Meet Roy Homfeld of Tracy’s Custom Homes in Farmersville

Today we’d like to introduce you to Roy Homfeld.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Roy. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Tracy’s Custom Homes was started in 2006 by my wife, Tracy and I. We specialize in designing and engineering new house plans as well as general contracting. Since we started the business, we have designed 500+ homes and built 10 custom home projects.

Growing up on a family farm and ranch outside of Adrian, TX in the Texas Panhandle, I was taught at an early age to be resourceful as shopping was over an hour drive away and I had plenty of time to be creative. I always enjoyed building with Legos and drawing with a pencil and paper. I was destined to be an engineer. One of the key moments in my life that led me into the field of residential construction was a new home was being built in High School and our Ag Teacher was good friends with the owner.

During class, we would go out to the job site and look around and our Ag Teacher would point out different construction practices. That would stay with me for another 10 years before I started Tracy’s Custom Homes.

After high school, I attended Texas A&M University to study engineering. That is where I met Tracy. I enjoyed my time at Texas A&M and the Agriculture and Engineering departments. I met lots of great people and still some of my dearest friends today. My wife, daughter and I still head back every fall to watch Aggie Football and host the Ol’ Whoop-ty tailgate for our friends and family. My wife and I graduated from college after 9/11, and jobs were very scarce. I had three job offers pulled back prior to graduation and ended up graduating without a firm job offer. A few months after graduation, I was able to land a job with a large corporation in the area and Tracy began her career in the area as well. We soon married and were looking to buy a house. After a few years of looking, we couldn’t find anything that really suited us and I began sketching some ideas on paper. I got more excited about building a house and entertained the idea of contracting it myself. I had gathered some pretty good knowledge on the farm, in Ag class, and understood the engineering behind house building, but wasn’t sure about the process or how to get started. I began reading residential architecture text books cover to cover, and the do’s and don’ts of house building. I went out to jobsites for visited with the builders and sub-contractors as often as I could.

Having used a CAD program at the corporation I worked at everyday, I was fairly good using CAD.

However, a program like the one I used at work would have been very cumbersome to use for house design and my wife was a visual decision maker, so I sought out a 3D residential design software and found Chief Architect.

I found this software fairly easy to use and was able to design our house plans. After some convincing my wife, we formed Tracy’s Custom Homes and set off and built our own house after work. There were many tense moments and a lot of learning, however I really enjoyed the process and the fine people I met along the way. Through the process, many of the sub contractors gave me a lot of feedback on the set of plans I had created were impressed with my attention to detail. A few asked if I would be interested in drawing some plans for them. That wasn’t the initial intent, but willing to help, I offered my services and started out drawing 4 or 5 plans a year for a few individuals. Then a few people asked me to build their house and I tackled that as well in my spare time. Over a few more years, by word of mouth, I picked up a couple of builders and started doing 10-15 houses per year and I was really enjoying it. By 2014 & 2015, I was designing between 30-40 houses per year. This is when it became too much, for a part time job. I was stressed about my job, my clients and we had welcomed our new daughter to the family.

It became apparent that I was either going to have to turn clients and builders away or take this full time. With my wife advancing her career over the years and a key component for the engineering department of Collin County, obtaining time off for either of us to help take care of our daughter became challenging and we wanted to keep our family in focus. Also, my Dad could still use some help on the family farm and I certainly enjoyed traveling back to the Panhandle to assist as well as give them time to visit with their only grandchild. I needed some work flexibility.

With my wife’s support, I ventured out at the beginning of 2016 to take on Tracy’s Custom Homes full time.

Although we started out as a design/build firm, we have transitioned into mostly a design firm. In the rural areas and smaller communities, we found that good design options were limited to the builders as well as individuals looking to build a home, and that was an area that we could really help out with. I became very efficient with Chief Architect over the years, refined my design process and had taught a few classes at User meetings. With great referrals, we have continued to see our business grow exponentially. I started to obtain more work than I could manage myself and brought in a new designer in October 2016. We launched a new website in Spring of 2017 and started using social media to further grow our presence. We now service six (6) surrounding counties, work with 20+ customer home builders, on pace for over 120+ new homes this year and are continuing to grow.

