“There was a little voice in my head in 2002 and 2003 saying, ‘This is too good to be true,’” Jurney remembers. That niggling feeling was probably prompted by Jurney’s memories of the last big downturn, which his father, a local custom builder, lived through, he adds.
On the other hand, Jurney had just started his own company when the boom began and was only building 50 to 80 houses a year, not enough volume to justify larger land buys anyway.
“I didn’t have a chance to screw up,” he says. “I got into the market at the right time. I had a little bit of heartburn” from owning a few more lots than he would have liked under his just-in-time lot business model when the slowdown hit, but not enough to seriously drain company resources. “We never got way out there like a lot of them.”
He now has about 160 lots on his books in the Triad area, just a little more than he would like.
“We are not making as high a profit margin, though we have remained profitable,” he says. “And we haven’t had to lay anybody off, knock wood. We are still in growth mode.”
Focusing on the Basics
The secret to Jurney’s success that has nothing to do with luck is related to a focus on the fundamentals—sales, value-engineering its products, and conservative financial practices.
Trade Secrets
The company's reputation enhanced by its warranty policies and advertising that extends to billboards and local schools.
A combination of circumstances and skills helps the North Carolina builder take advantage of the downturn.
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The Omaha, Neb.-based builder has some very definite ideas about managing its jobs and people.
“A lot of our builder friends in town that have not been through a downturn, their salespeople were just order takers,” he says. “Half the models in Greensboro were unmanned. We have maintained quality, customer service, and we have kept our neighborhoods clean and green.”
Least Expensive Homes
Jurney also worked with SMA Consulting to help improve its operations. The company has cut its number of floor plans from 250 to 50, value-engineering them to the extreme in the process, getting costs down to $42.50 a square foot.
“We have gotten very competitive, price-wise,” Jurney says. The company’s goal is to always be the least expensive builder in town. In the Triad, it builds homes selling from $90,000 to $180,000, with square footage ranging from 1,000 square feet to 4,000 square feet.
The company is beginning to reap the rewards of surviving as its competition closes down. Jurney is hiring the best of his competitors’ employees, strengthening his team, and securing the North and South Carolina real estate assets of C.P. Morgan, the Indianapolis-based builder that closed in February. Morgan targeted the same buyers that Jurney does, making its land holdings a good fit. Investors will purchase the Morgan lots, but Jurney will have partial ownership. “I hate that we’re going through the times that we are, but you can take advantage of the situation,” he says.
Still, he adds, “I don’t want to go into the land banking business. I want to focus on home building.”