Builders planned for undersupply, now demand is the swing factor

Builders planned for undersupply, now demand is the swing factor
The “emerging trends” in housing story over the past decade or more has been a tale of magnitude variations on a theme: constrained supply eclipsed by growing demand. If there is one conclusion that rises above all others in this year’s “The State of the Nation’s Housing 2026” report, it is that the industry’s challenge […]

Four rules for underwriting secondary Texas markets in a slower cycle

Four rules for underwriting secondary Texas markets in a slower cycle
For the better part of a decade, the Texas growth playbook was remarkably simple. If you wanted scale, liquidity and appreciation, you went to the Texas Triangle: Austin, Dallas–Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio and tried to be early to the next ring of rooftops. Those four metros captured the lion’s share of population and […]

Why hazard insurance is becoming a housing market constraint

Why hazard insurance is becoming a housing market constraint
The U.S. needs a new strategy to address the significant recovery costs following large-scale disasters  Disasters such as fires, floods and tornadoes are striking a widening geographic area across our country, and their frequency appears to be rising. The cobbled-together framework of consumers’ hazard insurance policies, state insurance programs, the national flood insurance program, and […]

Berkshire Taylor Morrison deal puts vertical integration in focus

Berkshire Hathaway’s planned acquisition of Taylor Morrison has opened the door for us to explore a set of uber-themed questions: about homebuilders’ present and future valuations, leadership and scale, and to the question that public homebuilder boards may now be asking: whether to build toward greater scale or join it. A related question may be […]

Who can buy a top-20 builder now? Berkshire resets board calculus

Berkshire Hathaway‘s planned acquisition of No. 6-ranked homebuilder Taylor Morrison begs big follow-on questions. These mostly spring from who this particular buyer is and the moment they have chosen. One way or another, these follow-up questions may prompt homebuilding leaders to revisit a core imperative many believed they had solved eons ago. For decades, the […]

Why Taylor Morrison’s integration playbook matters in builder M&A

Flashback Shortly after Sheryl Palmer became chief executive officer of Taylor Morrison in 2007, I met with her in Scottsdale, Arizona, to discuss a challenge that would have intimidated many experienced homebuilding leaders. The company she had inherited was not merely navigating the early stages of what would become the worst housing downturn in modern […]