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HOME BUILDING’S
‘ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM’
BY GEORGE CASEY
BIG BUILDER
Over the past several weeks, I have had the opportunity to attend a variety of fall industry conferences: the Urban Land Institute (ULI) fall meeting in Dallas,
a Vistage Construction Network CEO Roundtable in Boston, and John Burns’ Fall Homebuilding Conference in
New York.
The latter was held the day after Election Day about two blocks from the New York Hilton. An interesting time to be in New York, to say the least.
I enjoy the mix of the conferences, because of the variety of viewpoints they provide.
ULI gave the industry view from home builder, master planned community developer, nancing and technology perspectives. Big picture and long-view stuff with a national and international perspective. The Vistage Network CEO Roundtable involved construction and construction service CEOs from New England and covered both commercial and residential, but Northeast focused. John Burn’s conference was expansive and deep on home building, residential community development, nance, and demographics on a national basis.
As I processed all of the information, a recurring theme kept coming back, kind of like that “It’s a Small World After All” song from Disney World. Once you get it in your head, it never leaves.
The theme was that many of the major players in the industry are not fully recognizing and attacking one of the core challenges for the industry: the inability to generate enough housing supply to meet the current and even-greater-tomorrow demand
that is on the way. The focus of many in the industry is actually on yesterday problems and solutions.
“Yet, the reality is that in many markets in the country right now, builders cannot keep production up with the
current sales level...”
An inability or unwillingness to see the issues that are new and with us today and which lack focus or solution seems to be a blind spot for many leaders.
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