Ideal Homes, Ideal Prices

Most people don’t live in executive-style homes. However, that doesn’t mean they should expect to settle for less than what they want when making one of the largest investment of their lives.

With that in mind, Norman –based Ideal Homes is setting out to provide Oklahomans with, well, ideal homes at affordable prices.

Vernon Mckown, who co-owns the company with Gene Mckown and Todd Booze, said product positioning and placement are what has made Ideal Homes Oklahoma’s largest homebuilder.

“Since our inception, our focus has been on affordable housing,” Mckown said. “We don’t try to build all things for all people. We focus on the first-time home buyer and the move-up buyer. We don’t build any homes priced at over $250,000.”

Ideal Homes was founded in 1990. McKown said the company typically builds about 450 homes per year, but it is on track to build 500 this year.

To date, the company has built more than 6,000 homes in all areas of the metro. It has developed three large neighborhoods in the Edmond/Deer Creek area, five in Yukon and Mustang, four in Norman, one in Del City and has another in development in Midwest City. It also does steady work in Oklahoma City and Moore.

“All areas run in spurts,” McKown said. “Every neighborhood will see growth for a while. Then it’ll taper off and pick up somewhere else, then come back.”

He said the Marble Leaf community at N.W. 50^th and Pennsylvania Avenue was the company’s best-selling area lat year. “Because there wasn’t any affordable housing in the area until the,” he said.

Ideal homes offers 30 floor plans with every home having at least three bedrooms, two baths and a two-car garage. Plans vary, through, with some offering four bedrooms and different amenities.

He said 30 to 40 percent of Ideal Home’s customers are first-time home buyers. The rest are what he termed “move-up” buyers, or people ready to leave their starter home.

“The delineating difference is price to a degree, or where they are in the buying life cycle,” he said, noting that sometimes buyers are older couples with empty nests looking to move down to a smaller home.

“Our typical customers are young couples, with about 10 percent active adults or empty-nesters who are downsizing,” he said.

McKown knows his market, and that’s no accident. The company spent about $55,000 on market research last year. The data yielded three key findings.

“The first, and the one we’re proudest of, is that one-third of our business comes from referrals,” he said. “It’s easy to grow your business when one-third of your customers come from word of mouth. That’s why we really take care of our customers. We treat everybody like family and that creates a constant stream of new business.”

The second finding pertained to location.

“We’re focused on finding excellent locations in Oklahoma’s best school districts and providing amenities everybody would like to have,” McKown said, adding the third finding related to the effectiveness of the company’s model homes.

“People are visual. They want to see what the home will look like. Not on a floor plan, but the real home. We have 125 to 130 homes inventory to show, just to give customers an idea of what their house would look like and so they can see our communities.”

Ideal Homes recently developed a new specialty by offering affordable allergen-free homes, which have proven popular with buyers who are asthmatic or have upper respiratory problems. McKown said the key thrust to making a home allergen free is looking at indoor air quality.

“You look at creating a fresh-air ventilation systems,” he said. “You control where the air comes in and out. The old strategy was to let the house be leaky, letting fresh air come in through windows and doors. We’ve gone to a strategy that’s more tightly controlled. We seal up the house and bring in a ventilation system with continuous air flow.”

Other features which help with allergies are installing hardwood floors in high humidity to minimize dust mites.

McKown said it’s hard to break down the added cost of making a home allergen free because “you’re looking at the whole house as a system, incorporating many aspects into the home. Some people don’t want all of them, some want more than others.”

One way Ideal Homes’ customers decide how much air quality control they want is by visiting the company’s selection center at its Norman headquarters. McKown said he and his partners will open another 4,500-square-foot selection center near the intersection of Interstates 35 and 240 later this year.

The company also is working with the Department of Energy to build an affordable zero-energy home which should make the already-thriving business buzzing with activity.

“It will cost the owner nothing for gas and electric,” McKown said. The grand opening for the first zero-energy home will be in September.

“It will be the first of its kind in the nation,” he said, nothing that some zero-energy homes cost up to $1 million. “Ours will be under $200,000.”

The zero-energy home will feature solar power, tankless hot water and innovative insulation and ventilation.

“We’re always looking to create products on the leading edge of the housing industry,” McKown said. “Our homes are cutting edge anywhere you want to benchmark us. People come from all over country to study our processes.”