10 Business Naming Conventions and Company Name Ideas for Home Builders – Part 1

Home Builder Company Name Ideas from 10 Business Naming Conventions – Part 1

Despite all advice to the contrary, a lot of company names are decided on for completely subjective reasons, without marketing studies, focus groups, research, or workshops. It’s like making grammatical and spelling mistakes. If you’re making them out of ignorance, you look silly and uneducated. If you know all the rules, you can break them strategically without detriment to your cause.

If you’re starting a new home construction company and you are exploring business name ideas, don’t overlook the rules and don’t skip the marketing research-brand identity exercises, including evaluating your name ideas against traditional naming conventions. Business naming conventions can help you eliminate poor choices and come up with a strong name for your home building company, which can help you build business straight out of the gate and over time.

10 Business Naming Conventions for Home Builders – Part 1

Family Names

Many builders have built stellar reputations and are well-known by their family name (usually a last name).  Some choose to extend the family feel even farther by adding “and Sons” or some other familial designation. And why not? Many builders started their company with a goal of establishing a legacy for their family in addition to providing for it.

One downside to using your family name is recognition. If your company is new it will take time to establish a strong reputation and build brand awareness. In addition, if something goes wrong, people may attach negative perceptions to the name that impacts your personal life (especially in a world where personal and professional cross over on social media!)

Regional Boundaries

Home builders whose names include words like “American” “Northwest” “Southwest” “Southeast” “Northeast” “Southern States” “East Coast” “West Coast” “Atlantic” “Pacific” “Gulf” and city names, county names, and so on, all chose names that indicate their areas of headquarters or operation. The only drawback to this can be when the region indicated in your company name limits your brand’s reach by creating the perception that operate within a smaller geographic area than you actually do.

Styles

As a home builder you may be planning to specialize in any one of dozens of known architectural home styles (Craftsman, Ranch, Spanish, Modern, Contemporary, Cape Cod, Colonial, Cottage, Cabin, mountain, log, and so on). Using the style name in your company name can help you stand out from other home builders and help your company get found online when people are searching for home builders that build specific styles. As with regional boundaries, the one drawback is that it can be limiting, precluding your business from consideration if a potential home buyer believes that you only build one or very specific types of architectural home styles.

Qualities and Values

Including words that convey meaning to home buyers as part of your new home building company name gives people an idea, instantly, of what they can expect from the homes your company builds. If key core values are part of the vision you have for your company’s products (new homes), employee and organizational culture, even the vendors, realtors, title companies and home loan mortgage experts you partner with, incorporating a value proposition into your business name can help you set expectations from the start.

But be prepared to “put your money where your mouth is,” as they say. When you set expectations with words that convey characteristics like quality, best, sound, premiere, legacy, divine, and so on, you’re also making a promise to buyers, employees, contractors, vendors, realtors, lenders, and all of the other real estate industry professionals you associate with. A promise like this, once broken, can produce consequences that negatively affect your company’s reputation wherever your brand is known.

Buyer Aspirations

Similar to values, words that appeal to buyer’s aspirations, dreams, and motivations are commonly used in home builder company names. The word “dream” itself is one of the common aspirational words used, since “the dream of home ownership” is part of “the American dream” itself. Other words that speak to home owners’ aspirations include words that describe the home owner experience itself; such as: Garden, candlelight, shelter, fine, pristine, noble, etc.

Lifestyles

As a business naming convention, incorporating lifestyle words into your home building company name can be useful, especially if you plan to be a niche builder. Examples include construction companies that use words like adult, senior, affordable, executive, luxury, estate, vacation, prestige, classic, etc. Each of these words instantly conveys meaning to prospective buyers about price, quality, features, and other amenities.

The downside of using such specific language is that if you expand into home buyer segments outside of your niche market (such as a luxury home builder that decides to build more generally affordable homes to expand) you may need to revisit your company name or develop a sub-brand under which you’ll build in a new niche. The downside to this of course is dilution of your brand identity, especially if you’ve built a name for yourself in a specific niche.

Generics

In the end, you may also opt for a name that isn’t easily explainable or doesn’t convey inherent meaning by using initials, words that have double meanings, words that are intentionally misspelled to convey meaning, words that have connotations related to home building (street, view, main, metro, built, build, ventures, construction, etc.)

Combinations

Construction companies started in partnership often decide to explore business naming conventions that enable them to use multiple names (or parts of names) as their company name. It could be use of two last names to form a company name, or two first names, sometimes separate and sometimes combined with two capital letters, other times combined to form a hybrid combination of the partner’s names to create a new word or play on words.

Destinations and Landmarks

Camelot, highlands, mountains, rivers, bridges, stars, Celtic, bays, urban, country, arbor, city, water, creeks, stones – even the word landmark itself – all words that have familiar connotations and which are commonly part of home builder company names. As with use of family names, the only real challenge is establishing brand awareness, recognition, and reputation. If you’re establishing a new construction company and like the sound of some of these words, hopefully you can also find a local landmark or destination that helps you tie your company name to something local home buyers, contractors, and realtors can identify with, to make your brand introduction easier.

Random

You may also choose for your own reasons to use words that don’t really relate to your personal story or any of these recognizable types of words as part of your company name. In recent years, many companies have thrown out business naming conventions and even made up their own words. These words often sound similar to other words used in the industry, but not always (“Google” is a great example of a brand that turned a random word into not just a well-known brand, but a verb, as in, “I’ll  Google this.”

If you’re looking for ideas about what to name your home building company, having so many business naming conventions you could employ could make your task that much harder. Never fear, the next part of this article is going to give you good criteria for choosing the right name for your construction business, and show you how to build a strong brand, so you can quickly “make a name” for your company.

We would love to be part of your story.

You’re an expert at new home construction, we’re experts at brand building and marketing. We would love to be part of your story; if we can help with a consultation or branding workshop that helps you nail down your new home building company’s brand identity (business name, logo, tagline, colors, logo, mission, vision – you name it!) then request more information here:

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