Sarasota-based Jade Homes was all over the news in August 2006, when it shut down operations. The real estate market had collapsed overnight, and the company still had 75 homes to finish. The owners of those unfinished homes were shocked, furious and frightened, and media coverage was harsh, holding Jade up as one of the big, bad builders who had taken advantage of innocent homebuyers.

But even while the company’s reputation was taking a severe beating, Jade’s president, Andrew Coles, was working behind the scenes to remedy the situation. During the late summer and early fall of 2006, he filled endless days with difficult meetings and painful phone calls to customers, subcontractors and other home builders, all in an effort to give Jade’s customers what they paid for. Unlike many other builders affected by the region’s—and nation’s—real estate slump, Coles didn’t walk away. He picked himself up and joined forces with another home builder, Sarasota-based Vision Homes, and today, the majority of those 75 homes have been completed.

Jade Homes was founded in 1997 by the British-based Coles family, which has a long history in the building business. “I was born and bred in the industry,” says Andrew Coles, who speaks thoughtfully and calmly, although he seems a little gun-shy as well. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather were all builders, and Coles “grew up in the business and worked my way up the ranks.”

Over the years Jade Homes enjoyed steady growth and, like many other home builders, saw a dramatic increase in business during the real estate boom of 2004 and 2005. In 1998, its first year of business, Jade sold 18 homes. In 2001 it sold 42, and in 2005 it sold 125, gaining a reputation for quality and garnering such acclaim as The Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce’s 2003 Young Business of the Year Award. The company eventually built an organization to handle sales of up to 150 homes a year. It had model centers in North Port, Port Charlotte and Rotonda, and at Rye Wilderness Estates in Manatee County; and it was one of three exclusive builders at Oak Vistas, a mixed-use development with single-family homes, townhomes and office space off Cattlemen Road in Sarasota County.

Then the market did a 180-degree turn. “The market came to a stop in the fall of 2005 very abruptly,” says Michael Padgett, vice president and owner of Vision Homes, who came to Coles’ rescue and helped him reorganize the company. Coles and Padgett have been friends for years, having first met through the Home Builders Association of Sarasota County. Their wives are friends, their children play together, and the families have gone on several ski vacations together. “It wasn’t a slowdown,” says Padgett. “It just stopped, and it caught a lot of builders off guard.”

In the first six months of 2006, Jade Homes sold only four houses, nowhere near what the company needed to pay its 30-some employees and cover its other expenses. By the time August rolled around, Coles had basically determined that he had no choice but to shut down. That’s when he went to Padgett for advice.

At that time, Jade had 75 homes it needed to complete—with sale prices ranging from $250,000 to $750,000. Most were in North Port and ranged from $250,000 to $325,000. Coles says the total cost to complete them all was around $7 million, and Jade Homes owed its subcontractors about $1 million. “The ceiling was coming down, and the walls were closing in,” he recalls.

Jade had sold so many homes and had so much overhead that when the cash flow from new sales dried up, there was nowhere to go. It just ate Coles up. “We relied on profit to handle the overhead,” he says.

The easiest thing for him to do at that point would have been to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy. He could have just walked away from it all and left others to clean up the mess. “But the right thing to do was to sit down and work it out,” he says. “We had contracts with homeowners, we owed subcontractors. I wanted to do the right thing for the industry.”

When Jade’s shutdown made it into the press, Coles might have wished he had just walked away. “When everything hit, customers were calling and Andrew didn’t have the answers at that point,” says Tina Burks-Riva, who has worked for Jade Homes since August 2005 and serves as the company’s office administrator. “People came to the office and were kicking at the doors. I knew what they had to be going through, but at that time the answers weren’t there.”