Most builders can be grouped into one of two categories: a custom builder or a production builder. Given today's rapidly expanding housing market and with the influx of new home building companies, we feel an explanation of "Custom Homes" and "Production Homes" is neccessary.
"Custom" (or customization) is tailoring a consumer product, electronic or written medium to a user based on personal details or charachteristics they provide.
"Production" (also called mass production) is the production of large amounts of standardized products. Mass production was popularized by Henry Ford in the early 20th century with the Model T automobile. Mass production is typically based on workers who perform simple repetitive tasks to permit very high rates of production per worker, allowing high volume manufacture of inexpensive finished goods with few if any options. With fewer labor costs and a faster rate of production, capital is increased while expenditure is decreased.
Until recently the overwhelming majority of the housing industry was comprised of hundreds of thouasnds of mostly small volume builders, carpenters, sub-contractors, and real estate persons. This group built what would be considered "Custom Homes" Large production builders didn't account for much of the total production of houses prior to the population boom of the 1950's. Following the population growth of the 1940's and 1950's the nature of homebuilding began to change. The traditional method of home building was to build one house at a time, on one lot at a time, for one customer at a time. As the country grew, and more and more people began migrating out of the city and into the suburbs, the larger homebuilders began focusing their resources on large-scale mass production. The result was the creation of regional, national, and multi-natioanal home building corprorations. These corporations were able to drop their prices below those of the smaller builders due to teh volume of homes they built, using less expensive means of production, and greatly reducing flexibility and customization. The large corporations began focusing more on how many homes they could build and sell rather than focusing on serving the individual needs of each buyer.
Those builders that retained some of the charachteristics of the early homebuilders could be considered "Custom" builders. Custom builders emphasize flexibility, customization, and customer service. With custom builders the customer is usually more involved in the homebuilding process. Custom builders are generally considered more expensive than a production builder, but this is not neccessarily the case. By the time teh production built home is completed with the options you desire (if they will make the additions and changes you desire) the new home is typically more expensive than the home with the custom builder. And remember, with the custom builder, the customer is buying more than a home. They are buying teh ability to build their home to fit their individual needs and lifestyle.
At D& D Custom Homes we have incorporated the advantages of the custom builders and the production builders to create a truly unique home building company. D & D Custom Homes enjoys many of the advantages production builders have over the custom builders. We maintain a professional sales staff to take you from contract to closing, the flexibility to allow your home to be built with the options you desire, hands-on supervision to ensure the quality of every home built, and a proven warranty procedure to ensure that our customer's needs are met after closing.
