Hitting the nail on the head

See the founder of Simonds Homes, Gary Simonds, talks about his beginnings, and ongoing success, in the home building trade.

 See the video Gary Simonds of Simonds Homes.

Simonds Homes founder Gary Simonds always had a tight rein on what he owed, and what was owed to him. 

Having been through and survived the 1990s recession, he knows what it takes to keep a business bouyant when the money, and the work, dries up.

Maintaining growth through the lean times was achieved through keeping a degree of stability in work-at-hand.

Anyone who comes to Simonds Homes for a house is only after a fair job for a fair price, Gary says. “If we can’t do that, then there’s something wrong,” he says.

When Gary started building in the 1960s, an early dream for him was to be able to build 50 homes in a year, but that milesone was passed without his even noticing it. By 1980, Gary and his son Mark were building 120 a year. But that was still the tip of the future iceberg. These days the figure is more like 1200 homes a year.

With architect-designed homes in most of the developing suburbs around Melbourne, Simonds Homes has enough presence, and “work-at-hand”, to keep the business going for many years.

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