It took a bit of persistence to get in touch with Craig Denman for this profile. He wasn’t trying to avoid us; he’s just not in the office much these days. “I’m out in the field more than I have been in years,” he reports. “Our prime market from 1995 to 2008 was vacation homes from $1.5 million to $5 million.” But that market has taken a vacation of its own, leaving high-end builders in Montana high and dry. In response, Denman reduced his staff from 63 to eight, added project management to his job description, and started spending a lot more time on the road.
Since the mid-1990s, when he began building for corporate CEOs (and the occasional movie star or professional athlete) in the spectacular Flathead Valley, Denman had been booked two years in advance. “But in 2006, our bookings were starting to run thin,” he says, “and by fall 2007 we could see that we would [soon] be out of work. We officially closed out our last vacation home project in August 2008, and we’ve been running with no backlog since then.” Second-home clients are waiting for a convincing economic rebound before they return to the market, he explains. “They have the cash, but there’s still too much uncertainty. They want to make sure their businesses are growing and that the real estate market has at least stabilized.” In the meantime, Denman has refocused on a less glamorous but steadier clientele. “We’ve built for people from Italy, England, and Singapore,” he says, “but we still did a few homes for local professionals—doctors and lawyers—and now that’s the core of our market.” The contracts are smaller, but Denman is glad to have them, as are the architects he once partnered with on mega-ranches. “They’re working on their $300,000 projects along with their $1 million projects,” he observes. “We’re all trying to survive.”
And Denman will survive. Starting in November 2009, clients who had put projects on hold began to call. “Not that they were making any final decisions,” he cautions, “but they were starting to talk again.” The bubble will leave its mark on a generation of clients, he believes, but the worst of the downturn seems to be over. “In 2009 it was hard to plan because it was hard to even drum up a client,” he says. “Now we’re able to plan.”
Denman Construction, Whitefish, Mont.
www.denmanconstruction.com
Type of company: Custom builder
Years in business: 33
Employees: 8
2009 volume: $2.3 million
2009 starts: 12
