Thomas James Homes’ new CEO details the firm’s go-forward plan

California-based Thomas James Homes (TJH) announced last week that Steve Schlageter has stepped up as the company’s new CEO, after joining the firm as COO in 2024. 

The builder, known as the largest single-lot, infill homebuilder in the nation, was founded in 2006 in Southern California. Since then, the company has expanded into the San Francisco Bay Area, and more recently into the Seattle and Phoenix markets. Over the last two decades, TJH has delivered over 1,400 homes and is on track to deliver another 200 homes for customers this year. 

Schlageter sat down with HousingWire’s The Builder’s Daily to discuss the firm’s strategy and what the company’s next phase of growth may look like. 

A focus on premium, infill lots

TJH focuses exclusively on single-lot luxury builds in highly sought-after, centralized neighborhoods that have typically gone years or decades without new construction. The homes, which sell in the $3 million to $8 million range, target the high-end of the market. This strategy, Schlageter said, has worked well. 

“The beauty of our businesses is that we’re at the center of the bull’s-eye, so there’s really always demand there. The prices can fluctuate a little bit, but not nearly as much as they do when you get out to where people are developing new communities. So we really are insulated from a lot of the supply-demand imbalances that happen nationally, just because of where we build and the nature of demand in those areas.”

Roughly one-third of the business involves build-on-your-lot projects, which typically entail a teardown of an existing house in favor of a larger new home. This is a popular option in wealthy, established neighborhoods, which often have an aging housing stock. 

The remaining two-thirds of the business is tied to company-owned lots. This includes a mix of spec homes and “buy and build” projects, where customers buy early in the process and customize homes during construction.

Bringing a production mindset to infill projects

There is high demand for new homes in central, affluent neighborhoods, but small, local custom builders often handle these infill rebuilds. TJH, Schlageter said, brings a “production mentality” with production-level systems and operational efficiencies to single-lot projects, enabling greater consistency in pricing, timelines and execution.

“No one’s developing communities in these areas. It’s all built out already. So the only opportunity to live in a new home is to do what we do, and we are just better at it than the competitor.”

This emphasis on approaching infill development with a production mentality was part of what attracted Schlageter to TJH. He previously cut his teeth in production homebuilding at PulteGroup, where he worked in various roles such as Raleigh division president, VP of strategic planning and SVP of operations and strategy. 

“My career at Pulte was very focused on operational excellence and making the divisions and the business work at scale. And it was a lot about community development, picking the right rings to develop.”

Schlageter brings that production mindset to TJH’s central infill locations, neighborhoods he refers to as “evergreen demand pockets.”

“I appreciated that there’s an opportunity here to bring efficiency and to bring scale to this business. I started here as a consultant, and just fell in love with the business model, and here we are.”

Thomas James Homes’ next phase of growth

TJH has built about half of its houses in Los Angeles County, and continues to maintain a large presence there. The builder is playing a noteworthy role in rebuilding Los Angeles’ fire-damaged Pacific Palisades neighborhood, with 30 customers under contract and 20 additional customers that could go under contract soon. 

In addition to Los Angeles County, TJH has turned to other markets for growth opportunities. The company opened its Northern California division in 2018 and launched operations in Seattle and Phoenix earlier this decade. 

Drawing on lessons from his time at PulteGroup, Schlageter has prioritized operational excellence and a disciplined approach to market expansion. The goal is to ultimately expand TJH into more states and cities in the future, but for now, the focus is on bolstering operations in existing markets. 

“To be frank, we’ve spent the last, probably two to three years, really honing the business model. It’s hard to go into a new market and compete with people who have been building there forever. It took us a minute to really figure out how to make the business model work. So we haven’t been as focused on growth over the past two to three years as we have on operational efficiency and discipline. Now that we’ve got that, we expect, as we look into ‘27, ‘28 and ‘29, that’s where we’ll start seeing the growth.”