The market
A new house for the price of a used one.
That is either true or it is not. Below is the market behind our price point in Southwest Michigan, with every source named and every estimate labelled.
The problem
Home prices sailed past the people the dream was for.
The cost of a house has climbed for years without the house getting better. The industry mostly accepts that. We do not.
The way to serve a market everyone else has priced themselves out of is not to cut corners or build worse houses for less money. It is to build good houses more efficiently, with a system disciplined enough to hold quality at a price working people can actually pay.
That only works if the market is really there. So we measured it, using public data anyone can check. Everything below is sourced, and the handful of figures we estimated ourselves are labelled as estimates.
Who lives here
About half of local households can afford our house.
A $220,000 home takes roughly $65,000 of household income to carry. The median household in all three of our counties earns more than that.
St. Joseph County
$66,425
Median household income · 23,620 households
Cass County
$70,443
Median household income · 21,207 households
Kalamazoo County
$71,069
Median household income · 108,759 households
This is the figure most market studies skip, because counting last year’s sales is easier. But sales tell you how many houses were available, not how many people wanted one. In a market this tight, those are very different numbers.
What it costs here
We sell new construction at the price of the median existing home.
Not below market. Not a stripped down product. The same money a buyer would spend on a house built in another era.
The price discipline is built into the catalog.
We build from a defined set of approved models rather than one off custom homes. That is what holds the price point steady.
Washington
$189,000
2 bd · 2 ba · 876 sq ft
Hamilton
$225,000
3 bd · 2 ba · 1,176 sq ft
Madison
$240,000
3 bd · 2 ba · 1,000 sq ft
Jefferson
$247,500
3 bd · 2 ba · 1,274 sq ft
Entire lineup inside $185,000 to $250,000
Houses here go under contract in about two and a half weeks. That is a market clearing almost as fast as it is supplied, which is the signature of demand that inventory is not meeting.
How much room there is
Building one house a week uses about 3% of this market.
We have committed to starting a home every week, 50 or so a year. Set against what this region actually transacts in our price range, that is a small share of a market with substantial room left.
| Annual volume | Share of homes sold in our range | Share of all new housing permits |
|---|---|---|
| 50 — our commitment | 3.5% | 8% |
| 100 | 7% | 16% |
| 150 | 10% | 24% |
| 200 | 14% | 32% |
The last column is the one that matters for this region. Long before we are a meaningful share of homes sold, we become a substantial share of homes built, which is the point. Nearly all activity here is the resale of existing housing. New supply at an attainable price is the thing that is not being added.
Where we actually are
We are early, and we have a lot to prove.
What we have proved is that these houses can be built, priced where they are, and sold at a sustainable margin. This is the whole record, not a selection from it.
5
Homes closed to date. Every one sold inside the price range we set out to serve.
80
Days from buildable lot to family in the home. A calculated target from our own operations plan, not an aspiration.
1/wk
Our current build commitment. A start every week. This is a plan we have begun executing, not a result we have banked.
What it adds up to
77,000
households who can afford a new home, in a region where houses sell in under three weeks and almost nobody is adding new supply at a price people can pay.
That is the gap AHI was built for. The numbers say it is real, it is large, and one company building a house a week does not close it.
Sources
- 1American Community Survey — St. Joseph County, MI
- 2American Community Survey — Cass County, MI
- 3American Community Survey — Kalamazoo County, MI
- 4Zillow — Saint Joseph County housing market
- 5Rocket Homes — Kalamazoo County market report
- 6U.S. Census Building Permits Survey via FRED, 2024
- 7AHI Group closing records, all homes sold to date
- 8Derived by AHI — see methodology
Methodology and limits
Household counts, incomes, home values, permit counts, and Kalamazoo County sales volume come directly from the sources listed and are not adjusted.
Three figures are ours, derived rather than measured: the share of local sales inside our price range, the annual transaction totals for St. Joseph and Cass counties, and the affordability threshold. These rest on standard turnover and debt-to-income assumptions. Treat them as estimates. Even if the price-range figure is off by half, one house a week remains under 7% of this market.
The one-a-week build commitment is a plan in progress, not a completed result.
Permit counts reflect 621 new housing structures authorized across the three counties in 2024. Figures reviewed August 2026.