New Home Insights Podcast

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.