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 18 Builders Earn Builder Partnerships Achievement Awards in Customer Satisfaction
The Builder Partnership Achievement Award (BPAA) was created to provide customer-centric home builders with third-party customer satisfaction validation from a credible source. To assure a high integrity process, Builder Partnerships put together a team of industry experts to effectively survey home builder customers, analyze the results, benchmark the applicants' performance, and validate them for a BPAA achievement level. Read more...
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 Couture Lifestyle Homes Receives
2012 Lee Evans Award for Management Excellence
The Lee Evans Award for Management Excellence is a prestigious award that recognizes builders who have excelled in implementing strong management systems and generating superior financial results. For 40 years, Lee Evans dedicated himself to helping home builders establish management and financial systems that improved their operations and benefited builders, their staff, and homebuyers. He stressed planning, operational excellence, financial benchmarking, and profitability.
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Experts' Corner: Advice for 2012
Over the years, Builder Partnerships, in conjunction with The Shinn Group, has produced an impressive array of webinars. We've lost count, but it's probably nearing 250, and we've enlisted dozens and dozens of experts to offer insight and tips for our members and the wider builder audience. We've covered finance, systems implementation, marketing, social networking, website development, energy efficiency, personal finance, and more. (All of these webinars are available at www.homebuilderuniversity.com.)
For this issue of the Builder Partnerships newsletter, we asked a group of experts to offer their predictions for 2012.
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5 Questions for Steve Moore, BSB Design
Not only is the home building industry going through a huge economic shakeup, it's also undergoing a transformation from meeting the housing demands of the defining Baby Boom Generation to the new demands of the upstart Millennial Generation. We asked Steve Moore, Senior Partner of BSB Design-the industry-leading community and home planning firm based in West Des Moines, Iowa and with offices around the country-what is working now and what the future holds for home building.
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 Get the Loan: The Role of Financial Ratios to Lending
By Emma S. Shinn
Lenders are tightening the rules of engagement for construction loans. They used to be relatively liberal in the debt-to-equity ratio. We've seen it as high as 15 to 1, but have always recommended builders maintain a
debt-to-equity ratio of 3 to 1. This target seems to be in line with the lenders today, although some may require a 2.5 or even a 2 to 1.
The debt-to-equity ratio is calculated by dividing the total debt of the company by the total owners' equity or invested capital. The question is what can you do to improve this ratio. There is more than one way, and it may take a combination of solutions to achieve the desired target.
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 Don't Rush to Construction Without a Complete Start Package
by Charles C. Shinn, Jr., PhD
Did you know that most of the waste and excess cost in the home building process occur, because builders rush to construction without a complete plan for production and sales? As we travel the country, we see this all the time. Builders rush to construction without having a complete set of working drawings and a full set of standard specs. They go forward without a master schedule showing the sequence of events for the trades that cuts down idle time, dry runs and inefficiencies.
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 Selling Has Changed-Are You Up To Speed?
By Tom Richey, Richey Resources Co., Houston, Texas
When a builder friend of mine visits Houston and enters 16 new home sales offices with an engaging move motive and is registered only twice, receives just one model presentation, and zero follow up, something is wrong! Very wrong!
The art of new home selling is in regression. The average sales velocity of a model home across the U.S. is 0.44 sales per month! Some builders are turning their sales staffs three times a year! Conversion rates have fallen off the cliff. The reason? Selling has changed. We are selling the way we sold in the 70s and 80s and it is turning buyers off. They are hearing the spiel and not coming back. Let's see why.
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5 Questions for Brad Bombardiere, CEO, Reality Concepts
1. What is the ultimate goal of a builder's website? Provide leads? Engage buyers? Build trust?
The ultimate goal is to sell homes. I work with quite a few builders, and that's just about the only thing they're worried about. I often say, "If you only had ten people showing up to your website per month, and you sold ten homes, they'd probably be very happy." It isn't' really about traffic. That means they have to communicate the right home in the right neighborhood at the right price. If they can't do that, there isn't any chance of getting a sale..
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 Success Stories
Making the Case for High-Performance Production Homes
by Vernon McKown, Ideal Homes
Building quality homes while saving our customers money through energy-efficient upgrades is the basis of our company's business. Building high-performance homes is all we do, and we do it at a price point that encourages first-time homebuyers to get into the new-homes market.
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Upcoming Events
Webinars
Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 11am EST
More details coming soon.
Click here to learn more.
For Manufacturers: Selling to Builders
Thursday, March 8, 2012 at 11am EST
Live Events
Builder Partnerships
7th Annual Networking Reception at IBS
Tuesday, February 07, 2012
Join us on Tuesday February 7th, the evening prior to the 2012 International Builder Show, for an excellent evening of networking and camaraderie. We are expecting this year's event to be even larger than in the past.
The Builder Partnerships Networking reception provides a great environment where you can catch up with old friends and freely interact with others in the homebuilding industry to develop relationships even before IBS begins.
To register, click here
Face to Face Networking Meetings
Builder Partnerships is pleased to announce 2012 Schedule for our Face-to-Face Networking events. These events provide a great opportunity for our manufacturer partners to get in front of our builder members and other guests for one-on-one product promotions and discussions.
Starting in January, we will host a series of meetings that will put your regional teams face-to-face with leading builders in their respective markets. Join us for just one or all events:
Charlotte, N.C.
Orlando, Fla.
Nashville, Tenn.
Philadelphia, Pa
Cincinnati, Ohio
Participating manufacturers may send up to two representatives to each session and have the opportunity to meet with builders in prescheduled one-on-one meetings.
Your regional representatives can also invite hot builder prospects as their guests.
The program is exclusive to Builder Partnerships manufacturers, builder members and builder guests.
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Builder Partnerships Linking Builders and Manufacturers for Growth
Builder Partnerships is a truly innovative organization. We continue to grow aggressively, adding many new builders and manufacturers each month. We manage highly competitive rebate and incentive programs and work with builders to strengthen relationships with manufacturers and other service providers in the industry. Through our educational articles, webinars, and secured website, builders are able to stay abreast of new developments and cutting-edge products being offered by our manufacturer and service partners.
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The Shinn Group has over 500 builder clients, located across the U.S. and Canada, including top performers among regional homebuilders. For more information, visit www.theshinngroup.com.
Builder Partnerships represents nearly 500 builders in the US and Canada who build an average of over 25,000 units annually. To be added to our distribution list or contribute an article to the newsletter, please contact us at info@builderpartnerships.com.
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