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Portrait Snapshot

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Company: Portrait Homes

Headquarters: Richmond, B.C.

Principals: Rob Grimm

Employees: 57

Operations: Suburban Vancouver, now concentrated in Maple Ridge, B.C.

Market segments: Move-up families, move-down empty-nesters, and first-time buyers

Product: Single-family detached homes and attached townhouses

2010 Closings: 63

2010 Revenues: $32.8 million (fiscal year ending September, 2010)

 

 

Take an HD Video Tour of a Portrait Home

 

 

 

Vancouver, B.C., builder Rob Grimm of Portrait Homes has been through one crisis of customer confidence in his career, and he wants to make sure it never happens again. That’s why he’s picky about the science behind quality construction as well as the way his customers are treated. That attention to every detail led Portrait to land a 2011 Customer Choice Georgie Award, which is a customer satisfaction award created by the British Columbia Home Builders Association using home buyer surveys administered by AVID Ratings.

Although Portrait is known for its fine single-family homes, the company actually started out building condo apartment buildings. But by the late 1990s the industry faced the “Leaky Condo Crisis,” Grimm says. “The federal government brought in some energy code requirements that dictated a vapour barrier inside the studs before the drywall went on. But standard practice in the industry was to face-seal buildings, and if you did that and somehow moisture got into a wall, the vapour barrier would keep it from drying out. That created problems with mould, compounded by our rainy climate, and it became a big issue. The condo apartment market just died in the late 1990s.”

Grimm says his buildings were always tightly sealed and he only had to deal with a few small problems. “On a face-sealed building, caulking is your first line of defence. You have to be especially careful where you have material transitions like stucco cladding to windows and balcony interfaces. As long as you maintain the building, you’re OK,” he says. “We were confident enough to give a seven-year moisture penetration warranty on our buildings, and even made it retroactive to first occupancy. We did have to spend a little money rehabbing a few buildings, but to a minor extent.”

Portrait switched to building single-family homes in 2000. “From the very beginning, we took the approach that when people buy a house from us they become a ‘client.’ We view it as a long-term relationship,” Grimm says. “We expect them to buy from us again and again, and refer us to their friends. You don’t get that kind of loyalty by hiding when things go wrong.”

Portrait now has 57 employees, including salespeople. It closed 63 homes in 2010 at an average price of $520,000 and anticipates 135 closings this year, with the average price declining to $450,000 because of the addition of a new townhouse project aimed at first-time buyers and first move-ups. Portrait won the Customer Choice Georgie Award, powered by AVID, in the category of production builders with fewer than 100 closings a year.

Grimm illustrates his point about not hiding when things go wrong by telling the story of a customer who experienced a driveway that was chipping and falling apart just two years after closing. “I asked our warranty service manager, ‘If that was your house, would you be happy with the way the driveway held up?’ He said no. It was a bad batch of concrete. We pulled it out, and went to our concrete supplier for help in correcting the problem. We could have said it was past warranty coverage, but we never hesitated to make it right.”

Everybody Has Customer Contact

When asked who is responsible for customer contact after construction starts, Grimm answers, “Everybody … I meet a lot of them, our customer service manager meets a lot of them. We’re always around.” But he acknowledges that the sales rep remains the primary contact person, although the construction supers also are required to be adept at customer relations.

Many of Portrait’s houses start as specs. “We’re constantly building; we don’t wait for a sales contract. We set the construction schedule based on our sales forecast of what we can achieve.” This can get tricky when customers want to choose from Portrait’s extensive library of pre-priced options and upgrades.

“Most of the houses are past the framing stage when they sell,” says Grimm. That complicates the work of construction supers, who are bonused for delivering defect-free houses but don’t have the benefit of a customer walk-through at the framing stage. Instead, the customer service manager does quality control inspections during construction, working with the supers and vice president of construction. “But he reports directly to me,” Grimm says. “We go over every house and every detail. Our business model is that we build to the quality level on display in our model homes.”

Quick Payments Motivate Trades

Most of Portrait’s trade contractors have been with the firm for years, and Grimm says that level of continuity is vital to building houses to Portrait’s well-defined standard of quality. How does he keep the trades happy? “Pay them fast; that’s the most important thing,” he says. “If they complete their work and it’s inspected by the end of the day on Friday, and we get the signed-off invoice on Monday, we’ll have their check by the following Friday. Never mess with somebody’s pay check.”

Still, Portrait works with multiple vendors per trade. “We want to be able to price-check them on a regular basis,” Grimm says. But he adds, “We want to work with the same guys over and over. It’s a lot of work to train new trades to our specs and standards.”

Rather than build in scattered subdivisions owned by other developers, Portrait develops its own land. “We really believe you have to do that to control the quality of the community, which is just as important as the quality of each house,” Grimm says. “Our vice president of construction grew up servicing land as well as building houses, so we’re fortunate. He knows how to put pipe in the ground!”

Portrait got its highest customer ratings in the following areas:

1. Landscaping the exterior of homes (12.70 points above the Canadian housing industry average)

2. The time taken until closing (+11.63)

3. Number of items corrected before move-in (+10.10)

4. The perception of time taken to fix service items (+9.60)

5. The builder’s level of caring during the total home buying experience (+9.40).

We suspect that last one is really first on Grimm’s agenda. “We have our culture of caring so well established that our customer service manager lives in the community where we’re building. We don’t want him disturbed at night, so we take care of the houses!”

Bill Lurz has been reporting on every aspect of the home-building industry since 1970. A former editor-in-chief of Canadian Building and senior editor of Professional Builder, Bill is currently editor-in-chief of AvidBuilder.com. He can be reached at bill.lurz@avidbuilder.com.