For 65 years the Hovnanian family has been putting keys in first-time buyers' hands and building 55-and-up communities where the lawn mows itself. Here is how a New Jersey homebuilder turned patience into a business model.
M/I Homes sells the house, helps personalize it, finances the buyer and stays on the hook after closing. Fifty years in, that unusually complete chain is being tested by the most stubborn problem in American housing: affordability.
Aro Homes is a Silicon Valley home-building company that designs and delivers precision-engineered, net-zero single-family homes for established neighborhoods. By combining a repeatable off-site/on-site construction system with architecture from Olson Kundig, Aro aims to cut the typical 18-month build down to roughly 90 days while producing homes that generate more energy than they use, cut water consumption by up to 45%, and save an estimated 11.2 tons of CO2 per home each year. The company launched publicly in 2022 with a $21M Series A and treats housing as a repeatable product rather than a series of one-off custom builds.