IMPROVING RELATIONSHIPS ONE HOME AT A TIME
Building high-quality, affordable residences requires a motivated team, fueled by genuine caring.
Written by Dawn Killough
Produced by Stephen Marino
Visionary Homes co-founder and CEO Jeff Jackson attributes the company’s success to caring about every home they build and every customer they serve. “Our goal is to leave every interaction that we have, whether it be with a trade partner, homeowner, community member, or a city worker, to leave that relationship in a better place than we found it.”
Visionary Homes, an affordable housing builder in Logan, Utah, began in 2004 when Jackson partnered with Justin Cooper. Both left their own homebuilding businesses, figuring they were stronger together, to compete against a surge of national home builders that had begun to flood the Utah market. They initially focused on custom homes up until 2020, then shifted to quality affordable housing for first and second-time homebuyers. About half of their
current portfolio is multi-family, consisting of condominiums and townhomes.
“Not a factory”
Make no mistake, just because their homes are affordable doesn’t mean they’re any less desirable. “When we talk about good design,
the quality of the trade partners that we use, the quality of the products that we use, we are not just a factory of houses,” Jackson said. “We care about every single home that we put out. We want to make sure that we’re giving our customers the best value for their dollar.”
Like any successful business, they rely on the talent of their people to drive their success. They don’t self-perform any work, so they focus on recruiting construction management students from the four schools offering degrees in their region. “We’re very active in all four programs, supporting them, going to their career fairs, and speaking at classes to explain the industry and get them excited about it.”
They also have a robust internship program every summer. They hire between five and fifteen interns each year and typically
extend offers to about 80% of those interns. Jackson spends a lot of his time securing top talent and making sure they’re happy. Luckily, their reputation as a company has grown. They had six top-tier applicants for a recent vice president of sales position, with some candidates coming from national home builders.
“We care about every single home that we put out. We want to make sure that we’re giving our customers the best value for their dollar.”
Jeff Jackson, Co-founder and CEO
Finding good trade partners is a struggle for any builder. Visionary has a rigorous onboarding process designed to bring the best
talent to the top. “We’re definitely not looking for the lowest price. We keep an extensive database of costs that says roofing should cost this much a square and drywall should be this much. The second we get pricing, we’re throwing it into our database to see if they’re in line with the market. And if they’re way below market, we know that’s not sustainable.”
“We also vet them to find out if they understand their own business. Do they know where their margins should be? Do they understand where their costs should be? And if they pass that test, then we start doing reference and insurance checks on them.”
Customer experience is their number one priority, whether it’s their employees or trade contractors. “As a builder, we’re only as good as our weakest link. Home buyers can have a phenomenal experience right up until the carpet goes in or right up until the closing table. And if they have a bad experience at the closing office or with the carpet layer, that’s what the buyer remembers about us. It’s not that 99 other people did a phenomenal job. It’s that the weakest link left a sour taste in their mouth.”
“We’re definitely not looking for the lowest price.”
Jeff Jackson, Co-founder and CEO
Management meets with their superintendents once a year to rate their field of trade partners and determine who they’ll continue working with. Partners are rated on their safety, quality, customer satisfaction, and price. “We
ask them: Are they good to work with? Are they hard to work with? Do they cause you problems? We allow our field supervisors, who work with them day to day, to have input on what trades we work with.”
Giving Back
Visionary Homes believes in giving back to the communities that support them. One of their largest efforts is a yearly summer concert that attracts around 5,000 people. They invite all the service providers in the county, including schoolteachers, firefighters, police officers, and city workers, and their trade partners and employees.
Additionally, they collaborate with other contractors on an annual diaper drive. Diapers are donated and then used by each builder to construct a house. They are then given to those in need.
Visionary partners with the Malouf Foundation, which fights human trafficking and child abuse and provides support for survivors. Through their Rooms Restored initiative, the foundation offers child survivors the opportunity to makeover their bedrooms through a safe, trauma-informed process. “A lot of the crimes against these victims happen in their own homes. So, for many of them, they have flashbacks or nightmares about their own bedroom.” Visionary has worked on several of these projects and offers a way for home buyers to contribute by purchasing furniture through Downeast’s Curated Spaces collection.
“I
didn’t want an office job”
Growing up, Jackson didn’t want an office job, as his father was a certified public accountant, so he started doing roofing, framing, and concrete. “I thought I would always stay in that hands-on, custom home-building world.” He owned his own home building company for a while before joining partner Justin Cooper in 2004.
They started Visionary Homes in Logan, Utah, which is about a hundred miles north of Salt Lake City. Without a capital partner, they relied on grit and joint ventures with landowners to fund their operations. They brought in their first capital partner, Blue Diamond Capital out of Provo, in 2017.
In 2023, they began to attract interest from Misawa Homes in Japan. They finalized negotiations with Misawa in June 2024. Jackson has also invested some of his own funds, as well as a few other small investors.
“We allow our field supervisors, who work with them day to day, to have input on what trades we work with.”
Jeff Jackson, Co-founder and CEO
In June 2024, Cooper stepped back from his position to become a minority owner, though Jackson credits him for building many of the company’s processes.
Visionary averages about 800 homes a year, and Jackson’s role has morphed into managing homeowners’ expectations and creating and reporting on the company’s vision to its financial backers.
A Virtual Future
Given the growing popularity of online car purchases, Visionary is working on integrating technology into the home-buying experience. “The idea is that you can shop for a Visionary home at midnight on our website. You’ll be able to fly over our communities, see what homes are available, drop in, and take a visual tour. Once you’ve narrowed it down to a specific community or floor plan, then you reach out to our online sales team.”
Visionary offers pre-sales in new communities and has some inventory in stock. There are incentives to make pre-sales more attractive, but if someone needs a home quickly, they do have options. They have several preferred lenders, and their goal for an inventory home sale is 45 days to close.
For those looking to get into the industry, Jackson advises them to keep learning and work on soft skills, like leadership. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re a superintendent, salesperson, a purchaser, or in land acquisition; if you’re going to be successful, you have to have leadership skills.”
And he takes his own advice, recently receiving a finance degree from the Wharton
EXPERIENCE YOU CAN TRUST QUALITY THAT LASTS
School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. “I’ve grown in my career and am more involved in the financial side of the business. I often found myself in meetings where terms and acronyms were used, which I would need to research later. It drove me crazy. So, I decided I was going to get a degree in finance so that I could better understand what I was learning. It’s made a world of difference.”
