Sell More By Building Beyond Code

Its hard to imagine but only a few months ago, virtually every home builder in the US, could sell every home they could produce and in fact many were restricting the number of homes that they would put up for sale, at any one time.

My My, how times have changed. The Federal Reserve, caught out by rampant inflation, has started raising interest rates and is indicating that it will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, or at least until, inflation looks like it is under control. Mortgage rates have doubled in a very short period of time and are now in or around 6%, pricing many new homebuyers out of the market.

According to Amy Kite of Kite Real Estate Team means that buyers who were qualified to buy a $600,000 home in December 2021 are now qualified to buy a $450,000 home and this is set to get worse over the coming months.

So what strategies can a builder employ to sell more homes to fewer qualified potential buyers. Well, lets be honest, for the last few years excluding the peak of Covid Pandemic, it wasn't really about selling, it was more about order taking and selling upgrades.

Now that there are fewer qualified buyers and finances are more strained, buyers are more cautious and more power to decide, which house they want to buy, if they can afford it.

So how do you sell in a tighter market without using costly incentives, that reduce margin. One of the most over looked strategies, is to focus on the QUALITY and SAFETY or SECURITY provided by the actual physical construction or framing of the home.

Every potential home purchaser with a young family or planning a family wants to know, that both their investment is safe and that the building is safe, or safer than the one being sold by the competing builder, particularly in areas prone to natural disasters.

If every builder is simply saying, that their homes are built to code, all they are really saying is that they are built, to the lowest legally permissible standard, which in reality is not exactly a badge of honor or anything to bragg about.

In no other industry or profession, do you hear bragging about doing something, to the lowest legally permissible standard. Imagine buying a car or getting on a plane or going to a hospital, that sets its bar, as the lowest legally permissible standard. You wouldn’t want to drive it, fly on it or be admitted to that hospital.

Do you think a potential home owner would feel any different about those homes, if he or she knew that the homes across the street were being “Built Beyond Code”. That is built to a higher standard.

Of course they would. That’s why some builders are already doing this and are showing the potential homebuyers, the quality of the actual physical construction in their homes, such as the use of ‘Premium” KD lumber and the “Precision Tight’ joints, which improve the quality of the home, lower warranty costs and reduce unsightly hairline cracks, in drywall and stucco and improve energy efficiency.

In addition when the walls of the home are fully sheared, not alone do they increase to stability of the home they are actually over 300% stronger than unsheathed walls.

In fact the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), recommends that all homes built in areas subject to natural disasters, such as earthquakes, should have their exterior walls fully sheathed.

These are all very important benefits and features that can be used to differentiate a high quality builder and the best part of it, is that it doesn’t cost the builder anything as any quality fully integrated off site solution providers, do this all as standard.

In addition as the main elements of the house are being factory engineered on some of the worlds most sophisticated automation to tolerances not achievable on site using traditional methods, it appeals to the tech savvy younger buyers and finally as the house produces much less waste going to landfill, it is much more environmentally friendly, reducing CO2 emissions.

Imagine the brand image of the builder that doesn’t simply build to the minimum standards. Be the builder of the truly quality home.

So why not sell more, by differentiating your home building company from the rest, by selling the fact that your homes ‘ BUILT BEYOND CODE”

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If you want to know more about to market your homes using off site construction to sell more homes, then you can reach me at offsitetek.com

Gerard McCaughey is Founder and Board Member of?Entekra Inc, a firm specializing in design, engineering and manufacturing of Fully Integrated Off Site Solutions? (FIOSS?) for homebuilding industry. He is also Founder and CEO of OffSite Tea LLC., a specialist consultancy in all matters related of Industrialized Construction.

Mr. McCaughey was previously co-founder and CEO of Century Homes, Europe’s largest offsite building manufacturing company producing over 8000 house units annually, with five plants in Ireland and UK, which he sold in 2005 to Kingspan Group Plc. He is regarded in Europe as being one of the leading figures in off site construction and green building movement, and was at the forefront of regulatory reform in both Ireland and Britain.

He has acted as an off site construction consultant in Eastern Europe, United States and South Africa and has written about green and offsite construction in many other countries around the world and is a sought after keynote speaker on off-site instruction. He is a previous?winner of Ernst and Young’s, Industry Entrepreneur of the Year Award, Winner of Manufacturer of the Year from the Building Systems Council (BSC) and Winner of the Ivory Prize for Innovation?and also recognized by US Immigration Service as a?"Person of Extraordinary Ability"?in green and offsite construction.