the plan set. Revision reviews are shorter — 30 to 45 minutes. The interior-selections coordination is handled through a shared selections board (cabinets, plumbing, finishes, lighting) reviewed live on a video call. You get a calendar link, we book the session, and everything is recorded if you want a reference later.

How can you design a house without visiting the site?

The information a site visit produces — dimensions, slope, view corridors, wind and sun orientation, tree lines, driveway access — is fully captured in a boundary and topographic survey plus a set of phone photos from each corner of the lot and from the road. Most jurisdictions in our coverage area require a stamped survey to permit anyway, so the survey exists. Once we have the survey and a few dozen photos, I have every piece of information a site visit would have produced. Since 2020, remote design has become the standard for out-of-state land buyers — the tools finally caught up to the workflow.

What do you need from me to start?

Five things: (1) a copy of the boundary and topographic survey (or a plot map from the county GIS if you do not have a stamped survey yet), (2) phone photos of the lot from each corner and from the road, (3) any subdivision, HOA, or architectural-review covenants that apply, (4) a short written program — rooms, sizes, must-haves, hard budget, and (5) any inspirational images or Pinterest boards that describe the look you are chasing. Send it all through the intake form and we go from there.

Do I need a licensed architect for a single-family home in Idaho?

No. Idaho Code §54-306 exempts residential buildings not exceeding three units or three stories from the state architect licensing requirement. A qualified home designer can prepare and stamp the plans; a licensed structural engineer signs the framing and foundation drawings if the jurisdiction requires it.

Who hires the structural engineer, and how much does that cost?

You hire the engineer directly. I refer you to engineers I have worked with, or you can bring your own. Typical engineer fees for a single-family home in Eastern Idaho and Teton County run $2,500 to $6,500 depending on complexity, snow load, and whether the design involves steel or unusual spans. You pay the engineer their invoiced amount — I take no markup.

Do I need a stamped survey?

For most jurisdictions, yes. My schematic site plan is drawn from your existing survey or from county GIS data and is enough for early-stage design decisions. When you submit for permit, most jurisdictions in Eastern Idaho and Teton County require a stamped boundary survey; some also require a topographic survey for sloped lots. Survey fees typically run $1,500 to $5,000 depending on parcel size and terrain.

How many revisions do I actually get?

Four rounds, and they are real rounds. A revision round is defined as a batch of change requests submitted at one time and returned as updated drawings. If you make ten small changes across three weeks, that is three rounds, not one — so we work in batches on purpose. Most projects use two rounds in design development, one in construction documents, and hold one in reserve for permit-review comments.

Who owns the plans?

You do. Full transfer of ownership on final payment, including the editable CAD file. You are free to build them, shop them, or hold them.

How long from signed contract to permit-ready plans?

12 to 16 weeks. Cleaner programs and faster client decisions finish sooner. Projects with heavy revision cycles or engineer coordination land at the longer end.

Can you help pick a general contractor if I do not want to build with SwagerBuilds?

Yes. Part of the delivery meeting is walking through how to solicit competitive bids, what to look for in a contractor proposal, and how to read a construction contract. That coaching is included whether you build with us or not.

What is the design-to-build credit again?

If you sign a construction contract with SwagerBuilds, 50% of the design fee — $12,500 — credits toward the construction contract. There is no time limit and no obligation. If we win the build, the credit is automatic on your first construction draw.

Who this package is right for

The $25,000 Home Designer Package is not for everyone. It is right for you if you already own the lot or have one under contract, if you want a real custom home rather than a stock plan, if you are willing to hire a stamping engineer and a licensed surveyor as separate contracts, and if you want a scope-locked design fee with no surprises. It is not right for you if your budget requires a stock plan, if your project is complex enough to require a licensed architect, or if you want a single vendor to handle every element of the design, engineering, and surveying scope inside one bundled contract.

If you are not sure which category you fall into, the intake call is the place to figure that out. There is no charge for the call and no obligation to move forward.

Start your project

Book a 20-minute intake call. We talk lot, program, and timeline. If it is a good fit, you get a scope-locked contract in 48 hours.

Call (208) 520-0636 or start your intake form.

About the designer. Bryce Swager, Founder — 4th-generation Rigby custom home builder. BuildZoom score 94. Licensed in Idaho and Wyoming.