Lennar posted a gain for seven quarters. DR Horton, KB Home – doing fine. How many local builders do you know who are “doing fine?”

But let’s say you refuse to be weeded out. Fair enough. After all, you’ve worked too hard to give up. The local community knows and trusts you. You’ve earned your reputation with excellent service. You have a right to exist.

You’re a builder. So build. Maybe not homes or communities – at least not right now. Build PARTS of homes, a.k.a. rehabbing.

The people who trusted you to build great homes will also trust you to turn old interiors and floor plans into brand new ones, build additions and give tired kitchens, baths and basements a new lease on life.

There are no national rehab companies. Rehab is a local game. As a seasoned local builder, rehabbing is well within your ability. You just need to rehab you business model a little, so you can weather the storm.

When the market recovers, your name will have endured because you never stopped building lifestyles. You’ll go back to homebuilding but with an increased sphere of local influence.

Consider that 90% of the NAHB is made up of homebuilders who build only ten homes or less, annually. Small, local builders are in the vast majority. Let’s keep it that way. Weather the storm any way you can.

Rehabbing is merely one option for local and regional builders intent on keeping their name alive no matter what. For more options, contact us.

– Garrison Insider

The NAHB has released data

2009 was a big year for small:

“The era of easy money is over. You really have to think before you go out and decide you need that five-bedroom, five-bath home,” said Rose Quint, the NAHB’s assistant vice president for survey research. “Couple that with the energy [cost] concerns of consumers today and I think we will continue this trend.”

It reminds me of another “small movement,” dating back to 1959: the Volkswagen Beetle. Smart marketing touted the financial, practical and image-related benefits of owning small. But there was nothing small about that marketing approach – it translated to big sales.

As marketers in real estate, it’s our job to turn this current real estate trend toward small into something big.

Like Volkswagen, we need to package “small,” and make it appealing. Real estate marketers have been doing this for years by using words like “cozy,” in advertisements. We have to go beyond that.

Today small means power. Small means ownership. Small means freedom. Small means lower carbon footprint. Small is nimble, sane, sensible. Small, in terms of living space, can have tremendous caché if we market it properly.

For some developers, building smaller homes means the hope of turning a profit on new construction – even in this economy, when standing inventory makes such a thing seem impossible. That’s a perfect example of turning the trend toward small into something big.

As marketers and real estate consultants, it’s not enough to merely embrace the trend. We have to harness its power and translate it into better products, smarter marketing and more sales. That’s exactly the kind of challenge we love at Garrison Partners.

Size may not matter as much right now. But sales still do.

GB