Archive for the ‘John Heywood’ tag
Truer now than ever for the homebuilding industry – “There are none so blind as those who will not see”.
The quotation above is attributed to John Heywood, a fifteenth century English writer. It closely resembles several Old and New Testament verses, most notably Jeremiah 5:21 (“Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not”) and Matthew 13:13 (“Therefore I speak to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand”). So this concept has been around for quite some time.
Yet it appears that the message is not being received and I am now well past the point of frustration in advising homebuilders and developers to simply look at the market to determine what will sell and hearing their automatic response of “you do not understand that things are different here and we cannot do that”. The fact is, things are not different here, there or anywhere else as the market is the sole determinant of where our buyers will live, what size and type of home they want and what they will pay. It does not matter what was the cost of the land or improvements, what the architect believed to be an attractive or appropriate design, or even who the builder is or how they do business. While the specifics of the consumers’ decisions will vary somewhat depending on geographic location, the national and local economy, the job market, interest rates and consumer sentiment, the homebuying market will always make their desires quite clear and all we need to do to succeed is look, listen and comply.
When homebuilders and developers fail to see, the only available course of action to sell the homesites or homes is to lower the price (or otherwise enhance the offering) until they have created such a visibly superior value that it overcomes all other concerns. But that typically results in losing money which has an obvious and undesirable long-term result. We can provide a superior sales environment and selling process, better merchandising, advertising and promotion and those efforts will certainly produce benefits and are worth pursuing. But without the underlying correct location, acceptable home design and features, and proper pricing, we are at best merely spinning our wheels while on the inevitable road to failure. Read the rest of this entry »
