Brohn Homes founders on how to keep home prices low

Aaron Boenig and Adam Boenig, co-founders of Brohn Homes, whose legal name is The Brohn Group LLC, built their first home in 2002. In 2003, they formalized the company that has become one of the top-producing volume homebuilders in the region. Two decades later, they’re still in the homebuilding business, but at a much larger scale. And they’re focused on how builders can keep housing affordable.

In 2021, the company started construction on more than 1,000 homes, closing on 760. The year broke records for the business, and company leaders anticipate another productive year.

Clayton Properties Group Inc. bought Brohn Homes in 2018. Since then, Brohn Homes has doubled its employee headcount, and company leaders said they’re continuing to hire. The company has 120 employees and contracts with about 150 outside companies.

While Brohn’s homes are exclusively in Central Texas, the Boenigs said they plan to expand into other major Texas markets as opportunities arise, but they do not currently have any such projects in the pipeline.

Austin Business Journal spoke with the company founders about the future of building affordably to keep price tags low.

Your entry-level brand, Waterloo Homes, tends to have a relatively low price tag, sometimes in the $200,000 to $300,000 range, even as material and labor costs are extremely high. Can you walk me through how your company manages to keep costs low? 

Aaron: Attainability of homeownership is our focus moving forward — democratizing homeownership and offering it to as many people as possible. We work to get that price point down, whether it’s through innovative product offerings, or through specialized purchasing or off-site construction.

Have y’all tried any innovative strategies, like off-site building, for example, that have succeeded in keeping costs low? Have any proven to be not so useful? 

Aaron: We’re entering our first community where we will be building the frame, including panels and trusses, off-site. It’s kind of a test for us in that regard.

The ultimate goal will be to build as much of — if not all of — the home off site. That’s where we’re going. If you’re not on that bus, you’re going to be left behind. I don’t know if it’s 10 years out or 20 years, but that’s the direction of the industry. 

Building homes off site minimizes waste, it has more controlled labor, more controlled environment due to weather. You can decrease your cycle times because you’re assembling in the field, not constructing in the field. You maximize construction quality, because everything’s being done in a controlled environment by robots, not by individuals in the field. 

That’s a really interesting prediction. It seems like a lot of people in the industry are ready for some sort of shift.

Aaron: We’re in an industry where we have had zero disruption over the last 100 years. They say the greatest innovation in home building is the nail gun. Really, if you think about that, it’s true. Homes built in 1940 are built the exact same way they are today.

I think we’re finally going to see significant movement in that area in the coming years.

If your prediction holds true, y’all are ahead of the curve when it comes to off-site building. Does that have anything to do with the acquisition by Clayton?  

Adam: Clayton is the largest homebuilder in the nation. They built about 55,000 homes this year, and every one of those homes is built in a structured environment indoors. 

They’re ahead of the process, so we will be able to leverage those components drastically, along with the purchasing power they have.

Courtesy of Austin Business Journal. See the full article here.