DiVosta Homes, A well-built place in the sun

Manufacturing in Action, Source : The Manufacturer US

DiVosta Homes builds homes in Florida with a time-tested approach that takes buyers from lot selection to mortgage application and beyond, as Greg Andrews explains

Florida has been one of the hottest real estate markets in the US in recent years, a fact that has positioned DiVosta Homes, a unit of homebuilding giant Pulte Homes, for rapid growth.

DiVosta, a 47-year-old company that Pulte bought in 1998, only builds homes in the Sunshine State and does so with a seven-step process that has been developed over the company’s history. DiVosta builds in a number of the state’s hot spots: the Palm Beach and Treasure Coast areas on the East Coast to Central Florida to Tampa and Sarasota on the Gulf Coast.

DiVosta’s upscale developments typically come with a number of community-based amenities. For instance, in Ave Maria, FL, DiVosta homes were offered in a 5,000-acre subdivision of homes that featured lakefront settings, a private town square, miles of walking paths, and a community center with a full-time activities director.

Pulte bills DiVosta as its specialty brand, akin to Toyota’s high-end Lexus line. While the foundations of the homebuilding process are similar, DiVosta homes include some design and production techniques that set them apart from other homes in the Pulte lineup.

Pulte acquired DiVosta in 1998 and has doubled the company’s output since—without leaving the company’s home state of Florida. The target audience for the homes is move-up buyers and active adults without children at home, a strong market in the Sunshine State. DiVosta homes typically sell for $400,000 to $800,000 and up.

A big selling point for DiVosta homes is their sturdiness. Though the homes are often finished with stucco or other exteriors, all of the company’s homes feature either poured or block concrete walls and concrete second-story floors. That solid core is meant to ensure the company’s homes can handle what Mother Nature dishes out in hurricane-prone Florida.

Despite the sturdiness, DiVosta says its homebuilding process has been refined to the point where a new home can be custom-designed for a buyer and built in less time than the industry average. The process includes a roster of task-specific teams that work in tandem to build out complete streets or partial neighborhoods in sequence, with each specialty team arriving just in time to complete its task and moving on just in time to let the next specially trained crew take its place.

DiVosta says its process enables it to better control labor and production costs, which in turn enables it to offer higher grades of flooring, cabinets, countertops, and other materials as standard features—features that are considered extras and add-ons in other homes. To ensure the process can be followed, DiVosta offers a menu of added amenities, such as standard swimming pools, decks, and other features that buyers select from.

DiVosta says its menu-like approach also helps homebuyers by simplifying what can be a daunting task of making myriad decisions in order to get a home built. DiVosta never wavers from its process, which it says has now been followed more than 25,000 times. Homebuyers choose a lot, based on whether they want to be closer to amenities such as lakes and community pools—such lots typically command a premium price—then proceed to secure financing. There, DiVosta doesn’t hand a customer off to a third party as other builders often do but instead offers the services of DiVosta Mortgage. Once a buyer is qualified and a payment plan agreed upon, the building process can begin. Homes can be ready in as few as 48 days.

Before building starts, the seven-step construction process begins with an on-site pre-construction meeting at which buyers get to know the team leaders and learn details about the process to be followed. Buyers return a few weeks later for a pre-drywall frame walk, when they get a chance to see the core of their home before finishing touches are applied.

Once construction is complete, DiVosta conducts a quality assurance inspection that is followed by a final walk-through by the buyer at the pre-closing orientation, where a company representative demonstrates the home’s features to the buyer. The process also includes three follow-ups: one 30 days after closing, another three months later, and a final check-up 11 months after the closing date.

The cumulative impact of the approach has been a strong reputation for customer satisfaction. In 2005, DiVosta took home top honors from J.D. Power and Associates for customer satisfaction among new home builders in Palm Beach County, Tampa, and the Fort Meyers/Naples area.

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