It may be tough to remember at this instant, looking ahead into the economic chasm. But, for high-volume home builders, 2019 was no slam dunk.
The year started hard. Remember? A divisive government shut-down, a worsening global trade dispute, and some big questions about consumer demand fortitude after some interest rates went up, monthly payment calculations spiked, and runaway costs for labor, lots, and materials tightened their squeeze on slender margins.
Here’s what our Builder 100 and The Next 100 companies–their leaders, their managers, and their broad-shouldered teams of doers, sellers, and supervisors accomplished, above all in 2019.
- You “bent your own cost curves” by doubling-down on good, solid resource management, operational improvement, and disciplined execution, so that you could deliver margins relatively predictably.
- You pivoted product, land calculus, and vertical value engineering to–finally–fully activate a younger, lower-income, first-time buyer segment, whose enthusiasm for what you offered took on a life of its own by the end of 2019. You pushed “customer care” higher in the value-creation pyramid, learning to build your business priorities and outlook around the sustainable and renewable benefit of delighting customers at the conclusion of their buyers’ journey.
- You began to tap into an even more valuable business opportunity, the kind that could one-day see a home building company rank among the very top tier of global enterprises: the unique and exclusive “ownership” of consumers’ behavior, attitude, preferences, and needs, where the shell and systems of a home are partial facets of end-to-end delivery systems for health, peace-of-mind, well-being, entertainment, sanctuary, belonging, and dreams.
From a 40,000-foot perspective, our Builder 100 and The Next 100 class of 2020 reflects a collective power made up of hundreds and hundreds of bright lights in leadership, vision, operational excellence, innovation, management, and execution.
Conditions through the back half of the 2010 at 2019 decade–even in light of current acute, drastic, and existential challenge–have required extraordinary stamina, nimbleness, ability to change and adapt, and a high-level of purpose-driven business gumption.
The decade past–capped as it was by a 2019 that grudgingly ceded growth among America’s most dynamic home building business leaders–in important ways, needed to and did ready the nation’s home building business community for a pandemic-challenged U.S. economic backdrop.
- Companies learned how to learn in real-time about customer segmentation, product mix, buyers’ journeys, and the beginnings of supply chain fusion so that they could focus more of their talent and resources on being smarter, more genuine, more sustainable customer champions.
- Companies learned to recognize and manage to producing more and more of what consumers value rather than more and more of what their operational systems can yield in rigid production and fabrication processes.
- Companies began to populate themselves with people whose skill and talent will lead to even smarter, more efficient, more valuable whole-life relationships with consumers, leading away from the hide-bound transactional one-off deal culture that has to-date characterized the community.
As BUILDER editor Jennifer Lash writes of this year’s Builder 100 and The Next 100 crop:
The top 100 builders reported a total of 350,003 closings for 2019—an increase of almost 22,000 compared with 2018. Those firms are responsible for the bulk of last year’s closings; overall, the 200 builders on the Builder 100/Next 100 reported 377,167 closings for 2019. Many companies were busy, and 119 of the 200 firms noted that they increased staffing levels in 2019. For the most part, these builders were heading into 2020 with optimism for both housing and their businesses as many industry experts revised down recession probabilities.
Again, that achievement of 9% growth, was no slam dunk. It came hard, and it came because of superb leadership, and it came because people who work for you did a great job.
For BUILDER and its siblings here at Hanley Wood, Meyers Research, and Metrostudy, what the Builder 100 and The Next 100 have accomplished in the past 18 months, and the past 10 years before that is the very essence of our own purpose, our own true north, and our own business horizon.
For that we are and shall be ever grateful to the work, the sweat, the day-to-day, and the sleepless nights, and the brash, ever-optimistic, shrewd, salt-of-the-earth, unflinchingly committed people you are, you manage, you train, and you lead.
Thank you for proving, as you have through the decades, why 100 continues to cast an almost magical spell of meaning and significance as the best of numbers.
Because our notational system for numbers is decimal (base 10), the number 100 takes on a significance that it would probably not possess if we employed other systems of notation. It is a round number and holds hints of perfection. The Western calendar is divided into the decade (10 years), century (100 years), and millennium (1,000 years), with the century as the most important unit.
Markets, as we end May and plow forward into 2020’s summer months, are responding with exuberance about the prospect of the economy’s broad-handed reopening.
A great number of questions remain. Many of the questions regarding the impact of our economy’s self-induced freeze on supply now begin to be answered. As many new questions will emerge as those supply constraints fall away, and demand either does or doesn’t begin to form and gain momentum in the weeks and months ahead.
We’re confident that our Builder 100 and The Next 100 companies have–largely–made themselves into enterprises built to persevere, to navigate, to thrive, and to lead a broader economic recovery over the next five years, thanks in part both the learnings and the accomplishments that led to their rankings in our Builder 100 2020 list.
Again, we can only say, “thank you.” For who you are, and the way you do what you do. Continue, and prosper.
