Sanford family built their dream home in the form of a barndominium, a more affordable and energy efficient structure that’s taking off across the South and Southwestern U.S. 

By Billy Liggett

When the first metal beams and steel siding went up during construction on what would become their new home last year, Bernie and Tina Fox were met with questions by their new neighbors from the nearby Quail Ridge subdivision near the intersection of U.S. 1 and 501 south of Sanford. The structure looked more akin to a new business, a new church or even a large barn than it did the type of new house that’s popping up everywhere across the city of late.

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Now complete, the hybrid house and barn — known as the “barndominium” (or just “barndo”) in several states further to the south and west — is everything the Foxes hoped it would be. Affordable to build and energy efficient, the open floor plan and large workshop/garage area is exactly what they were looking for (but couldn’t find) when they moved to North Carolina in 2016 from Texas, where barndos have become a growing trend over the last eight years. 

“I love it,” says Bernie, a machinist, welder and musician who was disappointed to learn many of the homes in Sanford’s real estate market didn’t feature garages when they decided to move from the Fuquay-Varina area a few years around the time of the pandemic. Their new home features a two-story garage with tons of work space and a large area to play music.

“It’s my dream house. And more importantly, it was attainable.”

Bernie and Tina Fox

Attainability — or affordability — is a big draw of the barndominium, a portmanteau derived from the words “barn” and “condominium.” Barndominiums are usually metal- or steel-framed structures designed to look like a traditional barn on the outside, yet feature a finished living space on the inside. Most have open floor plans, high ceilings and other modern amenities.

Barndos can range in size from modest — Bernie and Tina’s home has roughly 1,500 square feet of living space and nearly that same sized area for the garage and work space — to the ridiculously large (the largest ones run about 5,000 square feet, and one behemoth in Texas measures in at more than 10,000). 

It’s no mistake the word “Texas” has already appeared multiple times in this story. The Foxes moved to North Carolina from New Braunfels, Texas, a suburb of San Antonio. The state is also ground zero for the recent barndominium boom, thanks to its sprawling rural land, existing barn like structures, adoration for all things “rustic” and available contractor expertise.

The homes are gaining traction in the Southeast and, more recently, the Carolinas. The Foxes’ home, to their knowledge, is the first to be built in Lee County. Tina’s mother lives near the five acres of land that went on the market in 2023 — the owner didn’t want to see it become a high-density subdivision — and the couple had just watched videos from a barndominium company in Texas, leading to the revelation that they could just build one here. 

“Everybody had just got through the pandemic and house prices kept going up, and so we just thought, ‘You know, why not just go for it?’” Tina said. “Our daughter just graduated from Meredith, so she’s on her own in Raleigh. And we have a 16-year-old son, so we don’t need a huge living space. The amount we paid for this land and this home is less than what many were paying for houses in subdivisions with no yards.”

The kitchen and bedroom hallway

THE TREND

Barndominiums, or at least the concept of them, have actually been around for over 30 years. The term was coined by real estate developer Karl Nilsen in a 1989 New York Times feature on his design of a project in Connecticut that combined features of a horse barn and stables with a new residential area. 

But barndos didn’t really hit the mainstream until 2016 when Waco, Texas HGTV megastars Chip and Joanna Gaines transformed a 1,000 square-foot barn into a home in an episode of “Fixer Upper.” While eight years later there’s not official “barndo count” in the U.S., more than 1,000 were built in Texas alone in 2022.

As the Foxes can attest, one of the biggest appeals of these homes is cost. According to U.S. News & World Report, a 2,400 square-foot barndominium cost anywhere between $120,000 to $500,000 to construct with a builder. Kits from companies that specialize in these builds start around $10 a square foot and can run up to $30. The U.S. News article stated more traditional homes with equal living and work space square footage can run up to three times as much as a barndominium.

Other reasons for the rise in popularity include versatility (they’re a top choice for homebuyers looking for ample workspace), high ceilings, energy efficiency and durability. There’s also the “rustic appeal” — those who enjoy “modern country” elements in their home can have a field day with the barnlike design elements.

The Foxes’ home is essentially three parts — the main living area, the garage and workspace area and the large “dogtrot” breezeway (essentially a roofed patio area that runs through the home) that separates the two areas. The living area consists of three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a small office area currently being used as a workout room. The living room and kitchen area are open floor plans, and the kitchen has not shortage of counter space with a large island in the middle of it. The main bedroom has barn-style sliding doors that lead to a bathroom and laundry room.

A portion of the garage and work area

The floors are all concrete (with rugs acting as carpet in some areas), the walls are all metal, and the outdoor temperature isn’t a huge factor as the inside walls are coated with a spray insulation from top to bottom. The rooms in the home are regular drywall, with lower ceilings added to the bedrooms.

“Overall, I’d say it’s modest,” says Bernie. “It’s just for us, and we didn’t need a large 20-by-20-foot master bedroom. But everything feels really nice and spacious. Two weeks after we moved in, my company hosted a Christmas party with about 36 guests here, and there was plenty of room for everybody.”

The Foxes got the idea after finding little success buying a home in Sanford and discovering around that time a Facebook page dedicated to barndominium design and floorpans. Bernie says he liked the idea of a “dogtrot home,” and when he and Tina learned of a few North Carolina businesses getting into the game, they reached out. They presented their ideas, and the companies answered with a floor plan that matched their needs.

The process wasn’t without its headaches. The two biggest obstacles between them and their dream home were inspectors and creditors. For the former, there was early confusion about whether their home should be inspected as a residential or commercial structure. The blend of a business structure with residential elements caused confusion on who should inspect it and how they should inspect it. 

The other problem was securing a loan — according to Tina, mortgage lenders are used to financing traditional homes with wood frames. The unfamiliarity with a home made of metal forced her and her husband to bank-hop until they found a blender with experience supporting these types of homes. 

“In just the few months since we started building this, there’s been a new barndominium builder move to Raleigh, and in time, this won’t be quite as difficult for others,” she says.

The dogtrot breezeway

THE DREAM

Standing in the middle of their dogtrot breezeway — which at the time had yet to be furnished and consisted of little more than a portable fire pit and a few bicycles — Bernie and Tina Fox look out over their land at the orange and yellow setting sun and smile. The land, the view, the space — this was what they had hoped for when they moved to Sanford. And on this day, it was all in front of them. 

“Back when we first had the idea to do this, we reached out on social media and found out a friend of ours whose daughter played soccer with our daughter had built one of these in Dunn,” Bernie says. “They had lived in a subdivision in Holly Springs just like ours, and they were sick of it. So before we began to build, we went out to their home and looked at it thinking, ‘This is exactly what we want.’ The first thing I asked him about was the electric bill. He said it was less than their old home, which was a smaller home. I was sold.”

The barndominium outside of Waco, Texas, featured on a 2016 episode of Chip and Joanna Gaines’ HGTV show, “Fixer Upper” helped spark a barndo trend that has continued today. More than 1,000 structures were built in Texas in 2022. HGTV photo

Tina says she belongs to a handful of Facebook groups comprised of fellow barndo owners. As the groups grow, their members seem to be steadily moved east.

Now they are the ones hosting potential builders to come by and see what they’ve done. Those requests are steady.

“Our contractor already has three or four new contracts in the area,” Tina says. “They’re not all houses — some might just want a big garage with office space.”

Adds Bernie: “If other are interested in doing this, I’d say definitely get your ducks in a row before you decide to build. Have an engineer or architect look at your plans, and make sure the city knows what you’re doing. I’ve already had a lot of people come up to me and say, ‘You’ve built my dream home. This is what I want.’ I tell them we love it. It really is our dream home.”