New Home Insights Podcast

A note: this conversation was recorded on March 17, 2025, so any references to pending legislation reflect the state of the debate at that time. The debate over institutional ownership of single-family rental (SFR) homes has moved from industry trade publications to the floor of the U.S. Congress. A bill currently working its way through the legislative process would restrict large investors from buying additional SFR homes and require build-to-rent (BTR) communities to be sold off within seven years of completion. But what does the research actually say? Josh Coven, Assistant Professor of Real Estate at Baruch College's Zicklin School of Business, joined the New Home Insights Podcast to walk through his findings — and the data challenges some of the most widely held assumptions about institutional investors, housing prices, and rental supply.

Japanese firms have gone big on American housing. Sekisui House has been at the front of this line. The 65-year-old innovative Japanese builder has built a book of homebuilding brands that covers the country. Their most recent acquisition, Richmond American Homes, not only gave Sekisui a national footprint but also brought them David Viger, now the President and CEO of Sekisui House U.S. David Viger played football for both Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick, two of the most “demanding” (I’m being nice) coaches in NFL history. Now he works for Sekisui House. Sure, Sekisui once made him hold a ceramic panel with his bare hands while they scorched it with a blowtorch, but I bet he still feels like this is an upgrade. David joined us recently on The New Home Insights podcast to break down how Sekisui House U.S. is doing things differently.

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.

Spring is a critical time of year for the housing market. The weather warms, foot traffic surges, and builders can bank sales. It is historically the height of the market, particularly in cooler climes. At JBREC, we constantly interact with new homebuilders, resale brokers, land brokers, building products folks, and other actors in the housing space to keep thumb and forefinger on the carotid artery of the housing market. Survey leaders Dillan Krieg, Cara Lavender, and Jody Kahn walk us through sales, incentives, buyers, strategies and tactics, what’s working and what’s not, and what headwinds have been heaviest in these unsettled times. And, as a special treat, we spend a little time with the legendary Jody Kahn, who shares some lessons learned from a storied career spanning almost forty years and still counting.

PulteGroup CEO Ryan Marshall brings clarity, candor, and—since it is in the name of the show—insight into the latest episode of the New Home Insights podcast. You can tell he is not eager to talk about himself, but Ryan has a great story to tell. He shares his humble upbringing and early life lessons before dishing the inside scoop on running one of the biggest homebuilders in the country.

The best ideas are the ones that seem obvious—“Why didn’t I think of that?” Sean Dobson saw the pile-up coming before the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) crashed the housing market. Sean and his company, Amherst, built a model to assess the true value of every home in America and bet right on what followed the GFC. Sean then had another great idea. Families who were foreclosed on were pushed out of the for-sale market but still needed a suitable place to live. So Sean pivoted to single-family rental (SFR) in the early days when there was still plenty of doubt from investors and market watchers. Today, Amherst is a diverse financial services company for some of the largest investor entities in the world; think pension funds, major endowments, foundations, and sovereign wealth funds. SFR remains a key focus. Sean shares his insights on the SFR market, housing supply and NIMBYism, housing affordability, off-site construction, and more. Here are some highlights from the latest New Home Insights podcast episode.

Most of us, even the CEO of a major homebuilder, don’t have a master plan for our lives. Sometimes, fate takes us to a place we never thought we would be. Sheryl Palmer’s journey started as a young advertising expert at McDonald’s, wound through homebuilder Del Webb, and eventually put her at Morrison Homes when it merged with Taylor Woodrow. Thirty days after that marriage in 2007, new builder Taylor Morrison asked her to take the reins. She hasn’t checked her rearview mirror since. Sheryl Palmer, Chairman and CEO of the sixth-largest homebuilder in the country by volume, joins us for this episode of New Home Insights.

Zillow is the unquestioned king of the existing home space, but it is not just about matching buyers with a resale. Zillow is big in the new home world as well. The company is partnering with homebuilders to empower them to reach potential buyers better, joining the melee for a buyer segment that often doesn’t realize they have other options. Qadra Evans is the Director of Industry Relations and Sales for New Construction at Zillow. Qadra helms Zillow’s efforts to help homebuilders use Zillow to expand their reach and put them on the radar of homebuyers who are not always reachable. Plus, we have some bold predictions for the 2025 housing market! Let’s review some highlights from my chat with Qadra on the latest episode of the New Home Insights podcast.

In April, the New Home Insights podcast looked at how the spring selling season was shaping up with some of our resident market experts, and you loved it. It was one of our most listened-to episodes. So, in this episode, we are joined by the JBREC survey team—Jody Kahn, Cara Lavender, and Dillan Krieg—to review 2024 and look forward to how the housing market is shaping up. They dig into a wide range of results from our monthly surveys of new homebuilders nationwide and distill that into an array of trends and insights.

With an election days away, politics is top of mind for almost everyone. So, now seemed like a good time for the podcast to delve into the politics and policies that impact housing. David Howard is the CEO of the National Rental Home Council (NRHC), which advocates mainly for the single-family rental (SFR) sector. David walks us through the ins and outs of national, state, and local housing policies. We had a wide-ranging conversation primarily focused on the rental market, but we also touched on the for-sale world.

To celebrate the 100th episode of the New Home Insights podcast, John Burns, founder and CEO of John Burns Research and Consulting, joins us. But it is not just John and me sipping a delicious IPA and commiserating. There is that, but this episode takes a 30,000-foot view of the long cycles of the housing market before delving into some current hot buttons—mortgage rates, affordability, public and private builders, and more.