Anderson-Jenkins strives for expertise in its own niche

Exceeding Your
Expectations
Anderson-Jenkins strives for expertise in its own niche
Some homebuilders aim for territorial dominance. Others covet chart-blowing production.
understanding a market and servicing a market to the
point where the tagline “Exceeding Your Expectations”
is more reality than hyperbole.
And while those approaches are all well and good to
Jeff Jenkins, co-owner of Anderson-Jenkins Signature In other words, map-driven imperialists need not apHomes takes a significantly different tack when it ply.
comes to steering his own company.
“We’re kind of happy with the size company we are,”
Rather than trying to be all things to all people, he Jenkins said.
said, the key to nine years of Texas success for he and
partner Shayne Anderson has been finding a market, “We can still see all the houses on a regular basis and
2 Business View Magazine
know what’s going on with everything. Once you start
getting to that 70, 80, 100 houses (per year) level you
really kind of lose control and become one of those
big corporate builders that we were trying to model
our business different than. We’re in our little niche
and we like being here in the New Braunfels and the
Kerrville markets. We’re pretty content to stay where
we’re at and stay around the same numbers and just
keep getting better.”
AT A GLANCE
WHO: Anderson-Jenkins Signature Homes
WHAT: Custom home builder serving the Texas
communities of New Braunfels, Canyon Lake,
Boerne, San Marcos, Martindale, Wimberley and
San Antonio, Helotes, south Austin and Kerrville
The seeds for that ambition were initially planted when
WHERE: Corporate headquarters in New Braunfels,
Jenkins and Anderson were roommates at Texas Tech
Texas
University who shared a common – if not precisely
similar – industry background. Jenkins’ father ran a
WEBSITE: www.ajsignature.com
homebuilding company that had a presence in several markets, and Jenkins also worked on the business side for a few national operations out of college.
Meantime, Anderson’s initial experience came on the Following graduation, Anderson had climbed the ladconstruction side and sprang from his own stint as a der to become vice president of construction for a cusbuilder with several national organizations.
tom builder in New Braunfels – a city of 60,000 about
Business View Magazine 3
4 Business View Magazine
30 miles northeast of San Antonio – when an immi- “We really hated the games that the national builders
nent change in that company’s leadership prompted we worked for played,” Jenkins said.
him to give his fellow Red Raider a call.
“They’d have model homes that were decorated with
“I was in the Dallas area and he called me and told me hundreds of thousands of options, and then they’d
the guy who owned the company he was at was looking show the price to the customer with apartment-grade
to get out of the homebuilding industry,” Jenkins said. finish-out – never telling the customer what the house
“He told me we could pretty much just take over. I had actually cost the way they saw it – and it just caused a
a wife who was pregnant at the time and convinced lot of frustration.
her to move to the Hill Country, and off we went.”
“We decided to price our homes with the same level of
The new operation’s main task as it grew, he said, was finish-out that we show in our models, so there are no
to take everything its leaders had learned during their surprises. What you see is what you get. If you like this
time with mammoth homebuilding conglomerates, house, I’m pricing this house to where you can recreand simply strive toward the contrary – specifically ate this level of finish. We just find that honesty and
as it related to the bait-and-switch techniques they’d discussing what things actually cost up front is a lot
seen employed in model homes.
better than trying to trick a customer, showing them
a low price knowing it’s not what they want. Then they
Business View Magazine 5
feel like you’re trying to reach into their wallet every
step of the way.”
“They know what they want. They want the good stuff
in their house – good appliances, good roof, good
finish-out,” he said. “They know the Lexus costs more
The business still runs with a relatively small staff at than the Camry. They get that. And they want to talk to
the New Braunfels headquarters, with a primary ter- the owners throughout the process. They don’t want to
ritory that also includes nearby Boerne and Kerrville go to some national builder where some 22-year-old
– though the overall corporate reach extends for the kid is learning how to build on their forever house.”
length of the 80-mile Interstate 35 corridor that connects San Antonio and south Austin.
And while such clientele may be challenging in some
respects, they’re also easier in others.
Yearly building volume is between 20 and 30 houses,
Jenkins said, and the client base consists largely of “They know what they want in a home. They’re great,”
retirees who are envisioning their final homes, with all Jenkins said. They’ve had several houses. They want a
the bells and whistles.
house with a nice finish-out. We try to accommodate
that on the front end. We get an idea of what their bud-
6 Business View Magazine
get is and help them maximize their budget through
our in house floor-plan design process.”
The Designer’s and Builder’s Source for Over 30 Years
A more pronounced lean toward energy efficiency is
among the frequently repeated recent mandates from
customers, which has prompted the company to include variable-speed air conditioners, open-cell spray
foam insulation, tank-less water heaters and Energy
Star-rated windows in all its base-model houses. A new
community going up in Kerrville, in fact, will have solar
shingles on all homes.
And, in terms of corporate efficiency, Jenkins said that
while the company didn’t suffer the same depth of impact that others felt during the Great Recession period, it still was forced to learn lessons about pricing
and profit-management whose benefits are paying off
on today’s margins.
Toward that end, Anderson-Jenkins is part of the
23-member Texas Custom Builders Guild – a regional
For over 30 years, Turney Lighting has provided its designers
and builders with unmatched quality and affordable prices. With
an outstanding reputation for excellence within the industry, let
Turney’s lighting experts set you apart from the competition.
Interior/Exterior Lighting
LED Replacement Bulbs
• Certified Lighting Experts
Solar Technology and Installation
LED Recessed and Undercabinet Lighting
• In-Store and On-Site Lighting Design Services
•
•
•
•
TURNEY
LIGHTING & ELECTRIC
San Antonio, TX 210-308-9966
2501 NW Loop 410 Suite B
Comprehensive Website
www.TurneyLighting.com
Boerne, TX 830-981-5579
30875 IH 10 West
Business View Magazine 7
8 Business View Magazine
“We look at where we picked up time, where we lost
time, what’s working, what’s not,” he said. “We’re always striving to be more effective homebuilders. I focus 100 percent on the business aspects of things,
and Shayne knows a lot more about building houses
than I do. If we both were experts in the same thing,
we probably wouldn’t be very good business partners.”
PREFERRED VENDORS
R. Hernandez Drywall – San Antonio-based drywall services provider offering warranties, free estimates and covering
a geographical area that includes communities in Bexar,
Comal, Frio, Gonzales, Guadalupe, Kendall & Medina counties.
Morrison Supply Company (www.morsco.com)
Turney Lighting & Electric (www.turneylighting.com)
component of CBUSA – which creates collective commodities purchasing power on the level of major national builders, while its local members are still able to
run their businesses on a personalized scale.
“Everybody was clawing to keep the ball rolling,” Jenkins said. “Now things are coming back and material
prices are rising. We were able to re-circle the wagons
and make sure that we were buying materials correctly
and running our company as efficiently as we could. It
was a good education.”
The quest for more learning continues frequently in
New Braunfels.
Jenkins said he, Anderson and their collective teams
sit down together after every batch of three or four
houses – usually every few months – to assess company processes and timelines and examine all other
aspects of the business, with an eye toward maintaining their intelligent progress.
Business View Magazine 9
www.ajsignature.com