For Ashton Woods president and CEO Ken Balogh, being nimble and agile is in the builder’s DNA. Whether managing a “shoestring” budget during the Great Recession, navigating and expanding significantly during a global pandemic, or quickly adjusting to a rapidly changing housing market in 2022, Ashton Woods has displayed adaptability and the ability to quickly pivot.

“Back in 2009, it was shoestrings [and] duct tape. We didn’t have any money. We always have managed to grow in spite of [money],” says Balogh. “Now that we have a very solid balance sheet, we still kind of have that DNA that we’ve got to make every dollar stretch five different ways. I think we’ve managed to do more with less than most in the industry.”

The nimble and agile approach has helped the Alpharetta, Georgia–based builder grow from just under 1,200 closings in 2010 to 8,591 closings in 2022 and a No. 12 spot on the latest Builder 100 list. During the past decade, Ashton Woods launched entry-level brand Starlight Homes, entered the single-family build-to-rent sector, and expanded its geographic footprint, all while ensuring the company’s people-centric, culture-driven core has remained present.

Balogh says the company does not have specific growth targets, and the growth of Ashton Woods is dictated by what operators are seeing in local markets, allowing it to quickly take advantage of opportunities.

“We have a plan for each market, generally, [in terms of] how big we think we can get. But the operators determine what they think they can deliver based on what they’re seeing,” Balogh explains. “It’s our job to help make sure they have the resources, capital-wise and people-wise, and support that they need. But we don’t tell them where they’re going to get to with the growth. It just so happens that we have been able to have a lot of growth because it’s in our DNA.”

On the Upswing

To help understand the growth of Ashton Woods in 2022—when the builder increased closings by nearly 500 homes and saw revenue surpass $3.5 billion—it is important to know the builder’s backstory. After peaking at 2,471 closings and $735 million in revenue in 2006, Ashton Woods—like many builders—endured difficult times during the Great Recession and saw its closings shrink to 1,319 in 2009. After nearly bottoming out, Ashton Woods secured funding that laid the groundwork for its future growth.

Balogh was appointed president and CEO, and the company brought in talent with an array of big builder experience, creating the foundation of a firm poised for growth and helping cultivate a tight-knit team culture that continues to define Ashton Woods.

Over the decade, Ashton Woods grew steadily, expanding its market footprint to operate in Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Charleston, South Carolina; Dallas; Houston; Orlando, Florida; Phoenix; Raleigh, North Carolina; and San Antonio.

In 2017, the builder introduced Starlight Homes. The launch of the entry-level brand was a “pivot point” for Ashton Woods, though its contribution to the company growth story is something even the executive team could not have envisioned.

“It was never contemplated that Starlight could be as large as the Ashton business. Being opportunistic, it was for us to grow,” says chief operating officer Ryan Lewis. “We [had] to diversify the portfolio and our revenue streams. But it was never intended or envisioned on day one that it could be as large as it is.”

Heading into the pandemic in 2020, the firm had increased its land portfolio to manage the growing Ashton Woods and Starlight Homes brands. Balogh says the company was poised to “turn the corner, pandemic or not,” and move “full steam ahead” when uncertainty clouded sentiment in the early periods of the pandemic. Ashton Woods increased its closings from 4,673 in 2019 to 5,998 in 2020 and increased closings again to 8,112 in 2021.

When traffic began to ease in summer 2022, Balogh says the company recognized the housing market was likely to begin to slow and leaned into its culture to lead its messaging.

“We’re not going to message one thing and live and operate another way,” Balogh says of the company’s approach in the second half of 2022. “If our land teams are going to know what they have to tell the market, it’s going to be that things are tightening up.”

Culture Over Everything

Culture is the North Star that serves as a guiding point and driving force for Ashton Woods, informing its hiring, growth, and strategy. A key concern when the firm was considering entering the entry-level market with its Starlight Homes brand was not the operating elements, but instead whether such an expansion was a cultural fit for the company.

“To sell a hyper-competitive, [entry-level] product in a very difficult space to play, we [didn’t] want to have to evolve the culture in a way that wasn’t comfortable,” says Balogh.

When the team gathered in Dallas to discuss the entry-level market opportunity, operators expressed caution over messing with the company’s strong culture, Balogh says.

