WRIGHT CITY, MO – September 14, 2026 (STL.News) McBride Homes, the privately held St. Louis-area homebuilder with an 80-year history, is expanding its presence in fast-growing Warren County by acquiring the remaining homesites at Alder Creek Manors in Wright City from Houston Homes.
The transaction gives McBride Homes control of the remaining homesites in the development and represents another investment by Missouri’s largest homebuilder in communities extending west from the traditional St. Louis metropolitan core.
McBride did not disclose the financial terms of the acquisition or the number of homesites acquired.
The lack of a disclosed purchase price makes it difficult to gauge the transaction’s immediate financial size. But the acquisition is notable because of the company making it.
McBride Homes isn’t a small regional contractor entering the subdivision business.
The Chesterfield-based company ranked No. 76 among the nation’s largest homebuilders in Builder Magazine’s 2026 Builder 100, after closing 748 homes and generating approximately $300 million in revenue during 2025.
It is also an 80-year-old privately held St. Louis company that says it has built more than 40,000 homes since its founding.
The Alder Creek acquisition therefore indicates where one of the St. Louis region’s most important residential developers believes future housing demand exists.
McBride Homes Takes Over Remaining Alder Creek Homesites
Alder Creek Manors is located in Wright City in Warren County, with access to Interstate 70 and connections to St. Charles County and the greater St. Louis region.
McBride acquired the remaining homesites from Houston Homes, another homebuilder active in the St. Louis market.
McBride Homes CEO Jake Eilermann said the company intends to build upon the work already completed at the development and finish the community for future residents.
McBride Homes plans to offer ranch and two-story homes at Alder Creek with two to four bedrooms.
Current advertised base prices run from approximately $269,900 to $340,900, depending upon floor plan, before options and upgrades.
The community’s grand opening is scheduled for Sept. 26.
The acquisition is more significant from a business standpoint than an ordinary announcement of another model home or subdivision.
McBride Homes is acquiring existing residential development inventory from another builder and adding capital to the Warren County housing market.
The company describes Alder Creek as another step in its effort to provide attainable new housing as the St. Louis region grows.
McBride Homes – Warren County Becomes Increasingly Important
Wright City sits along the Interstate 70 corridor west of St. Charles County, placing it within reach of employment centers throughout the western St. Louis region while offering land and housing prices that can be lower than many established suburban communities closer to St. Louis.
That combination matters more in a housing market where affordability has become one of the biggest obstacles for buyers.
McBride Homes CEO Jake Eilermann recently told Homes.com that affordability, employment growth and interstate access have contributed to the company’s expansion into communities farther outside its traditional St. Louis footprint.
The strategy has been described as McBride’s “Next Exit” expansion strategy, targeting communities outside the company’s traditional core but still sufficiently connected to the St. Louis region.
Eilermann said the company isn’t trying to become a nationwide builder. Instead, it is extending outward from its St. Louis base into markets where it believes employment growth and relative affordability support additional residential construction.
That distinction makes the Wright City acquisition particularly interesting.
Rather than leaving St. Louis for distant metropolitan markets, McBride appears to be widening the geographic radius of what it considers its home market.
McBride Homes – From One Carpenter to a $300 Million Homebuilder
McBride Homes’ history is deeply connected to postwar St. Louis.
The company traces its beginning to 1946, when Joseph C. McBride, then a carpenter and maintenance worker at Carter Carburetor Co., borrowed money for tools and entered the residential construction business.
His original objective was straightforward: build affordable new homes for veterans returning from World War II.
McBride built his first home in North St. Louis County.
According to the company’s history, modest profits from those early houses were reinvested into the operation, allowing it to expand gradually.
During the 1950s and 1960s, the business expanded under Richard McBride as suburban development accelerated throughout the St. Louis region.
McBride moved beyond individual houses and into subdivision development and apartments.
The company continued expanding even as the national housing industry experienced difficult periods during the 1970s and 1980s.
During the late 1980s, McBride Homes became the first major St. Louis homebuilder to expand across the Mississippi River into Illinois residential communities.
The company also relocated its headquarters to Chesterfield.
McBride later experimented with expansion beyond the St. Louis region, entering Indianapolis and Atlanta during the 1990s and adding Louisville and Kansas City around 2000.
Today, however, the company remains closely identified with the St. Louis and Missouri housing markets.
Its current corporate headquarters is in Chesterfield.
McBride Homes – More Than 40,000 Homes
McBride says it has now constructed more than 40,000 homes throughout the St. Louis metropolitan area.
The company says it has been Missouri’s largest homebuilder and the leading St. Louis-area builder for more than 25 years.
Independent industry rankings also confirm that McBride is a significant national homebuilder.
Builder Magazine’s 2026 Builder 100 ranks McBride & Son Cos. No. 76 nationally.
The company recorded 748 closings in 2025, including 713 detached homes and 35 attached homes.
Builder reported approximately $300 million in 2025 revenue.
Those numbers put McBride in a very different category from most locally owned residential contractors.
Despite remaining privately held and headquartered in the St. Louis region, McBride competes in an industry dominated nationally by massive publicly traded builders including D.R. Horton, Lennar, PulteGroup and NVR.
McBride Home’s 2025 Business Slowed
McBride’s expansion also comes against an important backdrop.
