Time is value, and eternally and always at the core of what you develop and build, and market, and convey as a value proposition to a customer.

Let's look at this look at what Americans value most through the lens of a survey that asks people just that. Analysts at Pew Research, who fielded the study, are unambiguous in their conclusion. That conclusion should fuse itself into the shopping experience, the livability promise, the total lifetime value, and even the exit strategy for a new home customer. Here's what that conclusion says.

Americans overwhelmingly view spending time with family as one of the most important things in their life, far outranking other personal priorities, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

About three-quarters of U.S. adults (73%) rate spending time with family as one of the most important things to them personally, regardless of how much time they actually devote to it. Nine-in-ten say they view it either as one of the most important things or as very important but not the most important thing. – Pew Research

Two separate parts of this finding ring the relevance bell for homebuilders, developers, residential investment stakeholders other partners. One is topical and timely and one is timeless.

What's timeless is the sweep of common ground across the ages and across all families and households of every description. It's one of human life's rare common denominators that we care beyond words for our families and the plainest evidence of that is time with them.

What's particularly relevant in mid-year 2023 – in the housing cycle nested in the economy nested in an epoch of national and global and environmental history – is the poignant meaning of "time with the family" at this moment.

Who do you like for a quote that would bring this home?

• Einstein
• Keller
• Jobs
• Angelou
• Churchill
• Bader Ginsberg
• Lincoln
• Shakespeare
• Edison
• Twain

Not to mention Seneca, Homer, Confucius, Patton, Groucho, Lombardi, Wilde. The list goes on and on, back and across in time, doesn't it? And when there's an especially good quote, usual suspects come to mind as likely sources of these gems of eternal wisdom.

This one, for instance.

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen all at once."

A quick Google search surfaces two of our usual suspects, Albert Einstein and Mark Twain. In fact, so many references, greetings cards, posters, memes, etc. credit the quote to space-and-time scientist Dr. Einstein, you'd hardly be surprised if ChatGPT backed you up on it if you were to say it's so. But it's not so.

The oldest confirmed use of any version of this quote that I was able to find is from Ray Cummings' short story The Time Professor, published in the Jan. 8, 1921 issue of Argosy All-Story Weekly (thanks to mgkrebbs for pointing this one out)." – history.stackexchange.com

Another source supports science fiction author Ray Cummings as the first source, with a slightly different date of origin:

According to Quote Investigator, the quote may actually come from Cummings’ 1919 story, “The Girl in the Golden Atom,” which was originally published in a magazine, but later expanded into a novel. In 1921, he also used the expression in another story." – Checkyourfact.com

Enough on who said it first. Let's dig into the phrase itself, what it means, and why it matters. Perfect, isn't? Probably for any and all eras, but certainly now, when it would appear that time – whose job is to parse, and cadence, and meter, and divvy, and order, and slow, and speed up, and stop-and-start events – must have its hands full. "Everything, everywhere, All At Once" practically nails the present.

Time's role, to keep everything from occurring simultaneously, seems to be vulnerable to the race of technology, events, and a riptide of environmental, social, and cultural turbulence.

This endows a home and the neighborhood and community a family calls home with all the more meaning. It's a physical and emotional sanctuary. It's a shelter, not just from invasions and harms in space, but from an onslaught of thieves of time. Homes remove friction from time with our loved ones; and they they stand up strong barriers that keep too many forces and demands from occuring at once.

And most importantly, homes serve as the structure and the doorways for a family member or loved one to experience best-in-lifetime moments, one at a time rather than all at once. It's the reason to come back again and again and again to the place, the town, the community, the shelter ... that can actually stop time in its tracks, at least for long enough to make a lifetime memory.

Look how much more people say they value time with their closest loved ones than other priorities that really matter. This chart lays it out there.

As Pew Research analysts note here:

No more than a third of Americans rate any of the other eight items on the survey as among the most important to them. Clear majorities say being physically active (74%), being outdoors and experiencing nature (72%), and being successful in their career (66%) are at least very important to them."

The kicker here is that the family, the loved ones who live there, make a home, not the other way around. It can be modest or lavish or anywhere in between.

As homebuilders, developers, architects, engineers, planners, manufacturers, construction crews, the very basic work in these incredible livelihoods is about making a place for a person to do and have and sustain what they value most. It can be entry level, first time move-up, 55-plus, luxury and any category in between.

Author and essayist Susan Sontag, another one often credit for having coined the phrase about time, added to it this way:

Time exists in order that everything doesn’t happen all at once . . . and space exists so that it doesn’t all happen to you.”

And you could say that a home is one of the few places left on this earth at this moment of peak warp-speed turbulence that allows time and space to do their jobs, which is what we value most.