This Houston-area homebuilding 2022 startup didn't say "hello world" with a flashy marketing website.

No investors' pitch deck boasted tech- and data-fueled future-of-building solutions nor promised to take on the housing crisis and improve the world.

These first-time homebuilding entrepreneurs didn't rely on wishful thinking or count on a free pass. They based their plans entirely on a practical proof point – building affordably and making a profit.

This week, or next, Hart Homes is due to break ground on their first starts as a subdivision builder in Dayton, TX, competing with the likes of Villages at Westpointe Dayton builders like Century Communities, First America Homes, Davidson Homes, as it delivers 44 of the 150 homes founders say are their Year 3 goal.

The origin story is as humble as dirt, hours, a lot of skin-in-the-game, and bootstraps. Saud Aziz and Luke Garcia's founder's moat– so to speak – would be the lower end of a $200,000-to-$400,000-range selling price on a home they could put on a piece of ground. They would do it GAAP-net-income-positive, prove and refine their business model and system, jump the fences from scattered-site builds for the first 24 months to subdivisions in year three, and then scale that system fast.

We did about $10.5 million in total asset and land value produced on $7 million in construction revenue last year," Aziz says. "We're hitting our margins. We've been profitable since our first year. We're trying to stick as close as we can to a $200,000 selling price, just because we know the market needs that."

Aziz and Garcia – driven by a deep passion for the homebuilding industry and steeped in some of its most rigorous business and operations systems – moonlighted the hell out of this high-barrier-to-entry model for months in 2022. After day jobs in the field, supervising projects of 40 or 50 homes each, they'd come home, toil, plan, and build together. They'd work well past the midnight hour night after night on their first couple of homes until they felt ready to emancipate from their employment safety nets and get going already.

Given their pedigree and raw passion, Aziz and Garcia's boldly planted stake in the ground and their momentum out of the gate shouldn't surprise experienced forbears in the field. Still, the particular canny way they chose the "where and how" of their real-world go-live moment speaks of a laser-focused strategy, instills confidence in the viability of their venture, and may even serve as a blueprint for other young and hungry souls who seek to become homebuilding's next generation of entrepreneurial founders.

Aziz and Garcia kicked their new homebuilding venture into gear in Houston's outskirts for three good enough reasons to withstand starting from scratch in one of homebuilding's trickier, high-risk, high-reward moments in a generation.

Reason one is what they know. Between the two of them – soon joined in their new venture by Gregory Monette Jr., a former Lennar colleague they'd crossed paths with – they've got a couple of decades plus of real-world operations management experience under their belts, having run point on upwards of $185 million in revenue-generation, construction, and land acquisitions for residential real estate construction projects, not only at Lennar but also at D.R. Horton and LGI.

Reason two is whose trust they've earned. A systems and process practice they osmosed and developed into a second nature during their time at the likes of Lennar, Horton, and LGI, has led to ground-level strategic industry partnerships and collaborations with top-tier suppliers, trades, and real estate stakeholders, driving both an opportunity to bend down selling prices even as they scale up in volume and market expansion.

Reason three is they recognize their own success comes on the backs of those at those three learning and training academies – Lennar, Horton, and LGI – that gave them both technical tools to give their own enterprise a strong shot at success, and the fire-in-the-belly motivation to go out and do it on their own.

I learned an immeasurable amount during the five years at LGI,” says Garcia, co-founder and Chief Operating Officer. “When I left LGI, one thing I noticed when I worked at D.R. Horton and Lennar was that I could be a top performer at those other companies because of my LGI learning and training. When we decided to start Hart Homes, I was able to utilize my experience and training to start a very solid construction program. here. We focus on entry-level, affordable housing. We use a lot of CRM software for scheduling. Everything's automated. We build houses in three months – just as fast as our large production competitors are doing it. We're utilizing the exact same software, and we have become very efficient in doing it as well."

A holistic land purchase, start, sale, construction cycle, and scalability model has to start somewhere, as much practice as Aziz, Garcia, and Monette had during their runs at Lennar and the like.

For Hart Homes, it started on a tip from a one of their partners.

One of our clients suggested we build a semi-custom home in Anahuac, TX, a small town 45 miles east of Houston with a population of less than 10,000 people," says Monette. "We built our first home there and then decided to build two others near the high school. We shortly realized that there were no other new construction homes in the city. The mayor mentioned that no one had built in the city for decades. We decided to re-build the city on scattered lots throughout the time and scaled to about 20 homes, becoming the premiere builder in town.

We took this same model and duplicated it in the city of Cleveland, TX, building 20+ homes there and also establishing a model home. Most interestingly we were competing with a masterplanned community with six different larger builders in the market which initially felt tough. In addition, the market shifted which made things tougher initially. However, because we were able to better control our land costs and provide a more affordable and attractive price point and were able to successfully sell in the community."

Their bet as a newcomer among giants was this: Find outlying tracts in a near-enough vicinity of entry-level first-time buyer offerings from big builders and do two things to win customers. One was to underprice them by $20,000 or $30,000 and the other was to build them at a slightly higher perceivable quality level.

What the big builders bring in in marketing, we figured let's buy infill lots near them so that we can be competitive," says Aziz. "We can sell houses for less to that same buyer, and we give a nicer quality product. Now, when buyers see our homes they say, 'Okay, I like Hart Homes. They have nice nine-foot ceilings, nice quality granite, and a little bit nicer product. That's usually the audience that we target the ones they want just a step above a production-level house."

The big bold vision Aziz, Garcia, and Monette have mapped out is for Hart Homes to be delivering upwards of 1,000 homes a year – for-sale, built for rent, etc – within the next five years. They feel it's what they do, and essentially who they are. It's also how they came to be Hart Homes.

We needed to create and LLC," Aziz recalls. "I called Luke and I think Luke saw a heart somewhere while he was talking to me, and he said, 'What about heart?' I typed it into the LLC portal and it was available. I clicked enter and paid for it. That's the truth. Our vision is obviously to do what we know. What we know, thanks to Greg, is the land side and how to acquire production deals with developers. And what we know on our side is how to build them fast, how to build them on budget, how to build quality, and how to keep the prices low for our customers. And we know how to provide solutions on the sales side. So, we plan to stick with what we know and expand our team and, hopefully, get over 1000 units a year over the next five years."

No pitch deck necessary. Houston, we've got lift-off.