Custom home builder in Epworth, Iowa.

Epworth is a small Dubuque County town twenty miles west of the metro. We build custom homes on acreage and post-frame shops for the surrounding farms here.

NXT Build handles residential and light commercial work for Epworth property owners. Post-frame is where Collin started, so barndominiums and post-frame buildings are a big part of the schedule, alongside custom homes, home additions, and roofing. The same crew and the same contact carry each job from start to finish.

Collin learned post-frame building the long way, with eleven years leading a crew for another contractor in eastern Iowa. In 2024 he started NXT Build LLC so he could run jobs the way he thought they should be run. That means a clean site when the crew packs up, and when you call, he answers and stays on your project until it is finished.

Why Epworth customers choose NXT Build.

When Epworth customers tell us why they called, it comes back to the chain of people standing between them and their build. They signed with a salesperson, got passed to a project manager, then to a crew working from half the story. Each handoff cost them time and money.

With Collin, selling the job and building it belong to the same person. The price he quotes is a price he has to build to. The dates he gives are dates he has to hit with his own crew. Call 563-581-3819 or email collin@thenxtbuild.com and you reach the builder.

The way the build runs.

Most of the worry on a build comes from not knowing what happens next, so here is the sequence for Epworth projects. A walk-through on your property costs you nothing. A written plan and a fixed price follow. Permits get pulled, the foundation goes in, and the crew builds. At the end Collin walks the finished building with you, and your warranty starts on move-in day.

Most people building near Epworth bought the land first. A few acres off Highway 20, sometimes a good deal more, with room for a house and a shop and maybe some animals later on.

On acreage the house is only part of the job. Before we stake anything we work out where the well goes, where the septic field can fit, and how far the driveway has to run from the road. Those decide where the house can sit more than any floor plan does. A great view from the back corner of the lot does not help much if that is the only place the septic will pass.

Then there is the shop. Almost every acreage owner around Epworth wants one, and the real question is whether it stands on its own or shares a roof with the house as a barndominium. Both work. A separate post-frame shop keeps the noise and the dust away from the kitchen. A barndominium saves you a second foundation and a second roof, and in January you can walk from the living room to the truck without putting a coat on.

The ground out here rolls. A gentle slope can carry a walkout basement on the house side, while the shop wants the flattest spot on the property so the slab and the overhead doors line up. We walk the land with you and pick both spots on the same visit.

A long lane on acreage needs more than gravel spread over dirt. If it has to carry a concrete truck in spring, when the ground is soft, it needs a real base under it, so we get that built before the heavy deliveries start.

Epworth is close enough to Dubuque that a lot of owners work in the city and come home to the acreage at night. That makes the schedule matter. You will know which days the crew is on site and what they are working on that week, so you are not guessing from the road on the drive home.

From our shop in Zwingle it is under an hour each way, and Collin is the one making the trip.