The latest news from GuildQuality.

GuildQuality collects a LOT of customer feedback. Lately, we’ve been interviewing around a hundred homeowners a day about their experience with one of our builders, remodelers, or real estate developers. We deliver that survey feedback, in real-time, to our members in a consistent, actionable, and succinct format. As a big added bonus, we also give them easy-to-use analytical tools to help them track things like the performance of their employees or their company’s performance in contrast with a highly-relevant group of peers.

Our mission is to elevate the building industry to a stature commensurate with its importance in our communities. There’s not many jobs that are more important than that of a homebuilder, remodeler, or developer. These are the folks that are shaping our built environment. They significantly influence both the way we live our lives today, and how we’ll live them for many decades (or even centuries) to come.

Given the importance of the building profession, I was pleased to see a significant trend emerge from a research project we’ve been working on. With the help of 15 remodelers and Remodelers Advantage, we’ve been able to make some judgments about the correlation between customer satisfaction and profitability.

We were trying to assess whether or not customer satisfaction impacted gross margin. Here’s what we found:

(more…)

I’On recently enjoyed the ten-year anniversary of its zoning approval, and the occasion prompted me to spend some time looking back on our sales history.

The entire development team has expended tremendous energy in our effort to maximize I’On’s quality of service, construction, planning, and life. Those efforts have paid off, both in terms of appreciation in lot values (as indicated by the above chart of average lot sales prices) and home values in comparison with the surrounding neighborhoods (as indicated in the below “Zestimate” contrasting the appreciation of I’On’s first house with that of the surrounding zip code — courtesy of Zillow).

We’ve certainly enjoyed our ups and downs like everyone else. We fret over inventory management, pricing strategy, marketing strategy, and quality. But despite all the challenges, the appreciation in home value and lot prices in the neighborhood has significantly outpaced that of the surrounding area.

To what do I attribute this superlative value creation? How have we so outperformed the surrounding communities? I think it’s two things: Vision and Execution.

The Vision has come from the founders, the builders, the architects, the salespeople, the development team, and the buyers. My brother Vince Graham was the fountainhead for that vision and he continues to serve as I’On’s vision keeper.

And a tremendous number of people share the responsibility for the Execution. I give most of the credit to the building team, their custom clients, and the homebuyers. Their commitment to exceptional quality gave us the great results we see walking down any one of the neighborhood’s streets. The neighborhood’s public realm–it’s architecture and urbanism–sets it apart from other new places, and there is absolutely no way to produce that kind of environment from the top down.

So thanks to everyone for a great ten years. I expect we have a few more to go before the I’On Company’s job as the developer is completely finished. But if we can make our last few chapters as enjoyable as our first ten, the result will have far surpassed our expectations.