After spending much of its first decade laying the groundwork for growth, Maryland-based Schaefer Homes emerged as the eighth-fastest-growing homebuilder by residential sales volume in HousingWire’s inaugural HousingWire Homebuilder Rankings.
Jim Schaefer, CEO of Schaefer Homes, founded the company in 2016 after several years in finance. Schaefer, a third-generation builder, initially operated the homebuilding company as a solopreneur, building the first few homes mostly by himself, which gave him hands-on experience across all facets of the homebuilding apparatus.
After the COVID pandemic, Schaefer Homes entered a new growth phase. The company delivered 12 homes in 2021, at a time when Schaefer was still handling much of the business himself. His wife joined the business later that year, and shortly after, they hired their first superintendent.
The builder’s first subdivision broke ground in 2022 and came online the following year, with infrastructure and home sales delivered and settled in just 15 months. Building on that momentum, the company began ramping up its hiring in 2024 and 2025, with key hires including a new Chief Operating Officer, Chief Revenue Officer, Chief Accounting Officer and Director of Construction.
“I didn’t have the experience of a national builder, so everyone brought their skill sets with them in their various specialty areas,” Schaefer told HousingWire’s The Builder’s Daily.
These hires were a key reason why Schaefer Homes has experienced positive momentum. While still a relatively fledgling company, with 31 homes sold in 2025, that marks a 68.3% increase from 2024.
With a strong team in place, Schaefer now has his sights set on a more aggressive growth period, aiming to reach hundreds of annual deliveries within the next several years. While scaling as a bootstrapped private builder isn’t easy, especially in today’s challenging market, Schaefer Homes is concentrating on laying a strong foundation, with an eye on continued team building, tightening up operational efficiency and sharpening its execution.
Building the team behind the expansion
The company has grown to 14 employees, including a leadership bench formed through relationships Schaefer developed during his time on the Maryland Building Association board.
“We’re a little overstaffed, but it’s in preparation for the growth of the future, and where this company is headed,” Schaefer explained.
As an early-stage homebuilder, Schaefer Homes has already learned some lessons about creating a positive workplace environment. One is that job clarity can’t be assumed, but instead has to be communicated and reinforced regularly. Establishing that clarity has been crucial as the team has scaled.
“We’ve hired a lot of people. We’ve grown relatively quickly, so we got back to the basics of going over job descriptions, key result areas, properly setting expectations and making sure the team has the tools they need to win. What we found is, just from experience…unless you’re properly setting that clarity, reinforcing it, and having these set conversations, a lot of companies think they have clarity. But they don’t, and there’s a misalignment in the operation. I think we’ve done a great job of establishing that foundation as we brought on additional employees in senior leadership teams,” said Tom Baldwin, Schaefer Homes President and CRO.
A focus on the missing middle
Schaefer Homes has spent the last 12-24 months refining its product strategy and locking in who exactly their target customer should be. The builder operates solely in Maryland, predominantly in suburban communities east of Washington, D.C. and south of Baltimore.
Maryland is one of the highest-income states in the country, but it is also one of the most expensive. The strategy, therefore, is to target middle earners, such as teachers, police officers, and other core middle-class professionals. The portions of Maryland where Schaefer Homes builds have a large military presence, with Fort Meade and NAS Pax River bringing in thousands of military members, as well as many government workers and contractors.
In the greater Washington, D.C. area, these professionals often earn in the neighborhood of $100,000 a piece once they are more established in their careers.
Schaefer Homes has tailored a mix of single-family homes, townhomes and two-over-two products to meet the needs and budgets of those buyers. In an expensive state like Maryland, this means delivering homes that average about $600,000, with offerings between the mid-$400,000s to the upper $700,000s.
A core offering is a four-bedroom home between 1,800 and 2,200 square feet, with a focus on maximizing livable space within smaller footprints, open-concept living areas and functional room sizes.
“We really cater to that missing middle. It’s an underserved market. I grew up with those people and understand their needs and how they’re overlooked. Everybody seems to be targeting a higher price point at the moment, and custom houses. We’re trending in the other direction,” Schaefer said.
Of course, targeting this customer segment does have its downsides, at least in the short term. As Schaefer put it, the spring selling season for this price- and mortgage rate-sensitive demographic has been defined by uncertainty. Traffic has remained healthy, but many prospective buyers are hesitant to make a purchase amid concerns about mortgage rates, inflation, rising fuel costs and broader economic uncertainty, reflecting a nationwide trend.
On the land side, Schaefer Homes takes a flexible approach to land acquisition rather than relying on a single strategy. The company has executed significant amounts of entitlement work alongside landowners, but also pursues lot takedowns and finished-lot purchases when market conditions make sense.
While an asset-light model is appealing in theory, Schaefer said, rising land costs, competition from national builders and inflationary pressures have made it more difficult to execute. Going forward, Schaefer Homes plans to maintain a balanced mix of entitlement deals, lot takedowns and finished lots, allowing the company to adapt as market conditions and opportunities evolve.
Tightening up operational efficiency ahead of growth
As Schaefer Homes prepares to scale further, the team has focused on tightening its operations.
One key operational priority has been implementing ECI MarkSystems, the company’s new enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform. As a growing company, relying on spreadsheets has created inefficiencies, delayed reporting and created opportunities for margin slippage. The new system, Schaefer explained, will create the operational infrastructure needed to scale within existing markets and expand into new ones in the future.
Schaefer Homes is eyeing other submarkets in Maryland for opportunities and hopes to expand into other Eastern Seaboard states in the future. States such as Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia and the Carolinas are potential candidates.
Part of the reason for this expansion is diversification. The greater Washington, D.C., area has long been viewed as stable and somewhat recession-proof due to a strong government presence and a constant inflow of domestic and international residents who work for federal contractors. Recent government shutdowns, combined with mass federal layoffs in 2025, however, had far-reaching impacts on the local housing market.
“It really rocked the market around here,” Schaefer said. “It’s definitely a risk, working in the Metro DC area.”
Given Maryland’s small size, looking beyond the state is a logical path. However, for now, Schaefer Homes is prioritizing operational refinement in its current market in preparation for potential expansion.
“We have to be excellent at operating rate here in the state of Maryland before we go anywhere else. Our goal is to enter other markets, but we are absolutely focused on the next several years of execution here, then duplicating it in other markets,” Schaefer said.
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