Its 2025 results were substantially below the previous year.
Builder Magazine reports that McBride closed 1,008 homes during 2024, generating approximately $409 million in revenue.
In 2025, closings fell to 748, while revenue dropped to about $300 million.
That represents approximately a 25.8% decline in annual closings and a roughly 26.7% decline in reported revenue.
McBride also slipped from No. 69 to No. 76 in Builder Magazine’s national ranking.
Those figures don’t necessarily indicate a company-specific problem.
The housing industry has faced significant affordability pressures from elevated mortgage rates, higher construction costs, insurance expenses, regulatory costs, and home prices.
But the numbers make McBride’s 2026 expansion particularly noteworthy.
Instead of simply retreating following a slower year, the company is continuing to acquire homesites, open communities, and expand its geographic reach.
McBride Homes – 2026 Appears to Be a Different Story
Signs suggest McBride’s business environment improved in 2026.
Eilermann told Homes.com that McBride recorded its strongest sales month in recent years during March, even while many national homebuilders struggled through a difficult spring selling season.
The company also said it expected to conduct approximately 12 grand openings across Missouri over a six-month period.
McBride’s activity since then has provided evidence of that expansion strategy.
The Wright City acquisition is only one example.
McBride recently announced Walnut Hills, a master-planned development in Jefferson City and the company’s first community in that market.
It also announced Progress Pointe, a planned 137-home development in Ste. Genevieve scheduled to open in October.
Those projects demonstrate that McBride is looking beyond its traditional suburban St. Louis footprint while maintaining its headquarters and core operations in the region.
McBride Homes Is Expanding at Both Ends of the Market
McBride’s current development strategy isn’t limited to relatively affordable communities on the metropolitan fringe.
At the same time, it is expanding in Wright City; the company is constructing one of its more upscale projects in central St. Louis County.
McBride’s Woods Mill Crossing development in Town and Country is transforming the former Woods Mill Center property into an upscale condominium community.
The first two residential buildings are now going vertical.
The overall development is planned for 112 condominiums, with current prices beginning in the $700,000 range and some units priced considerably higher.
That creates an unusual contrast.
In Wright City, McBride is offering new homes beginning in the upper $200,000 range.
In Town and Country, it is developing upscale condominiums costing more than twice that amount.
Meanwhile, its Jefferson City expansion brings McBride into another Missouri housing market altogether.
Together, these projects give the company exposure to first-time buyers, growing families, move-up buyers, and affluent households seeking upscale condominium living.
McBride Homes – An Important St. Louis Economic Indicator
McBride’s size makes its activity relevant beyond the residential construction industry.
Homebuilding creates economic activity across numerous other sectors.
New developments require excavation, concrete, lumber, roofing, plumbing, electrical work, HVAC systems, landscaping, appliances, cabinets, flooring, transportation, engineering, and numerous other products and services.
Residential development also affects local governments.
New subdivisions can increase property-tax collections while simultaneously creating additional demand for roads, schools, utilities, police, fire protection and other public infrastructure.
For that reason, McBride’s land acquisitions and development decisions can provide an early indication of where private capital expects population and housing demand to grow.
Warren County is particularly important to watch.
If major builders continue purchasing land and developing communities farther west along Interstate 70, the trend could represent a longer-term extension of St. Louis-area residential development beyond St. Charles County.
McBride Homes Remains Privately Held
Another reason McBride deserves closer business coverage is its ownership structure.
Unlike the largest publicly traded homebuilders, McBride does not have the same quarterly SEC reporting obligations requiring detailed public disclosure of revenue, margins, land inventories, cancellation rates, debt, and forward sales.
That means considerably less information about its operations becomes public automatically.
Yet McBride is still large enough to rank among America’s 100 biggest homebuilders.
That combination makes independent monitoring important.
Land acquisitions, new subdivisions, property records, planning approvals, construction activity, and industry rankings can provide valuable information about the company’s direction and the broader St. Louis housing market.
McBride Homes – Eight Decades and Another Expansion
McBride Homes enters its 80th year considerably removed from the business Joseph C. McBride started with borrowed tools in 1946.
It has survived recessions, housing downturns, high-interest-rate environments, the 2008 housing collapse, the pandemic, and dramatic changes in where and how St. Louis families live.
The company has built more than 40,000 homes and now ranks among the country’s largest residential builders.
Its acquisition of the remaining Alder Creek homesites is relatively small compared with McBride’s entire history.
But it may be important when viewed as part of a broader pattern.
McBride is investing in Wright City.
It is entering Jefferson City.
It is preparing a 137-home community in Ste. Genevieve.
It is constructing luxury condominiums in Town and Country.
And it is doing so after a year in which its closings and revenue declined substantially.
That makes McBride Homes a company worth watching—not merely as a homebuilder, but as a privately held St. Louis business whose investment decisions can provide clues about where management believes Missouri’s housing market and population growth are heading next.
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Editor’s note: McBride Homes describes itself as Missouri’s largest homebuilder and says it has built more than 40,000 homes. National ranking, closing and revenue figures cited in this report are based on Builder Magazine’s 2026 Builder 100 data. McBride did not disclose financial terms or the number of remaining Alder Creek homesites acquired from Houston Homes.
