Madison home developer celebrates 20 years in the business
The Woodland Homes family on Feb. 4, celebrating “20 years without a name change,” CEO Mike Friday said jokingly. (Record Photo/Nick Sellers)
By Nick Sellers | Staff Writer
MADISON – Mike Friday, CEO of Woodland Homes of Huntsville, located in Madison, pondered recently how far his company – now companies – had come since Feb. 5, 1995, when he started the business.
“We built 13 homes that year,” he said. “We had one person doing sales, and one bookkeeper.”
The next year, Friday and Woodland Homes doubled its output, building 26 homes.
“We just started to grow from there,” he said.
In 1999, Friday started his own development company, Daltina, to go along with Woodland Homes, which constructs the homes, and Woodland Real Estate, which sells the products, to keep all operations in-house.
“We wanted to control our own destiny, basically,” Friday said.
More than 20 years later, Friday and his wife, Melissa, host of Dream Home Cooking with Woodland Homes, are still going strong, even after the housing market started turning sour in 2007.
“Although we’d prefer never to live through those seven years again, we wouldn’t trade them for any amount of money. Those tough years humbled us and brought us to our knees – literally. The good Lord answered out prayers and placed some very special people in our path that forever changed the course of our business,” Melissa, who currently plans company events and advertisements, said.
Every one of the 2200 homes Woodland Homes has constructed and sold has been in Madison County, Mike said, with a few exceptions in Decatur.
“If you’re in a home built by us, you’re in a home that will create value,” Mike said.
The team has also grown considerably in size since 1995.
“I contribute a lot of success to the team,” Mike said. “It’s the team that produces the quality and makes the experience enjoyable.”
Woodland Homes specializes in building in subdivisions that consist of less-than 200 homes, with a more diversified product now than when it started 20 years ago.
“I see Woodland Homes continuing over the next 20 years being the market leader, providing the best service to our customer,” Mike predicted.
