New Home Construction on Solid Footing in Great Bend Market

The local home-building market, like its real-estate cousin, is being directly affected by the double-boom of farm commodity prices and oil-patch revenue. While a majority of the effects are positive for businesses and their customers, Dave Thomas, owner of Thomas Quality Homes Inc., does offer one caveat.

First the good news: One new house can have a giant ripple effect throughout the community, Thomas noted. The person who is contracting to have a home built may be selling a home, and the person buying that home may be selling a home, and so on.

“There might be three or four houses selling for one new one getting built,” Thomas said. “And we have local suppliers and subcontractors. We may be building a $250,000 house but that might affect $500,000 in movement from other houses being sold.”

The oil and ag economy has a two-fold effect, Thomas continued. “It is good because we just finished a new home for someone in the oil business. This area is ag and oil. When they are doing good, they are spending money - maybe not a new house, but some remodeling. As long as they are doing good, it helps us.”

Now for the caveat: “But when oil prices get this high, we are paying a 28.5 percent fuel surcharge on top of my freight bill. So it adds to your bottom line. Someway, it has to get back to the consumer.”

With that one negative nugget out of the way, the good news continues for this area. Local home builders use local subcontractors, which again, causes reverberating effects throughout the entire economy.

Thomas Quality Homes, 242 B N. Highway 281, has five employees and uses subcontractors for plumbing, electrical, stucco, brick laying and heating and air conditioning jobs.

“We do everything else ourselves – sheet-rocking, cabinetry, staining, painting, texturing, all the finish work. Our thought is we have better quality control when the same guys” are doing a lot of the work.

Thomas is in the planning stages with two clients; one house will be in Amber Meadows, north of Veteran’s Park, and the other will be just outside the city limits. The clients are local people with children, who are upgrading.

“We do about 50 percent commercial and 50 percent residential,” said Thomas, who is currently constructing the new Credit Union at 10th and K-96. “It keeps us busy. There are times when commercial is down or residential is down. I started 30 years ago and did framing but you couldn’t keep busy doing only framing. So we started sheet-rocking, shingling and now we do everything.”

Thomas looked back to the era just after the 1981 flood that saturated Great Bend from one side to the other. “I think it was 1982, there were two houses built and I built one of them. There are times when it has been slow … and other times we are building like crazy. There is a slow-down now because people are nervous about the election, fuel prices, energy costs.”

Because of these factors, Thomas’s clients are trying to be as energy efficient as they can when making plans. For example, building materials often include Insulated Concrete Form (ICF) blocks, made of recycled Styrofoam. Using this with concrete and steel can help it stand up to harsh Kansas weather.

“If it wasn’t for the windows,” Thomas said, “we could basically make it a tornado shelter. They are one-foot thick walls. They guarantee ICF will cut your utilities by 50 percent. And we all know what utilities are going to do.

“People are wanting green material, sustainable goods and recycled material,” Thomas added. “They are thinking about the long-term effects of all this.”

Thomas said he builds “more of the upper end” type of home, and the cost of a square foot can range from $135 to $150. “Now that’s a really nice house, not cutting corners,” Thomas said. “The last one I did was 3,000 square feet and another was 4,500. These are unique houses. The question is: do you want a VW or a Mercedes?”

Mike Niedens, owner of Niedens Construction Inc., 3600 N. Main, has been in the business more than 30 years and has built houses all over town, including Amber Meadows, StoneRidge, West Broadway, 26th Street and 29th Street. Niedens also has built in the county and in surrounding communities.

His current projects include two homes in Great Bend and two others are in the planning stages outside of town but in Barton County. He collaborates with local people and newcomers who are associated with Central Kansas Medical Center, Barton County Community College and other organizations.

Niedens has built and is building homes for people in a wide variety of circumstances. Some are moving into town from the country; some want out of a large home and need something smaller; some want no maintenance; and some need bigger homes because their families are growing.

“It has been pretty steady,” Niedens said. “It is not a boom but not real slow. We have done as much in Amber Meadows during the last two or three years as anywhere. The city really stepped forward with this. It’s a nice deal. The city was willing to step forward and do it.”

One of his current projects is in Amber Meadows, where Niedens has built six other homes. “They are nicer homes than people thought they would be,” he commented.

The first phase at Amber Meadows is 50 lots and 15 of those are home to completed houses or houses currently being built. There are a total of 160 lots in the subdivision.

Niedens attributes this good, steady business to, once again, the oil and ag economies. His current and future projects are for clients affiliated with these industries.

“In the mid- to late-1980s, building virtually stopped,” Niedens recalled. “Oil was dragging it down. In the early ‘90s it started to come back. The economy was rebounding. And flood control was wrapping up at that time. Before flood control, you could hardly build anything. The last 10 years have been pretty steady.”

Niedens Construction has six employees but it also keeps subcontractors hopping. “All of them have employees too,” Niedens points out. “Most contractors here are not real large – us or the subs. There are a lot of one-, two- or three-man-type operations. It all adds up.

“In the market here, it would be difficult to run a real large crew because we’re not always sure how steady it will be.”

Because of the many factors involved, the time it takes to have a home ready for occupancy varies with each client. “You can get into a house in six to nine months, a year for sure,” Niedens commented. “But it all depends. Some hit me at the right time. Do they have the plans? Do they have other information for me to put together a bid?

“Some see a floor plan they like and want the same thing,” Niedens elaborated. “That works for us. And two to three weeks later we can be up and rolling. But we have also spent up to a year with some just on plans.”

The most difficult decisions are the floor and exterior plans, Niedens said. “Then it is all cosmetic – colors and products. Most houses we build are in the 1,600- to 2,200-square-foot range. That’s a typical range for us. People in their late 30s and 40s start with that square footage and it goes up from there.”