Customization had limited Brown Haven Homes’ ability to scale

As a mid-market builder, Brown Haven can’t outspend larger competitors on buyouts or concessions.

Choice is how Brown Haven wins buyers. Its semi-custom homes let buyers change walls, garages, porches, kitchens and more. Delivering that choice took a growing amount of manual work.

In Revit, base plans were drawn only to the level a sales set required, so every sale meant redlines, and drafters redrew each buyer’s changes into the construction documents. Every change also moved through estimating and engineering. As Brown Haven sold more homes, the rework became unmanageable for the current team.

To keep offering choice without adding overhead, Brown Haven needed its systems to work together. When Bogdan Constantin joined as president, he couldn’t easily see how many homes would close that month. Brown Haven’s ERP, CRM, SharePoint, and customer survey data all lived in separate systems. Bogdan, who built and sold two software companies before joining Brown Haven, set out to connect them and moved the company’s product design and development into Higharc.

Brown Haven uses Oasis AI and Higharc to transform product development in 6 months

The result is Oasis, an AI homebuilding operating system Brown Haven purpose-built. Oasis pulls the company’s ERP, CRM, SharePoint, survey, and Higharc data into one place, where the team can ask questions about the business, build dashboards, and automate routine work.

Brown Haven used Oasis to decide what to build first in Higharc, analyzing which plans were selling and where its product offering had gaps. The team identified 17 plans that accounted for approximately 84% of sales and built those first. Oasis also helped the team review 27 existing plans and spot opportunities for new products, including designs for narrower 40-foot lots.

The two systems now feed each other. Showroom activity, option sales, and custom requests drafted in Higharc flow into Oasis, which flags the custom options worth turning into standard ones. Higharc turns those into pre-priced options available across Brown Haven’s plans.

Pre-priced packages are moving more buyers to standard options

Brown Haven Homes uses Higharc to offer buyers pre-priced structural options and curated packages, with pricing visible as they make selections. One kitchen package, for example, might add $3,000 to the price of a home, while another could save the buyer $2,000.

Buyers are choosing more of those standard options to personalize their homes. One-off custom requests per home are down approximately 20% year over year since launch, while gross margin rose from 29% to 36.7%.

When a buyer asks for something new, Brown Haven builds it once in Higharc as an option, and it becomes available across its plans. The time spent on that one request pays off on every future plan that will include the option.

Higharc’s option management cut redlines 80%

Before Higharc, custom options frequently meant another round of redlines, drafting and coordination with estimating and engineering. As Brown Haven builds more structural options into Higharc, fewer of those changes need to be handled individually.

Austin estimates that completed structural options have reduced the associated redline work by approximately 80%.

Brown Haven measures drafting complexity using an internal point system. A simple change, such as swapping a window for a door, might be one point, while a heavily customized job could require 13 points or more.

For the drafting team, that means fewer changes to incorporate after a home sells. Work that once had to be completed for individual customers is now reused across multiple jobs.

A new product line created in two days wins 6 sales in first month

Competing on choice means responding when buyers ask for something Brown Haven doesn’t offer. When a string of buyer requests came in for barndominiums, the team developed a complete barndominium plan set in Higharc in two days; in Revit, launching a new product took about three months. Because of the speed at which they were able to develop the new plan, they were able to close 6 sales.

Connected estimates save about $16,000 per home

Since going live on Higharc in April 2026, Brown Haven has rolled out Higharc Estimate, and it has nearly eliminated the need for manual takeoffs. Every estimate now comes from the same Higharc model that drives Brown Haven’s plans, pricing and options.

That matters because Brown Haven’s homes rarely match their base models. Buyers add structural options, and each one changes the materials a home needs. Builders that bid lumber off base-home takeoffs are pricing a house they won’t actually build.

Brown Haven’s estimate data flows into Oasis AI, where it’s combined with cost data from the company’s ERP. Its lumber pricing reflects the exact materials that went into the last 100 homes it built, and Austin’s purchasing team updates supplier pricing monthly.

Oasis AI also reviews every upcoming purchase order against Brown Haven’s other approved vendors and flags where a switch would save money. On one slab job, changing vendors saved $12,600 on one PO. Across all jobs, Brown Haven is saving an average of more than $16,000 per home.

Those savings are part of a broader margin gain. This year, Brown Haven’s gross margin rose from 29% to 36.7%.

Sales conversion up 17% as advertising spend fell by 65%

Brown Haven added Higharc Showroom to its website, giving prospective buyers a way to explore floor plans, configurations and available options before speaking with the sales team. Buyers can see how different selections affect the home’s configuration and price, helping them narrow their choices earlier in the process.

Since launching Showroom in April, Brown Haven has seen a 15–17% increase in website leads year over year even as traffic substantially declined. Sales conversion improved 17%, rising from 17% before Higharc to 20% following launch.

Brown Haven was also able to reduce advertising spending by approximately 65%, concentrating its budget in markets with stronger historical performance.

More homes without proportional increases in drafting headcount

Brown Haven’s operational improvements are changing how leadership thinks about drafting capacity.

Brown Haven’s drafting team of six supports approximately 280 annual closings. Brown Haven is now focused on getting more production out of its current team by reducing the amount of custom work required for each home.

With common modifications already built into the plans, drafters spend less time working through redlines and more time developing new products and options that attract buyers and help close sales.

Brown Haven is targeting 500 homes annually by 2028 with its current drafting team, without adding headcount.

Brown Haven is competing on product, and buyers are responding

Brown Haven has taken control of how it competes by changing the way it develops product. Oasis AI shows the team what buyers want, and its drafters turn that into pre-priced plans and options in Higharc in days.

That shift has also cut redlines by approximately 80% on completed structural options, freeing the drafting team to keep building new home plans.

The strategy is working. Since Brown Haven launched Higharc, its website leads are up 15–17% year over year and sales conversion is up 17%, while the company has cut its advertising spend by two-thirds.