Homebuilding Strategists Talk Candidly About Getting To 2030

[Image, clockwise from top: Alex Akel, President, Akel Homes, David McDonald, President, Defy Investments/Davis Homes, Wade Jurney, Co-Founder, CEO, National Home Corp., Nikki Pechet, Co-Founder, CEO, Homebound, Audrey Lam, Executive VP - Finance, Oakwood Homes]

I’ve been in scores of homebuilding leadership conversations over the years.

One that stopped me cold in the last few weeks wasn’t on stage. It was a call in preparation for a collaborative conversation on stage later this month.

Five homebuilding strategic and operational leaders — each running a different model, each fighting to stay profitable in 2025’s fiercely turbulent conditions — joined me for a conversation ahead of their appearance on the opening panel at Focus On Excellence, October 27–29 at the Four Seasons Denver.

What I heard in those 45 minutes was an unfiltered portrait of what it takes to keep a company alive, let alone thriving, in this moment of punishing capital costs, stretched buyers, and relentless execution and razor-thin margin risk.

This isn’t theory. It is survival — and reinvention. Both at the same time. Everything, everywhere, all at once.

It’s brutal every single day.” – Nikki Pechet, Co-Founder, CEO, Homebound

Nikki Pechet has built Homebound around technology-enabled infill construction — an idea born in the ashes of the 2018 California wildfires. The company now operates across Dallas, Houston, Tampa, Denver, and Los Angeles. But her biggest challenge isn’t engineering the tech. The challenge is getting people to use it.

It’s not that hard to build technology,” she said. “It’s really hard to get technology out into the operations of your company. Brand-new software never works perfectly, and when you’re building houses while trying to get people to adopt new systems, it’s brutal every single day.”

At the same time, she’s managing risk in a land market full of fear and abandoned deals.

We’ve got a lot of capital, so we can grow — but we can’t afford to overpay for land that won’t work in the next couple of years,” she said. “It’s a moment for disciplined aggression.”

Her candor underscored a hard truth for every builder in 2025: technology and capital aren’t magic. They only matter if leaders can make them work inside real-world operations.

I’m the real estate developer who’s also a software developer.” – Alex Akel, President, Akel Homes

Alex Akel leads a 40-year-old Florida homebuilding company that has turned customer experience into a growth engine. He’s leaned on in-house tech to make the entire process — from color selections to warranty tickets — transparent and personal.

We send customers photos every week — good, bad, and ugly,” Akel said. “That transparency builds trust. It turns buyers into our best marketers.”

His challenge, though, is brand weight. Competing with national builders means over-delivering on service and referrals.

If you have no name, sometimes any name looks better,” he said. “So we’ve got to build ours one 'wow experience' at a time.”

That human-centered approach — using data and tech not to replace people but to strengthen connection — is the kind of operational discipline that will define the next decade of homebuilding.

We’re learning to grow with less capital.” – David McDonald, President, Defy Investments / Davis Homes

David McDonald sits on the capital side of the business. His firm, Defy Investments, acquired Davis Homes — a 60-year-old, third-generation Indianapolis builder — earlier this year. He’s spent 2025 learning just how cash-hungry this industry remains.

This is the year we’ve had to ask how we grow a business with less capital,” he told me. “We’re not a fund; we self-finance. We’re pouring profits back in, but free cash flow is tight.”

That constraint has forced innovation. McDonald’s team is experimenting with off-site wall panels, robotic production, and accessory dwelling units—always with an eye toward realism.

This industry loves shiny objects,” he said. “We’re trying to be pragmatic—prove it in the lab before we scale it.”

It’s a humility born of private-capital patience — one that mirrors what many private builders face now: finding new efficiency without giving up identity.

Buying a lot, building a home, and selling for a profit—while balancing overhead. That’s the challenge.” – Wade Jurney, Co-Founder, CEO, National Home Corp.

If anyone personifies operational toughness, it’s Wade Jurney. His National Home Corp. builds entry-level homes across Florida, Texas, and the Carolinas at an average price of $250,000.

For him, the defining issue isn’t tech — it’s land, capital finance, and operational efficiency, all working at high velocity and high performance.

I’ve never – in two-plus decades – built a house without a bank loan,” he said. “But lately, we’ve had to look hard at private debt. The covenant restrictions from banks make it nearly impossible to move at the pace we need to move.”

Jurney’s model thrives on velocity, but he’s blunt about the grind.

We have to figure out how to squeeze profit out by going down-market, being flexible, and growing even when margins are thin," Jurney said. "It’s very difficult to be nimble and efficient when you’re shackled by covenants.”

His closing line summed up the mood of the group:

Sometimes you have to grow while you’re not making a profit.”

That honesty is why this panel belongs at the front end of the Denver agenda.

“We're looking for efficiency, doing more with the same.” – Audrey Lam, Executive VP, Finance, Oakwood Homes / Clayton Properties

Audrey Lam brings both financial and operational depth to the table. She recently moved from market president in Colorado Springs to EVP of Finance at Oakwood Homes, part of Clayton Properties Group and ultimately Berkshire Hathaway.

Capital is accessible,” she said, “but our parent company is laser-focused on returns. We’re looking for efficiency — doing more with the same, not necessarily more with less.”

Her toughest balancing act is between growth and attainability.

Denver’s expensive,” she said. “We measure ourselves by how many of our homes are attainable — priced at four times the area median income. Replacing legacy land positions to hit that goal while costs and rates stay high — that’s the daily puzzle.”

Lam’s focus on affordability as a measurable discipline, not an abstract value, reframed the conversation around purpose: not just building homes, but building systems that keep homes within reach.

From Pressure to Practice

By the end of our call, five themes shone clear:

Capital is tight.
Margins are thinner for longer.
Technology is only as good as the culture that adopts it.
Operational excellence—not optimism—is the new differentiator.
The future workforce will have to be digital-native, data-fluent, and purpose-driven.

Woven through our conversation: People. Every leader on the call knows the next generation of builders will have to operate differently — more integrated, more adaptive, and far more connected across functions.

Who will be on your team in 2030? Who do you want them to be?” I asked. “And what are you doing today to make sure they’re ready?”

That question hung in the air. It’s the question that defines this moment.

Please come to Denver

That’s why this panel will kick off the program and set the two-and-a-half-day agenda on course at Focus On Excellence 2025. It’s not another talking-heads session. It’s a pressure test for what comes next: workshops where we’ll map real 2030 scenarios, design future-ready organizations, and tackle the structural challenges — capital, land, labor, leadership — that shape every homebuilder’s reality.

If you lead a homebuilding enterprise — public or private, large or regional — this is your peer set. These are your challenges. And this is the room where leaders will start solving them together.

I hope to see you there.

The companies that come out of this cycle stronger will be the ones already building for what’s next.