Oakwood Homes set out to cut the cost of building a new home in the Denver market and found that through streamlining processes and managing time better it could get the cost of a new home to come in under $300,000. Denverite reports:
Oakwood Chief Operating Officer Scott Thorson said some of the savings came from small steps, like cutting back on traditional advertising in favor of Facebook posts or sending some financial documents via two-day rather than overnight courier.
“These costs, they all roll back to the homeowner eventually,” he said. “We had to save little pieces here, little pieces there.”
Based on periodic surveys of builders, the National Association of Home Builders has seen a steady increase in construction costs. The price of building a single-family home almost doubled from $124,276 in 1998 to $237,760 in 2017, when Oakwood began taking a hard look at its costs. The assessment began by bringing together staff from a variety of departments — purchasing, sales, finance — and subcontractors.
“It really did start with a conversation,” said Don Carpenter, Oakwood’s head of product development. The goal was to “sit down and partner with our vendors and our labor force.”
