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This week in home building news! Catch up with Az and a colourful array of guests, to hear about who's killing it, who's innovating, and who's getting into strife in the world of new home construction.
Az (00:53)
There's a builder in Queensland doing something I think more building businesses should probably spend some time thinking about. And interestingly, it has very little to do with construction. It's about who the business is actually designed for. Because if we asked most builders who their customer is, they'd probably have an answer. Custom homes, first home buyers, knockdown rebuilds, families, developers, investors.
But here's a slightly different question. How much of your business has actually been designed around that customer? Your product, your pricing, your sales process, your selections, your communication, the blocks your homes are designed for, even the number of decisions you're asking that customer to make. Because I think there's a very big difference between knowing who your customer is and actually designing a business around them.
And that's what caught my attention with a builder called MAYDE
We've dropped a bit of an article on the website, but MAYDE focuses entirely on first home buyers. We recently went through their Queensland range for an article that we wrote on them because we thought what they're doing was pretty impressive and very, very interesting. And the headline number is pretty attention grabbing that we had on the article. They're advertising homes for 234,400.
Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, just over 137 square meters. But that's actually not the bit that I found most interesting. It was what happened when we looked at the whole range. There's 26 designs. Each single design has a published price on the website. I think that's pretty cool. We tested this back in the day at GJ's and it drove a lot more results. But people don't like to put their prices on there.
Sometimes it's very hard, but they have their prices entirely on the website. and actually every design has two published prices. The starter specification and then the elevate specification. They've Mayde it really, really simple for the customer. so I think you're picking up what I'm putting down here.
And even the difference between the two specifications is published. Depending on the home, it's roughly about forty-four thousand to sixty-five thousand. Seven of their designs are built for ten meter wide lots. Every home comes with a choice of ten standard facades. And according to MAID's product material that finishes, fixtures, and fittings are selected in a single design appointment.
If you actually think about it, none of these things are actually revolutionary, and that's actually the point. Put them together and you start to see a business that appears to have thought pretty carefully about the person coming through the front door. Think about that person. They're building their first home. They probably haven't been through a building contract before. They don't know all the terminology. They don't necessarily know which upgrades matter.
They may not understand what things cost and they're about to make hundreds of decisions about something they've never done before. So what do you do? You could give them unlimited choice or you could remove some of the complexity exactly like May did. And this is why I actually love what they've done. Here's the range, here's what it costs, here's the next specification, here's what that costs, here's your facade choices, here's how we're going to take you through selections.
And then suddenly the customer has a much more clearer path. And as we keep talking about here at The Good Builder, building becomes a little less riskier for them because they understand what's happening. And that's where I think this stops being a story about Mayde and it becomes a very interesting business lesson. And this is why I wanted to talk about this today. Because there's a lot of things that we do in business.
We add things and as business grow, we add another design, we add another inclusion, we add another option, we add a service, we add an upgrade, we add a customer type, we add another way of doing something. And every individual addition probably makes sense at the time, but when you look at the whole picture, does it really?
I think sometimes what we do is we add a lot of complexity.
You know, maybe a better customer experience doesn't always have to come from people making more choices or giving them more choices. I think it's about
making the right choices a bit easier.
And MAYDE has another constraint they've clearly had to think about. Queensland's first home buyer grant currently has a seven hundred and fifty thousand dollar value threshold for the home and land together. And I'm not gonna debate the grant here or any of that, but from a business perspective, what MAYDE has also done was worked with that information and Mayde sure that they can get home and land packages built underneath that threshold.
For example, and we put this in the actual article itself, and I urge all of you guys to take a look at it, because this is not an advertisement for Made. This is a bit of a dissection of what they're done. You have a look at their design, the poppy. Starts at two hundred and thirty four thousand four hundred, the Parker starts at two hundred and eighty-two thousand, the Toby twenty-one twenty nine thousand, and the Otis three hundred and twenty four thousand.
Different homes, different lot requirements, different price points, but very clearly defined for that market and to fit underneath that threshold.
And I think a pretty important question to ask yourselves and your team on this Monday is who exactly is your business designed for? Not who can you build for? Because a good builder can probably build for lots of different people, but If you're a knockdown rebuild specialist, does everything about your process make knockdown rebuild easier? If you're a custom builder,
Is your entire client experience designed around someone creating something they've never built before? And if you're building townhouses for developers, is your operation designed around repeatability, speed, developer relationships, all that kind of stuff? Or are you essentially saying, We're a builder, tell us what you want to build, and we'll build it? I think this is a really interesting conversation to have, and I think it'll bleed into other conversations.
including productivity and all that sort of stuff that we're talking about in the wider media.
Because I'm actually increasingly interested in whether some of our productivity gains actually start before the site. Think about the MAYDE model. Defined designs, defined specifications, standard facade choices, a controlled selection process. Could that reduce estimating time? Could that reduce variations? Could it simplify procurement? All of that stuff. We don't have MAID's internal numbers, and I'm not gonna say their model has produced
great outcomes. I don't really know. I've heard on the grapevine it's going quite well. And in my opinion, I think it's going to go really, really well. But sometimes I think you've got to have a look at designing a business with less unnecessary complexity in the first place before you even get out there and start targeting the people you've got to target.
If I were you, I would go and check out that article. It's a very interesting little look at a builder that's doing things a bit differently. And the way, as I've talked about this entire episode, they've built their business around the customer and not kind of the other way around. If you thought this episode was interesting, I would love for you to like and subscribe. Share it with another builder or someone in the industry that might find this interesting. And once again,
A big congratulations to MAYDE and what they're doing there. We wish you all the success from the good builder and we can't wait to see what happens and I'm sure I'll be doing a little case study later on. Have a good Monday.