Trumark Homes – majority-owned by Osaka, Japan-based Daiwa House Industry Co., Ltd. – has acquired Clovis, CA-based Wathen Castanos, which is currently building in San Luis Obispo, Monterey Bay, Clovis, Fresno and Madera.
In an accelerating homebuilding M&A backdrop, the deal boosts Trumark’s growth, expands and fills in its North to South California footprint, and adds more attainable products, price points, and property locations.
Under an “imperative” to grow, according to Trumark co-founder and co-CEO Michael Maples, and a green light to tap the deep, highly-motivated capital resources of Daiwa House – one of three Japan-based real estate development and construction giants who’ve built dynamic, top-25 ranked, U.S. homebuilding portfolios in the past decade – Maples’ highest priority in getting the Wathen Castanos deal done focused on people.
“What struck [Trumark co-founder and co-CEO Gregg Nelson] and me about Wathen was their company culture,” Michael Maples tells The Builder’s Daily. “Even though the deal came together fairly quickly from the time we went into a LOI (letter of intent), our conversations span over a year. Obviously, without culture, things just deteriorate. If that box doesn’t get checked, we don’t go any further. They operate a business that we really admire. Their product is special, and they look at the consumer experience and try to delight customers with their design, just like we do. We thought – especially for some of the markets they operate in, they did a very good job of that – the buyer experience is solid, so there’s just a lot of ways we connected with them.”