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The New Home Insights Podcast On the Road: Sunshine State Edition continues at Wellen Park. Dean Wehrli sits down with Rick Severance, Division President at Wellen Park, to unpack how a new brand, a wider range of homes, and amenities built from day one turned the former West Villages into one of the nation’s fastest-growing master plans. Rick covers how top-rated schools brought in more families, a downtown that thrives without subsidies, casting builders in distinct lanes, the partnership with the Atlanta Braves, and what it takes to plan a master-planned community for the long haul.

The New Home Insights Podcast On the Road: Sunshine State Edition heads to Babcock Ranch, the latest stop on our tour of Florida’s best master plans, with more episodes to come. Dean Wehrli sits down with Tom Hoban, President and Chief Investment Officer of Kitson & Partners, to trace how a 91,000-acre ranch became a new town of 17,000 residents with more than 90% of the original land in permanent preservation. They cover Babcock’s rise as the first solar-powered town, the smart water system that kept the community dry and powered through Hurricane Ian, a downtown built from day one, builder partnerships that push innovation, and the Innovation Neighborhood that comes next.

The New Home Insights Podcast On the Road: Sunshine State Edition continues at Lakewood Ranch, the second stop on our tour of Florida’s best master plans. Dean Wehrli sits down with Rex Jensen, President and CEO of Schroeder-Manatee Ranch, and Laura Cole, Senior Vice President of Lakewood Ranch, to trace how a family-owned ranch and shell mine became a city of 80,000 residents and the region’s economic engine. They cover long-term financing matched to absorption, the Stewardship District, village-by-village builder curation, workforce housing alongside multimillion-dollar homes, nearly half the land set aside as open space, and why patient capital and execution keep Lakewood Ranch among the nation’s best-selling master plans.

The New Home Insights Podcast hits the road for the Sunshine State Edition, kicking off our tour of Florida’s best master plans at Lake Nona, with many more episodes to come. Dean Wehrli sits down with Rob Adams, Senior Vice President of Residential Development, and Frank Paris, Senior Vice President of Design and Pre-Development at Tavistock Development Company, to trace how intent and patient ownership turned Orlando pastureland into a jobs hub anchored by health and wellness. They cover housing segmentation from $450,000 townhomes to multimillion-dollar estates, the 15 to 20% master plan premium, 1,000 community events a year, Lake Nona’s early bets on technology, and how Tavistock is bringing the Lake Nona playbook to Sunbridge, its 30,000-acre community next door.

For a new homebuilder, your model is your calling card. It is how you portray your product to the world—at least the world that matters to you: the folks visiting your community, your sales center, your clubhouse. The same goes for apartment developers. How you present has an impact. Impressions, both first and last, matter. Angela Harris is the founder and CEO of TRIO, a residential design firm with a national reach that helps builders and apartment developers make the most of their models and merchandising. A designer first and foremost, Angela is also a psychologist, delving into buyers’ minds to understand how they will respond to the purposeful choices inherent in her work. She understands what design and merchandising can and cannot do, and that an authentic voice is the one most likely to be heard. I sat down with Angela for this episode of the New Home Insights podcast, where she walks us through models, merchandising, and how to get the most out of each.

Demographics usually move slowly. Over the past two years, they turned on a dime. Eric Finnigan, VP of Demographics Research at John Burns Research and Consulting, joins Dean Wehrli to unpack the demographic forces resetting housing demand. They cover the sharp reversal in immigration and its impact on buyers and construction labor, shifting domestic migration patterns, an aging buyer and renter profile, and why the national housing shortage no longer means what it used to.

The housing sector always seems to be in “crisis” mode when it comes to pricing. But now more than ever, there is no denying that affordability is the biggest hurdle to homeownership. Getting a key to a new home into the hands of a first-time buyer is everything to LGI Homes. It is a singular focus that has provided LGI with direction since its founding in 2003, as it has expanded from its Texas base into over 40 markets across the country. That focus comes from the top down in the form of Eric Lipar, LGI’s co-founder and current Chairman and CEO. Eric joined Dean for a chat on this episode of the New Home Insights podcast.

Wellness can mean different things to different people in different contexts. Is it a spa treatment with facial scrubs and sliced cucumbers? Is it someone in a rented lab coat on YouTube rapturing about cold plunges and cupping and the latest superfood? Is it rise-and-grind hustlers, holistic healers, biohackers, and keto carnivores? In housing, it is so much more, and Teri Slavik-Tsuyuki knows that. Teri has been planning innovative communities for a while now, both as a developer and a consultant running the show at tst ink. Wellness is a housing trend, but it is far from a fad. For Teri, it is something infused in a community, embedded in its DNA. It has a variety of aspects and a menu of solutions. Teri recently joined me for the New Home Insights podcast to talk about wellness and also how she views housing innovation.

Homebuilder mergers and acquisitions (M&A) seem to slide into the zeitgeist now and then, catching our attention and making us wonder what happens next. M&A is having a moment now. From the rush of big Japanese operators into America to American builders partnering with their brethren to make them stronger, M&A is in the headlines. But sometimes it’s useful to step back and see the big picture. What is motivating this? What are the strategies in play? What makes a deal, and what might break a deal? Moelis & Company is an international investment bank and strategic advisor in a wide variety of sectors. Bob Crowley is a managing director at Moelis & Company who handles housing. He has been in the M&A game for a looooong time (I tried not to do so many o’s that it would make Bob mad). During that time, Bob has been a part of some of the biggest mergers in the business and still is today. He sat down with me on the latest episode of the New Home Insights podcast to provide that big picture.

Has Housing’s Spring Forward Stalled this Year? by John Burns Research and Consulting

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.