Dive Brief:

• Addison, TX–based builder Gehan Homes announced last week that it has launched Gray Point Homes, a brand that will deliver entry-level product targeting millennial buyers.

• Gray Point Homes’ portfolio will initially comprise 14 floor plans and 42 elevations.

• Twenty communities in Texas are planned under the Gray Point banner over the next year. Its first offering will be Balmoral, a 580-acre community in Houston, followed by Mostyn Springs, in Magnolia, TX. 

Dive Insight:

The country’s 30th-largest homebuilder with 1,634 closings last year, Gehan Homes builds in more than 80 communities Austin, TX, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, as well as Phoenix. In April, the company announced an expansion in Houston with three new communities.  

Houston’s housing market is proving as robust as others around the nation, recording the second-highest starts count in the country for Q1 2017 at 25,789, according to Metrostudy. That figure was down 6.5% year-over-year, but the data company expects it to climb 3% to 4% by the end of the year.

The median home price in the metro was up 4.6% year-over-year to $228,000 in April, the Houston Business Journal reported. And Realtor.com recently named Houston as one of the hottest markets for older millennial buyers.

Nearly half of millennials live in the suburbs, according to data from Zillow, where entry-level inventory is easier to come by than in urban centers. And the increasing number of those buyers is starting to have an impact on housing trends. Single-family home sizes have decreased somewhat since the years immediately following the recession and are expected to continue to contract.

Gehan’s latest move is well-timed, as the industry continues to face a shortage of homes in the entry-level category. Trulia’s Inventory and Price Watch reported an 8.7% year-over-year decrease in starter-home inventory in Q1, while that category’s share of the overall market decreased from 26.1% to 25.9% during the period.

Gehan isn’t alone in its plans to target entry-level buyers: Meritage Homes, Ashton Woods, Toll Brothers and D.R. Horton have announced entry-level efforts recently. Meanwhile, developers in Buffalo, NY, and Chicago are among those with multifamily projects for millennials.