53 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 10, ISSUE 10 industry and necessitated a different approach. Beattie says we were able to pivot instead of hosting an open house and in-person meeting we turned to video tours and skype meetings. It also meant fewer construction projects. Under normal conditions, Homes by Managen builds seven to 10 homes, each with an average size of some 3,500 square feet, in a year. Right now, the company has scaled back a bit and has three or four on the go at present, as Beattie informs. Each has a price tag ranging from $900,000 to $2.5 million, and one house may take an average of 10 months or as long as two years to build in some of Edmonton’s most prestigious neighborhoods. “We are building generally larger custom homes,” says Beattie. “But we certainly do build a lot of single-family homes in the million-dollar range.” A breed apart What sets Homes by Managen apart? McKenna says it’s simple. “I think probably one of the key things is that we’re very customer-focused,” he says, “and we’re very open to making changes and not just repeating what we’ve done in the past. I think that helps, but mostly it’s the focus on the client to where we almost look at it as a kind of mini marriage, where, throughout the build, we’re going to be involved in each other’s lives heavily for the next year or so.” Being able to create homes customizable to the client’s specific requests is a thing in which the company takes great pride, as McKenna notes. “We start with a lifestyle meeting,” he explains, to discover “all the things that you need in a home, and then we come up with a design. We keep tweaking that design until it gets to the point where you’re 100 percent satisfied with it.” What does a Homes by Managen house look like? Stunning. Take this showcase home, for instance: a two-story executive family home in a lovely HOMES BY MANAGEN
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