A new YouTube video featuring Bill Haney and Maura McCarthy, founders of Blu Homes, being interviewed before the awards ceremony at the 2013 Social Innovator Showcase has answered some questions I’ve had about Blu Homes.
According to Bill and Maura, they have already raised $70,000,000 for Blu Homes and they are getting ready for another round of investment. They said that most of their investors are families interested in their homes which according to Maura are homes using technology that has previously not been used by the housing industry.
 |
| Maura McCarthy and Bill Haney (right) |
The interviewer said that Blu Homes has only been open for 5 years and already have sales of over $70 million. That’s a fantastic number considering that they would have to sell their homes for almost one and a half dollars FOB each from the factory to reach that number.
Here are some of my personal observations. Why would a modular housing factory that has sold an average of $14.5M in houses every year need so much investment money and look for more? Are they a non-profit? And why are the big investment companies not investing in them? Maura said that the family investors love coming to the factory and looking at the homes they build but I think the real reason is that those families apparently have a lot of money burning a hole in their pocket for anything green and unusual and don’t look as hard at the bottom line or care about it as much the big boys do.
Maura’s mentioned that Blu Home is using the latest in housing technology. Actually their folding house idea was used almost 50 years ago and abandoned as a very inefficient way to build. It ships easily but other than that, there doesn’t seem to be any advantage. Those family investors must love it though.
I know that it seems like I don’t like Blu Homes but nothing could be further from the truth. I think their marketing approach to selling their homes is right on the mark, their homes are interesting to watch being set (unfolded) and they do clean up nicely for interviews. What I do question is why the modular housing industry can’t take a few pointers from them and go after investment money to market our industry instead of letting the “new to modular” people dictate to future home buyers what our industry really is.
OK, I’m off my soapbox and settling down to work hard to continue to promote the real factory modular & prefab housing industry.
But if you have about 30 minutes and want to watch pros setting the stage to solicit even more money, enjoy the video.
