Operating a home building company

[Luke Hayes]

Hello everyone,

I’m a home builder in the Oklahoma metro area, as I have been for just over six years. I’ve built my business slowly since I graduated high school.

Business has grown mostly by referrals over the years and I’ve recently hired a superintendent to help.

I’ve been going through growing pains and learning to work on the business rather than in my business so I’m going over the E-Myth Revisited.

I’d like to better my current process as for systems of communication with my:

superintendent (we have meetings every morning to go over current 9 projects)

Homeowners (custom homes) - keeping them up-to-date with updated cost sheets and scheduling

Subcontractors - keeping them on schedule

If anyone has experience, or really enjoyed their home building process with their own custom builder I’d really like to hear about any proven strategies.

Thanks!

[Cassi Justiz]

Hey @Luke Hayes, 

I haven't had a positive custom building experience, but I can give you the major critiques based off of my parent's custom home fiasco and a client's failed semi-custom home. 

-Minimal/no communication from the builder. I think the fact that you are actively working to make this a priority says a lot and will put you ahead of your competition. This was the major complaint about both of these building experiences. Even something as simple as doing weekly updates would be perfect. It doesn't have to be anything crazy, but once a week after your meeting with the super you can sit down for an hour and shoot out emails to each client with a quick "Framing is complete! Next week we will be starting on the _____. You will need to have your whatever picked out before (DATE). Everything is progressing as planned." In both scenarios I've experienced, the client was never updated on progress and only received communication after reaching out to the builder/rep to find out what progress had been made. This usually took a day or two of back and forth because of the chain of communication. Rep-super-sub-rep-client. One of these builders even sold the client on buildertrend, but it never got updated after the initial selections were completed. So I haven't been able to see the functional use of what it is supposed to be like. 

I don't have any great tips on the rest of it, but communication is essential to keeping buyers happy throughout the process. 

Also, another note on the customer service side of things is to make sure your allowances actually allows for decent products. My client was building a 220k house. It wasn't a huge or high end home, but her lighting allowance didn't even allow for basic builder grade products. Even if she choose the least expensive option for ALL of her lighting choices, she was not able to stay within her allowance. She was looking at about $100 over her allowance to just to get the required lights. So instead of leaving the lighting showroom excited about her selections, she left feeling frustrated that the builder didn't even plan to allow for the most basic fixtures in their allowances.