What Do Your Unsold Homes Say?
|
Buildings, especially bricks, famously spoke to architect Louis Kahn. They also speak to builder John Wieland, especially his unsold inventory. It says things like, "No wonder no one wants to buy me."
Wieland recently returned from a nearly two-month tour of his communities throughout the south. Each night he pitched a mattress in an unsold spec home, and asked himself the question, "Why hasn't this house sold?"
Sometimes the house would direct his view to the master bedroom window, which would afford a beautiful view of the gritty pad where the company's concrete trucks are cleaned. In other cases, it provided a revealing glimpse into the bedroom of the house next door.
After listening to his unsold inventory for two months, Wieland came away with the distinct impression that his homes, many targeted at second-time move-up buyers, were just too big. He also got that from talking with customers, who were less interested than they used to be in buying the biggest house they could possibly afford.
At other times, the house revealed to him that it was just too far from town. In each case, the experience reminded him that each home, despite its gorgeous carpet and sparkling countertops, is just a small part of a much more important whole: the community.
"It was the most educational two months I have ever had in home building because you get a comprehensive experience of how your purchasers are living,” Wieland told Builder's Teresa Burney. “I would absolutely not trade the experience for anything, the ability to see our neighborhoods and homes from the customer’s point of view. You are there at 10 o’clock at night. You wake up in the morning, and you see your customers wake up.”
After a few weeks of traveling around in his green Winnebago, Wieland determined that his unsold inventory fell into two buckets. First, there were the homes the company absolutely had to sell, even at a loss. Second, there were the homes that might still yield a profit with some calculated changes.
As a result of his odyssey, Wieland has renewed the company's attention to the sites on which models are built, how homes relate to each other, and how build outs are staged in each neighborhood. The experience served as an important reminder that developing a strong floor plan and great elevations is only half the battle. The war is won or lost at the community level.
So, I ask the obvious question. When you listen to your unsold homes, what do they tell you?