The business has given me something that I am proud of building from the ground up, a service our community was needing and the flexibility to be with my family when needed that I continue to cherish. We are happy to help out with our community and strongly believe in community service and giving back to others as so many people have given to us along our way. The greater Dallas area and the small communities that surround it provide the perfect canvas to design a house, business and career on.

Has it been a smooth road?
Tracy’s Custom Homes has had its share of challenges. I believe all entrepreneurs and small business owners have challenges. In my research, the successful ones identify their mistakes, learn from other business owners and adapt to their surroundings instead of plowing straight ahead with blinders on. With that mindset, I am always looking backwards to see what worked and what didn’t and what we can do moving forward to both be more successful as well as give our customers the services they need.

A pitfall of my own, is always trying to please everyone. 100% Customer Satisfaction is my goal, but in reality, it should be 99%. One of the hardest things for me to swallow early one was when I had a difficult relationship with a customer. I tried everything possible, put in additional hours, made myself available anytime they wanted, and as they changed their minds on everything, sometimes going back to their original ideas, I rolled along. I was getting very frustrated. I realized that I was frustrated with my process and not necessarily the customer. They truly didn’t know what they wanted and toward the end, I was just wanting to complete the job and move on. This is when I learned, that although I wanted to be personable with them, it was a business and I was providing a professional service. I had to step away from the project and really dig deep to see what I could do better as well as give them some hard guidance on how the process needed to go.

In dealing with the public and something that is considered their biggest investment, sometime personalities clash. After going through a few of these customers, I am able to take it less personal and focus on the service that I am providing for them. It allows me to sleep better at night and less impact to my bottom line.

Another problem that I incurred multiple times was dealing with finances. Again, I had attended several workshops and felt like I was fairly educated on profit and loss and how to manage my bank account. For a previous employer, I was a project manager for multi-million dollar contracts.

I am thankful for that experience and learned a great deal about forecasting. However, for a large fortune 500 corporation, I had plenty of assistance and oversight all around me that I didn’t have when I started my own business. Being from a small town and a farming community, I wanted my business to be old school. No contracts, no money up front, just collect payment when the job was finished and the customer was satisfied. This along with my design philosophy of not charging for design changes began to create issues with Cash Flow. Having a spouse and business partner that had a full-time job, relieved some “true” financial worries, but none the less it put a strain on our personal relationship. I had to come to the realization that to run a successful business, I needed to adjust my payment policy. I began to give a “free” consultation, but then if my customers wanted to go forward with me, they would need to put down a deposit. Approx. half way through the process, I would collect a 50% payment and the final amount due at completion. This greatly improved my Cash Flow and I rarely have any complaints from my customers. I found as long as I was upfront with them what my expectations were, they didn’t have any issues. I still do not use any form of “contracts” and haven’t had any issues, so I feel like I still have that “old business” I wanted.

In today’s age, social media is VERY important. I heard it every small business seminar I went to. I am the greatest online shopper. Amazon comes to my house weekly. Part of my engineering personality, I research EVERYTHING to the fullest extent or until I am satisfied with choice. So when we started our business in 2006, I knew I needed a website. People needed to find me and if they “Googled” me, I wanted to have a presence. I hired a local high school kid who was very good with computers and web design. He created our first website in 2006 and I was proud of it. As we began to get more and more jobs, mostly by referrals, I began to focus on the service side of our business and less on the marketing. Tracy’s Custom Homes was still a part time job at this point and my main employer preferred I keep my personal social media presence very low. I did not join Myspace, Facebook, Twitter or other social media outlets. As teenagers and grandparents were out there learning all about social media, myself, in my 20’s and 30’s, was oblivious to it, besides hearing about it. When I decided to make a real go at this business in 2016, I knew I needed to revise that website that was created in 2006 and create a social media presence. That’s right, I had never touched that website for 10 years. Data was obsolete, my address had changed, pricing information was wrong… I attended several workshops put on by the Collin County Community College and Small Business Association. I asked young and old business owners that had been using social media for a while on how and where to start. At the time, I was still unsure about Facebook, having never used it and was focused on creating a new website.

