John Wieland was hoping he would not be running his home-building empire in his 74th year.
He would be involved but spending less time doing hands-on management in his Smyrna office.
But the recession that kicked Atlanta home values to 10-year lows, the struggle to sell new homes while competing against below-cost foreclosures, the collapse of the financing machine that sold buyers more house than they could afford all kept Wieland at the wheel when he would have rather been adding to his art collection and traveling the world.
C’est la vie.
Wieland has been building houses here before Atlanta deserved the sobriquet metro Atlanta and has seen good times come and go.
Starting his business out of a Volkswagen Beetle in 1970, Wieland built in the city and expanded to the suburbs. He moved into South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee, nabbing awards along the way: Professional Builder magazine’s Builder of the Year in 1994; Builder magazine’s America’s Best Builder in 2005; and J.D. Power and Associates award for Highest Ranked Quality Among New Home Builders in Atlanta from 2007 to 2009.
But by 2009, the number of builders was thinning out and Wieland was fighting an economic riptide that kept trying to suck him out, too. He is still standing and plans to increase the number of new homes he is building from 450 this year to about 600 in 2012.
Inside every builder lives an optimist.
Q: What has changed about the homebuyers and the market in metro Atlanta during this economic period?
A: I think the buyer is much more practical than they used to be and much more focused on value and less focused on the extras — the five pieces of crown molding or the wine cellar or the floor plan that doesn't seem really functional. And it makes a lot of sense to me because home values are terrific right now, but the reality is they are probably not going to increase sharply. So you are going to live in the home for a longer period of time than you visualized 10 years ago (because it's tougher to sell and move up). So you need to make the decision for the long term. ...
And one of the major thoughts is convenience in terms of being in the right location, whether that is for schools or proximity to shopping or proximity to your job or church or amenities in the neighborhood. I think there has been a shift in American values in that so many people are going back to the fundamentals. We are saving money. We don’t want to go deeply in debt to buy a home. One of our major thrusts right now is urban infill and there is much more appreciation for being close to the city and much less appreciation for the yard that you have to maintain and pay taxes on.
People still want a home that reflects their personality and is big enough for the family, but still is within their budget. The thought of the really big “wow” home is pretty much yesterday’s thought.
Q: In hindsight what signs were there that the market was weakening in 2006?
A: One of the pieces is clearly that people were buying more home than they really needed, that they were stretching their budget to buy as much home as they could because the assumption was that it was going to appreciate. ... And it didn't turn out that way, very sadly.
And I think this is one of the great sins. There were a number of people who were induced to buy homes because of loose lending that, really for them, renting was a more suitable option. And there was a fallacy in the thinking of the Bush administration that somehow you are a better person if you own a home. And I am here to tell you that you are not a better person if you own a home. That is a choice and renting is a terrific solution for lots and lots of people. It gives you financial flexibility so that if your job gets sick, you don’t have a mortgage that is pressing down on you.
Now, the history is that housing has led the country out of recessions until this one. It didn’t happen this time because of the air coming out of the housing bubble and so we have this tremendous amount of resale homes, short sales, that just flooded the market. Housing hasn’t led us out of the recession. Housing has kept us in this recession.
Q: What did you do to allow you to survive when many builders have not?
A: This is our 40th year in building and my policy has always been to reinvest in my business. So we made our share of dumb mistakes, but because we reinvested the profits in the business, we had banks that believed in us. And then some sales people kicked some reality into me. And by that, I mean people would offer a certain amount for a house and I would say, "I'm not going to sell that house for that price." And they said, "Let me tell you, you need to sell that house for that price." And I said "OK," and we kept selling houses for the best price we could get for them. ... And so I think that we are still here because we decided we could not change the environment. We had to go with the hand that we were dealt and that has always been my philosophy of life.
John Wieland
Title: Founder of John Wieland Homes and Neighborhoods
Career: Homebuilder
Age: 74
Education: BA Amherst College, MBA Harvard
Residence: Atlanta
Hometown: Cleveland
Wife: Sue
Passions: Travel and art collecting
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