Preparing for the spring selling season, KB Home is off to a strong start with community openings from Washington and California to Texas and Colorado. KB Home—No. 6 on the 2023 Builder 100—recently named Robert McGibney as president in addition to his role as chief operating officer.
Jeffrey Mezger, chairman and CEO, says, “Rob joined KB Home over two decades ago and is a great example of our ability to grow talent within the company. He has done a tremendous job building robust businesses across our footprint and has been an outstanding operator throughout his KB Home career. Rob’s appointment to president, along with several regional management additions, are important steps in structuring our team to take full advantage of the opportunities available to us and achieving our strategic goal of top five or better market share position in each of our served markets.”
Responsible for overall operations of the home building company operating in 47 markets from coast to coast, McGibney is focused on directing business strategy, community count, and revenue growth.
“I look forward to expanding our scale while continuing to cultivate a supportive and inclusive workplace culture that encourages employee growth and development,” he says. “Our dedicated team has played an essential role in our business for over 65 years. Their passion for our customers and dedication to building the American dream has earned KB Home the distinction of being the No. 1 customer-ranked national home builder based on home buyer satisfaction surveys from a leading third-party review site.”
To learn more about KB Home’s plans for growth in 2024, BUILDER caught up with McGibney.
How does it feel stepping into the role of president in addition to your role as COO?
I am deeply honored to be stepping into the expanded role of president and COO and helping to position KB Home for future growth. This is an exciting time for the company. Our business is well situated to respond to strengthening buyer demand and favorable demographics given our product positioning and price points as well as planned community count growth. I feel very proud to work alongside an exceptional team that is committed to building our customers’ dreams and putting the great American aspiration of homeownership within reach for thousands of families.
What strategies are you planning to implement as president?
Our key operational priorities remain consistent for 2024: executing our built-to-order model and providing the combination of best price and value to our customers while also continuing to deliver high satisfaction levels to our buyers.
With our built-to-order model, we provide each of our home buyers with a highly personalized experience where they can make a wide range of structural and design choices for their new home. We believe this highly interactive, “customer-first” experience, which puts our home buyers firmly in control of designing the home they want based on what they value and how they want to live at a price they can afford, gives us a meaningful and distinct competitive advantage over other home builders and resale and rental homes.
In addition to differentiating us from other home builders, our built-to-order model helps to drive low-cost production based on a disciplined and scalable operational platform. In 2024, we will continue to focus on the reduction of our build times, incremental cost reductions through value engineering, and community count growth.
As KB Home aims to grow community count in 2024, is there a goal of how many or of what size?
Our objective remains to achieve at least a top five position in each of our served markets, and all our divisions have a road map in place to achieve this ranking. Last quarter, we opened 24 new communities, achieving nearly all our planned grand openings. These new communities, along with our first quarter openings, have us well positioned for the spring selling season. We expect our ending community count to grow sequentially as the year unfolds, and we believe that we will exit the year with a meaningfully higher number of open communities.
Will any new markets be in the mix for community growth?
Though we evaluate new markets to enter, our primary focus is to expand our scale within our current geographic footprint to achieve a top five position in each of our served markets. Reflecting the geographic span of our home building business, we have operations in nine states and 47 major markets.
In 2024, we expect to accelerate our land investment activity to support our future growth while remaining diligent with respect to our underwriting criteria, product strategy, and price points.
Are there any new home designs or features KB Home is looking to roll out this year?
Recently, we launched the first residential micro-grid communities of all-electric, energy-smart homes in California. Homes in these communities serve as decentralized energy resources that can act as part of a virtual power plant and create a self-reliant, energy-efficient neighborhood independently powered through solar and storage. I’m personally excited about the future of this project as these micro-grid communities will serve as a working laboratory over the next few years to help us explore and guide how the future may be powered.
With climate change top of mind for most of the country, how is KB Home building homes that are environmentally friendly?
At KB Home, we believe that sustainability is built on one essential idea: balance. We strive to ensure that today’s home buyers can achieve their dream of homeownership while balancing that objective with mindfulness about the sustainability needs of future generations and our environment.
We have maintained a course toward sustainability for over two decades, innovating and iterating in pursuit of improving performance, creating an industry-leading culture, and building a better home. Sustainability has been a means for us to reduce the total cost of homeownership and expand our reach with our core first-time and first move-up home buyers, while also striving to do the right thing for the planet and our business.
We believe sustainability initiatives such as Energy Star-certified homes and WaterSense programs are unique strengths and important to our customers, employees, partners, and stockholders. Our rigorous management practices and industry leadership in sustainability have earned us a place on Newsweek’s 2024 America’s Most Responsible Companies list, USA Today’s 2023 America’s Climate Leaders list, Fortune’s Change the World list, and The Wall Street Journal and Drucker Institute’s Management Top 250 list.
You can find more information on our sustainability initiatives or view our full sustainability report here.
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