In North Carolina, Sundog Homes is changing the game on the custom home-building process. With a new office and planned showroom in Asheville, the company gears its business toward buyers that are interested in a custom home, but are on a budget and need a quick turnaround. To expedite the process, the company has implemented an interactive web tool that allows potential customers to add the features and spaces they would like, make notes directly on the plan, and immediately receive an estimate.
Courtesy Sundog Homes
An in-house land buyer is also available to consult on ways to speed up and save money on construction, such as purchasing a level lot versus a mountainous one, or building on land with city utilities. “There are many custom home builders for the upper tier of the market, and of course there are mass market national builders out there. As a local builder in this price point, we feel well-positioned to help those interested in building a new home within both time and cost budget constraints,” says Carter Sowers, director of technology at Sundog Homes, who talked to BUILDER about the company’s process.
How is Sundog’s approach to custom home building different than the traditional approach?
Out of necessity, our approach to building and construction is more holistic than an average custom home builder’s because we’re constantly dealing with sever terrain and more complicated site conditions. Most of our business is located in the mountains of Western North Carolina. For that reason, home site conditions have the ability to significantly impact the total cost of a home when compared to other markets. We offer full service land development and planning services, so more often than not we’re tasked with determining the best use of our customers’ mountain land.
How does the new interactive application on your website simplify and expedite the process?
All of our new floor plans are interactive. Customers can browse our plans on the website and with the click of a mouse, they can customize every room in the entire home. They can choose to make a living room into a den with double doors, or combine two bedrooms together to make a larger master suite. We’ve thought through all the standard options for a given floor plan, and customers enjoy the freedom this gives them to customize their home. Once they’re done with all the standard options, they also have the ability to play with furniture placement. If they know the dimensions of their own furniture, they can get a good sense for how it will fit in their new home before they even sign a contract.
Courtesy Sundog Homes
What makes the process more affordable and accessible for those looking to build a custom home with a lower budget?
Our most recent product offering, the Sundog-Express home series, is our attempt to try and minimize some of the sticker shock that can happen when people want to build a home in the mountains. Several of our plans can live up or down to accommodate the slope of the land the customer has. We also don’t assume that everyone can afford to upgrade every facet of their new home, and we try not to make too many assumptions about what the customer values most. We keep our base home prices and our standard features relatively minimal so that the customer is empowered to spend money on the areas of their new home that are most important to them. You’d be surprised how many people prefer low maintenance vinyl siding as opposed to cementitious siding, so long as their architectural review board permits it.
Courtesy Sundog Homes
How do you control quality while keeping prices competitive?
We believe in building things right the first time. We also believe in empowering our construction field managers to make key decisions in real time to keep our projects moving forward.
What will the new design center accomplish?
The new design center will give us a dedicated space to focus on all the tactile things about a new home, both interior and exterior. We believe this new space will dramatically enhance the customer experience by allowing them to make decisions more easily and more confidently. And even though we don’t have the data to back it up yet, we think the design center will result in fewer change orders, and faster build times.