I had a lead from a customer of mine on a young lady that was great with marketing and web design. I moved forward with her and her small business. Even though we were hundreds of miles apart, I appreciated that she listened to what I wanted and what my services were. She helped me put a lot of my thoughts together and organize them into a useful forum. However, she was involved in several charitable organizations and raising a family as well. My website moved further and further down the list of priorities for her and eventually led to a parting of ways after several months. Although I did not get a working website (failure) out of that business venture, it did allow me to see where I wanted to go and gave me some great ideas moving forward. I then searched for a new web design company. I wanted to hire a company that full time and dedicated to web designs so I could quickly and efficiently move forward. I ran across a competitor’s website that I really liked and contacted the web designer about their services. The initial telephone conversation went great. They were a dedicated company located in the Silicon Valley. She seemed very interested in my business and was couldn’t wait to get started. I reacted a little slower and wanted to call a couple of the companies she worked with to get their opinion. I made those calls and received glowing reviews, “She works very efficiently”, “She is always available and on time”, “She is very knowledgeable and does the coding herself and hires others to help”. I thought great!

Coming out of my previous designer’s arrangement where timeliness wasn’t a great attribute, this sounded like a good fit for me. This company wanted 50% up front. I read through the 8 page contract and wrote the check. I started to feel uneasy when I received a call from her to discuss my ideas and initial design and was told they had already created it for me. I was confused as I had not given her any details about my business or the look and feel I was after. After the initial review, it was apparent that she wanted to put me in her box of templates. I was not impressed and when I pressed for changes, I was approached with additional design fees… In short, she did not want to market my business, only create a website. We parted ways (failure) and I was very distraught at how I had done my research, hired two professionals, spent what I thought was a lot of money, and still did not have a new website. I began asking around for suggestions as every mom and pop store had websites. How was this so difficult for me? Thankfully, I attended a Social Media seminar shortly after ran into Kasia Johnson with Merge Forward. Her presentation to small business owners on how to create a web site and what criteria to look for in hiring a web design company was exactly the information I was looking for. I had made some critical mistakes in my first two selections and felt ready to begin searching for a new company. I found a local company in Plano, North Texas Web Design, that I was able to sit down with and explain what I was looking for. They were very easy to work with, valued my input and created my current website in just a few months. I’m sure they could have done it within a month, but they were waiting on me for additional input most of the time. After the website was launched, we then started a Facebook page for Tracy’s Custom Homes and have started to use it to grow our social media presence. We have received great reviews with both.

As our small business continues to grow, another challenge was growing from a one man shop to adding an additional employee. I really didn’t have a payroll previously and was uneducated on the requirements and taxing responsibilities of the business. Fortunately, I have a great CPA, Rutherford & Taylor in Greenville, TX and they were able to walk me through the steps. With the first hire, payroll and cash flow became more important. This is when I really started to focus on my billing and customer progress.

I have a greater respect for small businesses that have been in operation for many years as it is a challenge and rewarding at the same time. I enjoy hearing about other business’ struggles and how they overcame them.

So, as you know, we’re impressed with Tracy’s Custom Homes – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
Tracy’s Custom Homes is focused on creating a home that fits our client’s lifestyle along with their design taste. We are not focused on putting all of our clients in the most comfortable style for us, but rather we listen to our clients and try to put ourselves into their situation and approach the design in that manner. We also educate our clients about code compliancy, new design trends and the latest in construction science.

