KAI RYSSDAL: Not too long ago most of Six Mile road in Northville, Mich., was cornfields. Old barns and rusty tractors. Now it's changed. Strip malls and office parks. And brand new subdivisions. Half a dozen of them. You pull into the one called Arcadia Ridge Estates. By Pulte Homes, the sign says. A couple of dozen new houses are in various stages of construction. You head to the sales office and open the door.

Today on Conversations from the Corner Office, Bill Pulte. The 74-year-old founder and chairman of one the biggest homebuilders in the country. Pulte sold $14 billion worth of houses last year. But when we caught up with Bill Pulte earlier this week in one of those homes out at Arcadia Ridge, he reminded us the company started out smaller. A lot smaller.


BILL PULTE: It really started when I got my first car, oddly enough. And my dad said, "Well, it's wonderful you got your first car, Bill, but how you going to put gas in it?" And I said, "Well, how about starting and giving me an allowance?" He said, "How about getting a job?" So what I did is I got a job as a carpenter. And fortunately the carpenter ended up being a good mentor to me.

The next two years, I tried to figure out how I could be in business when I went out — graduated from high school, and I did.

RYSSDAL: You're a skilled craftsman. You're a skilled, trained, professional carpenter. How important was it for you to be able to walk in and say, You know what? That's not plum, that wall. Or, this floor, I don't like this floor, let's fix that. Did that . . . did the guys saw you coming? They said, Oh, man, here comes the boss and we've got to get it right.

PULTE: No, because I had a great relationship with all the tradesmen, because they knew I knew what I was talking about. By the way back in those days tradesmen really knew the trade. So you really didn't have to inspect quality, okay? But you had to know how to cut costs by building a structure, for whatever it had to be built for, but not by over-building it. So many people don't know that you can take this many 2x4s out or this kind of rafter out if you did it differently and that's what I would go and do more than I would check the quality because the quality of these guys back in those days was very good.


RYSSDAL: Clearly you are dependent on very skilled craftsmen and labor.

PULTE: Well, we used to be. But today there aren't very many skilled craftsmen. The fact is there are very few, so the way that things are designed — for example, kitchen cabinets. Nobody builds kitchen cabinets on the job. The first house I built, I built all the kitchen cabinets myself. But nobody does that because you can get a much better quality job in the plant, OK?

RYSSDAL: So who do you have working for you? What's your labor pool?


PULTE: A lot of kids, in most cases, who don't want to work. Mexicans who need to work, and do a wonderful job. Who may be here illegally, we try very hard; we check their two requirements and hopefully they are there.

RYSSDAL: Are you at all worried about the Immigration Bill that's making it's way through . . .

PULTE: Yes, it could potentially be a big problem for this industry. Enormous problem.

RYSSDAL: What are you going to do?


PULTE: Well, we can't do it by ourselves. I mean, the industry and the other industries that are affected . . . they have to convince — we can't let these people go out of the country. . . . But if I were a young Hispanic boy and my family didn't have any money and I didn't have a job I'd be sneaking over that border, too. I have to say that.

RYSSDAL: You are a nationwide builder of homes. I'm curious, though, how you've made that business work because what sells here in Northville, Michigan, might or might not sell back in my neighborhood in Los Angeles.

PULTE: That used to be the case. It isn't today. Oddly enough, the floor plans do not change anywhere near as much as people believe. It's the elevations. When I say that, the outside look. In Massachusetts we may have to use a shingle, wherein California we have to use a stucco, and maybe in Detroit here we use a brick, so it's the different materials and design of the outside that change much more than the inside.


There's a few rules of design. How do you give value in a house? One is square footage for the money is always a method people use to get — whether it's got value. But secondly is perception of space. If I can make the house feel bigger when you walk in the front door, if this house looks bigger than it really is, that gives a lot of value. These are very important.

RYSSDAL: The house that you live in now, and all the others you lived in over the years . . . Did you design those?

PULTE: Everyone but one I designed the floorplan and had a concept of what I wanted the outside to look like. And the one that I didn't build myself I put a big remodeling job on in 30 days because I had my sixth child and we were living in a three-bedroom house, so we had to get out fast and I didn't have time to build it. So I remodeled it. But every other one I did, yes.

RYSSDAL: Bill Pulte is the founder and chairman of Pulte Homes. The Corner Office today is in Northville, Michigan. Mr. Pulte, thanks a lot for your time.


PULTE: Thank you for inviting me.

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/segm ... pulte.html