Missouri-based McBride Homes—No. 68 on the 2022 Builder 100—recently celebrated one of its most successful grand openings to date, with crowds of people camping outside the sales office waiting to purchase a home.
The community, Crestwood Crossing, was scheduled to open Aug. 27, but due to the pent-up demand and inability to host campers on-site, McBride quickly decided to hold the grand opening days in advance.
“Families were starting to camp out several days in advance of the scheduled grand opening,” says John F. Eilermann, CEO and chairman of McBride Homes, in a company press release. “Once our first camper arrived and word got out, more and more folks continued to join the fun so we opened early to accommodate the crowds.”
Out of the 81 available homesites, 52 homes were sold during the grand opening weekend.
With the last-minute scramble to handle the vast amount of campers in line, McBride called in multiple sales consultants throughout the metro area to help with the overflow of interested parties.
“Buyers have been extremely interested in this piece of land since it had remained undeveloped since 2013 when the former Crestwood Mall closed on the site,” says Erin Hardebeck, director of marketing at McBride Homes. “It’s an A+ location, close to shopping, restaurants, major highways, and it’s located in the highly sought-after Lindbergh School District. Also, there was a huge pent-up demand for larger single-family homes in that area. A lot of our buyers were folks who grew up in Crestwood and wanted to remain in the area, but with expanding families they could not find a home to fit their needs.”
Eilermann adds the builder had over 800 names on the interest list and over 250 appointments scheduled for the Crestwood prospects, citing “we haven’t seen anything like this demand in years.”
Crestwood Crossing will include 81 single-family homes with pricing from the $340,000s to $600,000s. The community will offer 34 homes from McBride’s Bayside series, 16 from its Oakwood series, and 31 city-style homes that were featured at La Collina, McBride’s recent neighborhood development on The Hill.
The community will feature many on-site amenities for future homeowners. Plans for the project include numerous public gathering spaces, outdoor restaurant seating, and a public plaza space with a water feature. In addition, the neighborhood will incorporate a connection to Grant’s Trail.
“We’ve already sold out of two of the three villages at Crestwood Crossing,” says Hardebeck. “With just the Townes remaining, we believe the remaining homes will continue to sell at a brisk pace due to the location, value, on-site amenities, school district, and the pricing from the $340,000s.”
Beyond Crestwood’s popularity, the builder sold 106 homes in August and states it has been seeing robust traffic throughout all of their communities and a record-high amount of page views on its website in late August.
“We also have two new neighborhoods that are slated for grand openings in late September, and they have already gained a lot of interest,” says Hardebeck. “Buyers are out there, and we believe sales this fall will remain strong in the St. Louis region.”
