The goal posts moved.

For enough time to fool ourselves since the year Covid unleashed demand for new homes, the goal line looked to be "how to make it faster and easier" to buy. Yet it always comes back to something else, doesn't it?

Like "how to make it 'realer'?"

Removing pain, frustration, time-and-energy-waste, disappointment, and drudge from the homebuying transaction has been and continues to be a worthy – necessary – focus point, especially from mid-2020 to halfway through 2022.

Adding transparency, simplicity, delight, etc. to the beginning, middle, and end of the pathway to the ultimate handover of a set of keys – experiences conspicuously absent from the homebuying process for all but an exceptional few builders and buyers ... also, an area of step-change improvement in the past 24 months or so.

All of those great achievements – the result of hard work and brilliance – count. They're big strides in the right direction, but not the goal.

Removing friction – doubt, uncertainty, risk, and insecurity – from the earliest stages of consideration that lead, possibly, to a decision to buy is where the goal posts stand 38 days before Super Bowl LVII, a proxy for the onset of this year's Selling Season.

This is the perspective Eric Snider, Ph. D., of Lifestory Research offers in context of his unveiling yesterday of the 11th "America's Most Trusted Home Builder Study." Taylor Morrison, a top 5 public homebuilder, won recognition as America's Most Trusted® Home Builder for the 8th year in a row.

Says Snider, in a note he shared with The Builder's Daily:

This year’s study reveals the pressures in the housing market has influenced how home shoppers see home builders. As housing inventories were limited, pricing pressures mounted, with increased demand, home shoppers transferred some of their frustrations onto the industry. Trust in the national home builders fell quarter-over-quarter throughout this past year.

We track several different brand evaluations for each builder and found an industry decline in most brand attributes. Perceptions of quality, trustworthiness, favorability, positive word of mouth, among other measures declined for almost every national home builder. Given that this was consistent across builders, it appears that shoppers held every home builder accountable for the market dynamics.

At the same time, we saw the best of the best to retain their footing atop the national rankings. Taylor Morrison, Trilogy by Shea Homes, and Skyline each retained their number one trust rankings from shoppers in their respective product categories, despite sharing the greater industry decline in trust. The fact that the best of the best maintained their top ranking, while sharing in the greater industry decline, in my opinion, reflects the dividends of brands. In tough times, brands may lose a little bit of confidence, but trusted brands are able to hold on to the years of brand building and trust they have earned."

Here's how the Top 20 in the new-homebuilder category ranked in the 2023 survey.

Per Snider, the annual study is based on survey results of more than 50,000 home shoppers' opinions on homebuilders' trust, quality, word-of-mouth, and other brand equity questions. The survey explores how the home shopping experience and brand interactions impact customers' perceptions of home builder brands.

Says Taylor Morrison Chairman and ceo Sheryl Palmer in a prepared statement:

Of any year to be named America's Most Trusted® Home Builder, this time feels especially meaningful. It illustrates that no matter what economic conditions we're operating under and the hardships those have created for consumers—from the pandemic, to historically high demand, to supply-chain constraints, to mortgage rate volatility, to affordability and inflationary pressures—our constant is how we treat people."

Sharing top honors among homebuilders over in the 55-plus category is the oft-celebrated Shea Homes Trilogy brand. Here's the way Lifestory's rankings in that category look.

They say of a trusted brand, it makes a promise, then over-delivers.

Have a look at this The Builder's Daily piece on the ROI of Trust.

What to understand about a trusted brand – especially for a transaction-oriented business culture like homebuilding in America – is that it's more or less equal-parts who you are and who you empower your customer to be.

One of the post-pandemic-era keeper trends – i.e. not a blip nor a fad nor a passing phase – in new residential construction, community development, real estate, and manufacturing is that when it comes to the place people call home, they're investing in a relationship over time, from purchase, to ownership, to sale.

There's no better time to earn – mostly the good-old-fashioned hard way – trust among customers who're grudging about taking a leap for fear they'll feel like a fool.

That comes down to rigorous behavior – not performative narrative – that's astonishingly simple to understand but not so easy to practice and perfect.

Say what you're going to do.

Then do what you say you're going to do.

And never stop.

That may or may not make the process faster and easier. But in the Selling Season of 2023 – if, hopefully, it can be called that – it's going to make it 'realer.'

The new 'real deal' extends beyond the transaction. What an opportunity!