Seeing its highest growth in 3 years, new home construction grew 4% in Canada last year, according to Statistics Canada.
The year started off slow and remained at a stand still in March and April while globally we figured out restrictions, policies and what safety measures to put into place in order to pull through. Put a lumber shortage on top of that and we saw costs increase across the country. You would think home builders would have had their backs up against the wall, but that wasn’t the case.
Mark Bailey President of R&M Homes, tells us they can’t keep up with the current demand over the past year. Many people were in lock down in their homes, with not much else to do. When you can’t spend extra income on travel, or just about anything right now, a lot of people turned to their homes. The lock downs and home schooling changed the way people looked at the function of their homes and what was or wasn’t working for them anymore. This created an increase in families searching for a home that would meet their new needs and created a boom in the home construction industry mid way through 2020.
“Blessed and fortunate to be able to work through the pandemic,” is how Mark Bailey describes this past year. The usual face to face conversations with customers has changed slightly over the past year but that has not slowed down R&M Homes at all. They were able to jump onto technology quickly, in order to work with their customers everyday and keep their builds on schedule. Emails, phone calls and Face Time have now become the norm, and was instrumental in working with a new customer who lived provinces away. Mark and the team at R&M Homes worked closely with this customer through the whole build process and never met in person until possession day. Mark tells us that Face Time played a big roll in this specific build. They were able to walk the customer through the home and show them the progress from foundation to completion. Not only could the customer see how the build was going, but Mark took the time to measure and step count out rooms live on Face Time, in order to give the customer an idea of size and spacing. Going above and beyond is what stands out at R&M Homes and it shows in their builds.
Having an open-door policy is what R&M Homes delivers. They want their customers to be able to see their homes being built, especially during the early stages. At this point, you can really see what is happening inside your home with plumbing, electrical and much more. Once the drywall goes up, most of that is inaccessible and is just as important as the finishings of your home that you see everyday. R&M Homes will also share with customers 3D renderings of the interior and exterior of their home. This is another great tool offered to customers, in order to better visualize their new home.
Face to face is still possible when working with customers while following safety guidelines. But Mark has never been more thankful for the use of technology while working with his customers this past year. As we move forward, we will definitely see a shift in how builders and home owners can work together in the future and has opened the door to new possibilities when working with customers who are not local. – DYH
