The housing market pendulum has swung back toward buyers, and understanding what consumers truly want—and will pay for—has never been more critical for builders. In this episode of the New Home Insights Podcast, JBREC's Dean Wehrli sits down with Jenni Nichols, Vice President of Design, to explore where builders can push, where they can pull back, and where they absolutely cannot compromise.

It seems that affordability has suddenly become the word of the day in politics, but it has been at the top of the agenda in housing for a very long time. There will always be market space at the high end—but there will also always be a need to solve for new home prices that fit into the fat part of the bell curve.

That is where Smith Douglas Homes lives. Smith Douglas CEO Greg Bennett recently joined us at the New Home Trends Summit for a live podcast. Greg offers his insights on building affordably by design, with an eye on the workforce families that form the backbone of American communities.

Back in the olden days (after those bikes with the one really big wheel and the one tiny wheel, but before TikTok), when we spoke about the rental market, we meant apartments. Sure, there were plenty of “mom and pop” rental homes, but no one thought about them, and no one was building new ones.

But over the last decade-plus, build-to-rent (BTR) has emerged as an ever-growing part of our national housing solutions. As BTR has grown and evolved, NexMetro Communities has played a key role in these changes. On this episode of the New Home Insights podcast, CEO Josh Hartmann joins me to talk about NexMetro, its philosophy, what drives it, his view of the market, and his take on BTR and its competition.

In the new home world, we often divide builders into public and private. The idea is that the publics are the capital-rich, large-scale firms with a multi-regional presence that are gradually gobbling up market share from the smaller local private builders scattered throughout the country. But this ignores the “big privates”—homebuilders privately owned but with the size and resources to act like a “national.”

David Weekley Homes is definitely a big private. The builder has spread from its Texas roots throughout the swath of the smile states (minus California, which hurts my feelings) and into the upper Midwest. On this episode of New Home Insights, Jay Brown, CEO, and Chris Weekley, President and Vice Chairman, walk us through David Weekley’s philosophy and strategy, expand on their expansion plans, and provide insight into how they view the market now and in the future.

If there are two things that fuel real estate development, they are land and money. Oh, and design. Three things that—wait, the type of housing is huge, too, so product is another fundamental. So there are four—okay, there are a whole bunch of critical elements to the successful development of real estate, but let’s stick with land and money. Having those two things is indispensable, and they are also what Rodney Montag of Bedrock Land Finance is best at.

Rodney understands the American real estate land market as well as anyone, and, through Bedrock, can provide builders and developers with the capital to realize their dreams. So we sat down with Rodney on the latest episode of the New Home Insights podcast and talked about exactly those things.

There is no housing market; there are housing markets. We all know that, but all too often forget. Now, as mortgage rates and increasing supply challenge the for-sale sector, rental supply has tapered from its peak, and that sector is firming. Moreover, dynamics vary, often markedly, depending on geography. The nation is dotted with dozens of rental markets that sum to a whole, but each has a different story.

On this podcast, Chris Nebenzahl and Zak Nyberg join Dean Wehrli to weave us through the rental market maze. Chris is JBREC’s Vice President of Rental Research, who keeps an eye on national trends. Zak is a Vice President of our consulting practice who has conducted rental feasibility work throughout the Sun Belt markets and up the Atlantic Seaboard. We cover supply and demand, rental trends, regional variations, amenities, the capital markets, and more in this episode.

If you’re going to be the “Something of Something,” it is not bad to be the Trader Joe’s of homebuilding. You are big but not too big. You’re known for high quality and attentive service, but instead of ringing a bell for someone who just bought a bottle of that delicious almond sparkling wine, you have a key ceremony for someone who just bought a brand-new house.

Beazer Homes CEO Allan Merrill joins us on the latest New Home Insights podcast to take a deep dive into Beazer’s strategy in our ever-changing and always-challenging housing market.

Tariffs, inflation, interest rates, jobs. All are factors that massively impact the housing market. As head of economic research and forecasting at Renaissance Macro Research, Neil Dutta tracks currents and trends across the globe. On Bloomberg TV or in Business Insider, Neil always tells it like it is. He recently joined the New Home Insights podcast to do the same. In this episode, Neil Dutta touches on not just economic trends but also lays out how he sees the US economy playing out—and how that will impact the housing market.

Note: This episode was recorded on June 12, 2025.

Every great story has an “inciting incident,” something that propels the protagonist into action. For Ryan Stroker, Founder and CEO of Avenue One, that moment came when he realized there was a gaping disconnect between institutional capital and a vast array of comparatively smaller homebuilders that could thrive with better access to big money. But Ryan had also cut his teeth in the single-family rental world. Ryan’s background in the capital markets and his attention to detail and data made him and Avenue One a natural fit to connect capital to local builders and single-family operators.

Placemaking is the art hiding within the banalities of residential development. It is the color on canvas that transforms square footage and dwelling units per acre into homes, and homes into communities.

DMB Development has been making great places since 1984, and the company’s President and CEO, Brent Herrington, has been helping them do that for almost 40 years. Brent provides his take on the key ingredients in the best recipes for great placemaking, highlights some of the best of those places, and, as a bonus, chats about DMB’s partnership with Disney and the new Storyliving communities that are beginning to take shape.