by Michele Newbern Gillis
Staff Writer
After years of not cooperating with Realtors, Maronda Homes has had a change of heart – or, rather, a change of ownership.
Ownership of the company passed to Ron Wolf, the son of the previous owner, Bill Wolf Sr., and he is very excited to enter a new positive relationship with Realtors.
“He sees value in Realtors and has a different concept about them,” said Jim Marshall, sales manager. “The customers have asked for that representation and in a difficult market it has given us the ability to bring more people in. This is not a temporary thing. The new owner has set up a whole system specifically for working with Realtors.”
Wolf designed a computer system to track leads.
“We track all our leads and register the Realtors as they come in. If they come back later, we know that they are with this buyer,” said Marshall. “He wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble of designing this computer system to track the Realtor leads if he wasn’t planning on going forward with it.”
Marshall has been with the company for nine years and said he wanted it to cooperate from Day One.
“I wanted it because I’ve worked with other builders and saw the value of it back then,” he said. “I welcome it and it’s something I’ve been working towards. I’ve tried to encourage it, so I’m very happy it is happening. I’ve been the one on the front line having to address customer when they ask ‘Why can’t I use my Realtor?’”
Marshall said there are two things he’d like to see from this decision.
One, he’d like to see an increase in sales. Two, he’s like to see a very good working relationship and trust built between Maronda and the Realtor community.
“We’ve obviously had friction in the past and I want to tear that down and really get a good working relationship with Realtors. From having a home inspection business in the past, I know the value of having a relationship with Realtors and I really want to see, more than anything, the wall come down between Maronda and Realtors.”
Marshall explained that their homes are usually built by their own employees rather than subcontractors.
“The whole concept of Maronda Homes was that we wanted to have a lot of work done by our own people,” said Marshall. “We have our own plumbers, electricians, air conditioning people, truss plan, trim shop and lumber yard.”
It varies, but usually anywhere between 40 to 60 percent of the work done on the homes is by their own employees rather than subcontractors.
“It gives us better control over the quality of the product and it cuts out a lot of middlemen,” said Marshall. “The whole concept of having a lot of in-house people is that we cut out the middlemen for cost purposes and we have better control over when and where they do their work.”
Since they cut out the middleman on the construction of the homes, they felt they could do the same with sales.
“We felt like if we hired qualified sales people who knew our product, then there wasn’t anyone who could represent our product better than our own people,” said Marshall. “We passed on that three percent savings to the consumer. Every builder in town builds the commission into the price. That’s the cost of doing business. Because our concept was to cut out as many middlemen as possible, we didn’t need the Realtor because we could represent it best ourselves.”
But, he said, over the last few years, they have come to the conclusion that a lot of people in a changing marketplace are asking to have that representation of a Realtor that they trust.
“We’ve had homebuyers ask ‘Why don’t you cooperate with Realtors?” said Marshall. “’I’ve been working with this Realtor who’s helped me and I really want to see them get paid for all the work they’ve done.’”
And now they can.
The company has been in business since 1972.
“It was started by the Wolf family out of Pittsburgh,” said Marshall. “Bill Wolf Sr. used to work for Ryland Homes years ago before going on his own. He started building up in Pennsylvania and then he heard that the Florida market was really good, so he contacted a man in DeLand. They partnered up and started building homes in DeLand and did very well. They expanded it to Orlando, Melbourne, Jacksonville and Tampa.”
When the market was strong, they were building about 9,000 townhomes and single-family homes a year in Florida and another 3,000 in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Kentucky.
The townhomes start from 1,200 square feet up to 1,700 square feet with a price range from $99,000 to $140,000. Single-family homes start from 1,300 square feet up to 3,901 square feet with a price range of $130,000’s to $270,000’s.
Maronda Homes builds a lot of the components of its homes at a factory and then ship to the lot. The walls on the first floor are concrete block.
“All of the walls for the upstairs are built in sections in a factory in DeLand and are shipped out on a truck,” he said. “It’s called our wall panel plan. We lay the block. The framers come in and the house is completely framed in one day, two days maximum.
“Some builders will take a week to two weeks to frame a house because it’s a stick-built house and it takes a lot of time. Even our walls that are built out of frame are built at a factory with a robotics plan to put it together more accurately because it’s done in a factory-controlled environment. It’s an engineered component rather than a stick-build on site.”
Marshall said that concept allows them to pass the savings onto the customer.
“We want to be the best price for the square footage of any builder in town,” he said. “We are the only affordable production builder who builds block homes in Jacksonville. Block stands up much better in hurricane winds.
“They don’t even build frame in South Florida because they know it won’t stand up to a hurricane. If it’s good for South Florida, why is it not good for North Florida? That’s why Maronda has been very successful in the 15 years we’ve been here. People that move from down South and other areas want a block home.”
The company built about 4,000 homes this past year and adapted its practices to the changing market.
Marshall said that they used to build larger homes, but as the market changed, people are requesting smaller homes.
“It’s just what people are out there buying,” he said. “It’s harder to get a loan for the larger homes.”