National Home Corp. targets 18% gross margin with pace focus

[Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of The Builder’s Daily analyses leading up to the HousingWire Homebuilder Summit, Oct. 19–21 in Dallas. Each installment will look closely at homebuilding leaders, companies and operating models finding ways to keep moving forward through a market that continues to test margins, affordability, capital discipline and execution. The series will explore the playbooks, decisions and leadership approaches that make a homebuilding business tough enough for what comes next – and bring many of those same operators and ideas into the conversation at the Summit.]Michael Bergman sounded almost out of breath one afternoon just before Labor Day, but it wasn’t because he’d just run up nine flights of stairs.Listen for a few moments to the youngish first-year CEO of a homebuilding startup that Michael helped co-found almost five years ago this week, and you’ll then clearly recognize why he’s breathless.He’s giddy with purpose, with all-in, sweating-the-details passion, with grit and the ineffable gratification that goes with it.One can safely say, in housing’s topsy-turvy, gravity-bending, pell-mell world of September 2026, Michael Bergman is having a...