Building Efficiency Drives Customer Retention
With a focus on product efficiency and high performance building, infill development companies like Thrive Home Builders are garnering increased customer loyalty rates. According to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), Thrive reported 26% customer retention by prioritizing third-party certification for major selling points like energy efficiency standards and product performance.
Gene Myers, founder and CEO of Thrive Home Builders, has customers buying their second or even third Thrive home in a Denver Central Park infill neighborhood on the site of the former Stapleton International Airport. It’s the largest infill project in the country, spanning 20-plus years of development with more than 10,000 homes, with about 1,000 lots left to be built out. Even with competition from several other builders in this development, Thrive has a 26% repeat customer rate.
Myers believes that third-party certification provides confidence in the product, and the efficiency, quality and healthy practices used in green-certified homes, coupled with beautiful design, brings customers back.
“The important thing is to just keep pushing and keep trying to refine that competitive edge or that unique value proposition that you have as a builder,” he noted. “I think the worst thing you can do is be just like every other builder. From our standpoint, having really crisp product differentiation is a real key to our being able to prosper in a market that’s heavily dominated by big public builders.”