At the initial desi9n consultation, we ask our customers to bring us any ideas, sketches, magazine clippings, and design ideas they found online so we can gather an idea of what they like for their new house. Pinterest and Houzz and have greatly assisted in giving the ability to share ideas from across the country. During this initial meeting, we focus on two things, 1. Gathering their ideas of “Touch and Feel” as well as a little about their lifestyle and how they plan to use the house. 2. We educate. We go over different building construction practices and associated costs with design choices.

As opposed to using AutoCAD or another 2D software, we utilize 3D design software. 3D software is starting to catch on with other design firms, but we have been utilizing it for the past 10 years.

We have found that the 3D software allows us to give our customers more of the look and feel they were after as opposed to looking at a 2D floor plan and it also allows us to see design or construction issues before the plans get to the jobsite. The builders and framers love our plans as they note they rarely see design issues during construction. Also, due to the look and feel we give their customers, there are fewer change orders in the field as we have already worked out a lot of that during the design stage. Most of our work still comes from builders, sub contractors and past clients.

Customers that have never used a 2D design firm, are less enamored as they see 3D design on HGTV all the time and that is what they expect. However, we love getting customer that have worked with other design companies as they are “blown away” with the speed at which we work as well as the 3D renderings and virtual walkthrough we give them. Many 2nd time home builders state they could have avoided some mistakes if they would have been able to see it 3D on their last build. This has truly set us apart from our competition in the past and really allowed us to get our foot in the door.

Another feature that is somewhat unique in our business, and is directly related to our design software, is we don’t charge for design changes through the process. Our philosophy is that our customers are about to spend $$$ on building a house they anticipate spending a long time in and we don’t want them to second guess rearranging the master bath or moving a wall over 6″ to give them more room in the pantry due to change fees. We aim for complete customer satisfaction and for them to keep the excitement high as they move into the build phase.

We are passionate about home building and are constantly involved in educating ourselves on what is going on in our area as well as other parts of the country. We are devoted to attending educational seminars and take full advantage of the National Home Builders Association. They offer great seminars and publications as well as arguably the best annual Trade Show anywhere.

Just like technology, the home building industry is always changing and Tracy’s Custom Homes prides itself on being a business that new homeowners and builders can call and trust for information and guidance. As an engineer, I believe research and education is key to being able to solve the next problem.

We are proud that our customers love our work and the downstream customers, builders and sub-contractors, appreciate and respect our attention to detail.

Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
The NE Dallas area is very unique in that it offers something for everyone. Where else can you go and see tall commercial buildings, mom and pop shops and farming all in a short span. Along with the vast job offerings, you collect a wide diversity of people and their passion. As a residential home design company, this gives us the opportunity to create multiple styles of homes and we are constantly changing and thinking about new approaches. Many of our ideas come from listening to our clients and how they live their lives each day. The Dallas area is centrally located in the US and is a major hub for the construction industry. Many major construction product manufacturers have either mfg. or distribution centers in the area. That provides us with the ability to go out and visit these stores or send our clients to them for a hands-on experience.

Building/Designing a home is more about the look and feel than what a design manual tells you. Our customers want to be able to see and touch the products going in their house, so being located in this area is a major bonus.

With our office located in the small town of Farmersville, we definitely take advantage of the opportunity to show off that southern charm and friendliness than comes along with knowing the people and businesses in your town. We absolutely love Farmersville and the surrounding small town communities. It allows you to stop and visit and really get to know some of the passions behind individuals and what is at the heart of America. The community is very supportive of local businesses and will go out of their way to promote you.

When it comes to dislikes, there really isn’t much to discuss. Everyone complains about traffic, but I have traveled to large metropolitan areas in the US and our traffic isn’t that bad. All in all, the Dallas area is a great place to live, run a business and raise a family.

Contact Info:

• Address: 2918 Andrew Dr.,
  Farmersville, TX 75442
• Website: www.tracyscustomhomes.com
• Phone: (903) 274-6022
• Email: sales@tracyscustomhomes.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Tracys-Custom-Homes-936716426474324/
• Other: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roy-homfeld-p-e-3b75a035/

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