We recently spoke with Ryan from RN Building about using Homepacks and their new builds...
I was building/contracting to a housing company a few years prior, and six years of building under my brand. My company is coming up to 10 years old. I've got seven staff, six builders, and one office lady that does 20 hours a week.
Because they looked like high architecture and it's quite appealing for the sales side of it when the house has got, a nice look is what I found. I'm a certified builder, I had some of the certified plans, but they were just very standard sort of designs, and there was no real 'wow' factor to them.
Because you've got a nice design and with your brochures, I found that clients thought that they're pretty professional looking.
The first initial cost. But then I thought, wow, all you needed to do was get one sale, and it was well worth it.
We're now onto the third house from our Homepacks plans; it's paid off having them! ...and I think we'll be building more of them because once you get started, people can see how the designs are working.
That lead for sale. People go to housing companies because they got all the plans stamped around everywhere, and everyone thinks that they're the only ones that build houses. But if you have nice house plans on your website and all these different designs, it's just getting the clients in the door.
Even before we started doing a few of the houses, having the plans there, clients knew we built homes and not just worked for housing companies. It gets clients to that first meeting, and once you've got them there, you can show them what your package is.
It's that easy start to the build because we can sketch a couple of small changes on and then just pass it on to the architect, and he's already got the design and all the rooms. It's definitely sped up a lot of the process there. I don't have to go to an architect straight away. I deal with the clients for the first few meetings, and if there are any small changes that they want to make, we can easily just mark it on and then send it to the architect, which in the long run, you know, it's keeping the cost down.
Most of the time, he's only charging us about eight grand to finish the plans off. Whereas if you're doing the full thing from him starting and dealing with the clients, you're probably talking almost double that.
Homepacks has already done quite a lot of the hard work getting all the designs and measurements there. All he needs to do is put it onto his system and then do the boundaries and you know, services and all finishing it off. But he doesn't have to spend hours going backwards and forwards with the client. You know, ("do you want this bedroom three meters?"), because you've already got all those bits and pieces there worked out.
Yes. As you'll see with the other two that we're doing, there's not actually a lot changed on them at all. It's just small, small little things they might change; one had a veranda and changed the media room into a study and just small internal sort of changes. But you know, you're not having to change the whole layout.
Yes, that's right. So that's what I'm finding. Like all of my jobs, I'm kind of the only one quoting it because as soon as I have that first initial meeting with them and you start talking about the sales and the design, you've already got them in the door, and they're not dealing with anyone else. It's straight from there. We work with our own architect, and we're not actually pricing against anyone else.
Yeah, that's right, that's what I say in their first initial meetings; these plans are licensed, so they can't; it's got copyright all over it. They can't basically take that design to anyone else.
It's a very good sales tool!
We're now going to that next level, where most of our sales of houses are over $700k. We're getting up to the nicer builds, and that's a lot to do with Homepacks plans because they're all nicer homes. I would far rather be building a nice-looking house than a stock, standard brick home.
That's the key with those plans is that little bit above other house plans, and once you start doing a few of them, people obviously see you doing a nice job, and you're getting that high-end of the architectural builds, and it just keeps going. We've got a couple of big jobs in the pipeline at the moment, which hopefully might come on later in the year. We've got the three houses we're doing at the moment and potentially another two.
You've got more passion when you're building a nice home, and you really actually look forward to it because you sit back at the end of the product and go, that's pretty cool!
Our clients didn't change too much. They just put the veranda on and changed the media room to a study.
"It's a very good sales tool!"
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