Rather than a top-down culture where everything trickles down from the corporate team, at Ashton Woods it is reinforced that the ownership of the business lies in its divisions, according to chief marketing officer Carrie Schonberg. As a result, Schonberg says local teams feel “very empowered to respond to opportunities they see in the market.”

While empowerment is a term that is thrown around as a buzzword for companies touting culture, the organizational structure at Ashton Woods tangibly reflects shared responsibility: The firm does not have multiple layers of leadership between the corporate and division offices, and instead the two interact directly and regularly.

The agile backbone of Ashton Woods that allowed it to sell its first Starlight home within a year of deciding to serve the entry-level market is built on trust.

“It’s a word that’s used a lot, I think overused in the industry in some cases,” Balogh says. “[At Ashton Woods], there’s no bureaucracy, no layers. There’s no barriers to having candid conversations. It’s not a culture that puts a lot of tight guardrails on people. You’ve got to be entrepreneurial and independent enough to make decisions around your business.”

One Plus One Is Not Two

While mergers or acquisitions are often the quickest way for short-term growth, Ashton Woods pursued a strategy of almost exclusively organic growth. Outside of an acquisition of Capitol City Homes in the Raleigh market in December 2021, Ashton Woods has employed an organic, people-centric strategy.

“I’m firmly convinced on the M&A side that 1 plus 1 never equals 2,” Balogh says. “When you combine two cultures and you think it’s going be accretive, it just, in our opinion, isn’t.”

Talent and people wins, rather than short-term revenue, has driven Ashton Woods’ growth story, says COO Lewis.

“There’s a lot of talented people in the industry, but not everyone will fit with how we run our business. Having people that fit the culture we found to be the most important thing,” Balogh says. “If you were evaluating a builder to expand, you look at people and land. The land to me is a product of the people, [so] all you’re really buying is the people.”

The company’s strong brand, product, and reputation have helped open doors in new markets more quickly for Ashton Woods, according to regional president Lindsay Motley.

“We found that while the path from a revenue perspective is probably not as fast [through organic growth], you’re much happier with the outcome when you look three to four years down the road,” says Lewis. “I think one of the strengths of the company is we’ve never had growth for growth’s sake. It’s always been opportunistic. Having that entrepreneurial spirit and applying that with the right talent and the right market and being very opportunistic about how you put that together really leads to leaps and bounds growth.”

Ashton Woods’ focus on opportunistic growth has prevented the builder from growing at a pace faster than the company infrastructure can handle, Lewis says.

“We’ve had a strategy for growth, but we’ve never had a mandate for growth. Because of that, we’ve never pushed operators to look for growth for growth’s sake,” says Lewis.

The builder is poised for more growth in the short term, with plans to expand into Nashville, Tennessee, and Greensboro, North Carolina. Both expansions are fundamentally driven by people.

“Nashville was never in the plan,” Lewis says. “The irony of a lot of our startup markets has been that, while there’s a big board of places we would like to be, it’s always a function of not forcing the timing but being ready to strike when the timing presents itself.”

In Greensboro, the combination of strong job creation and a talented operator’s familiarity with the market made the expansion attractive for the builder, Lewis says.

Build-to-Rent

In addition to providing a runway for significant future growth, the Starlight Homes brand also opened a door for the single-family rental space for Ashton Woods. While the company never underwrites any projects to specifically be single-family rental focused, the company allows itself the flexibility to serve the end market if needed, says senior vice president of land acquisitions Thad DiGiuro.

“The single-family rental business, in the good times, it’s incremental profit and revenue, and, in the bad times, it’s replacement revenue and profit,” DiGiuro says.

The Future of Ashton Woods

Balogh says there is “zero interest” in exploring options of going public.

“If we didn’t have access to capital, I think that would be an issue,” Balogh says. “But we actually have a strong balance sheet now. And for the first time since I’ve been here, it’s been the last two or three years that have been transformational.”

For the future, Balogh says the firm will remain focused on opportunistic growth and its people.

“As long as we can continue to grow the business and keep the values and the culture intact, [then] it is all a good time,” he says. “There will be other opportunities as we get bigger and have a bigger platform. We don’t know what they are today, but we move pretty quickly. The team can pull off pretty much anything we set our minds to.”