Jody Kahn: What Builders Say Now About New Home Demand

If there’s a constant in homebuilding today, it’s this: builders are feeling around in the dark — again. But this time, unlike in 2022’s rate-driven freefall, builders’ incentives aren’t meaningfully boosting new home sales.

Jody Kahn, Senior VP of Research at John Burns Research & Consulting, and her team just wrapped up a couple of the most revealing, granular, real-time pulse-check surveys of homebuilding and residential land sentiment in the business: a mid-month poll of about 90 homebuilding firm executives, and the firm’s October 2025 Residential Land Survey, compiled from about 90 active broker and developer participants nationwide.

TBD caught up with Kahn at a milestone moment in her career, and she gave us exclusive insight into what she’s hearing from the field.

We’re not seeing broad-based panic,” Kahn says. “But we are hearing real caution. Builders are navigating slower demand and buyer hesitancy, and they’re having to rethink pricing and inventory, land strategy, and what kind of risk they want to take on.”

Here’s what stands out.

Demand Is Slower—But It’s Not Disappearing

As Q4 kicks off, many builders report that homebuyer traffic has thinned and the urgency to buy has weakened across buyer segments. Poor affordability and mortgage qualifications hold back first-time buyers, while move-up households are struggling to sell their existing homes. But, as Kahn emphasizes, prospects are anxious to secure the best deal.

We’re hearing that it’s slow,” she says, “with sales mainly to buyers with a need to move. Builders are spending big dollars to buy down mortgage rates and still help with closing costs. However, prospects are now expecting these incentives and outright price cuts, and still ask for more. People still want to buy. They're just hesitating, or have a home to sell.”

Some of the hesitation, Kahn notes, is psychological. Households feel unsettled by mixed economic signals. The Fed’s recent rate cut has not yet translated into lower mortgage rates. And the ongoing “move-fast-and-break-things” White House administration juggernaut—and its uncertain policy outcomes—are adding another layer of buyer pause.

One builder tells us: The urgency is gone,” says Kahn. “Another said: We’re seeing visitors that are going with the highest perceived incentives rather than the quality of the home, location, or community amenities.”

In this environment, many builders are still offering incentives—but they’re finding that price adjustments alone aren’t always enough to restart momentum.

Incentives Aren’t Always Doing the Trick

Kahn points out that while incentives—closing cost assistance, mortgage rate buydowns, price reductions, and design center credits—remain widespread, they’re not universally effective. Especially in communities where pricing has crept too far ahead of the local market, they’re just not moving the needle.

In some cases, it’s not that the house is too expensive in general—it’s that it’s too expensive for that buyer in that market right now,” she says. “Buyers are aware that new and resale home prices are declining in most housing markets and figure they can buy at a lower price if they wait.”

One telling detail: builders who dialed up spec inventory earlier this year are now holding more completed homes and finished lots than they had anticipated. And in slower-moving communities, incentives have become the norm—no longer a differentiator.

We heard from multiple builders that they had planned for a higher sales pace this year, and now they’re sitting on more inventory than they’d like,” Kahn says. “That’s shifting their behavior.”

Inventory Patterns: Messy, Regional, and Full of Clues

Builders’ inventory levels—especially the number of finished homes or those within 30 days of delivery—have become a critical signal of pricing power, buyer urgency, and sales pace. And the latest data from the October Burns Homebuilder Survey points to a nuanced, regionally variable picture.

We saw the builders’ average finished inventory per community tick up nationally month over month, which was a bit displeasing,” Kahn says. “That’s not the direction you want if you’re hoping for more pricing firmness.”

While inventory-heavy regions like Florida and Texas have shown some improvement, others—particularly Southern California and the Northeast—registered more noticeable inventory jumps in September. But Kahn cautions against over-interpreting these moves.

These are regions with a high share of attached homes,” she explains. “So you’ll see lumpy patterns. If a builder releases an eight-plex and half are unsold, that temporarily inflates the ready inventory count. We may see those homes sold and inventory normalize later in the month.”

Still, she notes, other indicators—like Southern California and Northeast average sales rates—aren’t especially strong either.

There’s clearly something evolving in those areas,” she adds. “Not a crisis, but definitely softening.”

Land Bet Rebalancing: Builders Pull Back, Sellers Hold Firm

One clear takeaway from the October Burns Residential Land Survey is that homebuilders—public and private—are in no rush to acquire more near-term lots, given today’s muted sales absorption and cloudy demand outlook.

My big takeaway from the land survey is that the builders clearly have a limited appetite for additional lots that they would be building on in the near term,” said Jody Kahn. “At the current sluggish sales pace, and no real relief in the near term—nobody sees an event happening that’s going to somehow unlock the housing demand—you’d argue, why would they need to scarf up some additional lots?”

That doesn’t mean builders are sitting entirely idle. Some are actively unwinding or reshuffling lot positions they had previously secured, particularly deals that no longer pencil under today’s pricing and margin constraints. According to the land survey, builders (public and private) accounted for 19% of land and lot transactions in Q3, a steady share from Q2, but one that’s growing within a smaller overall volume of activity.

The builders legitimately are moving some of the lots and land that they now say won’t work based on current numbers—based on what they can actually sell a home for and create some margin,” Kahn said. “Some of those land deals don’t pencil now, so they’re moving them.”

A mandate from corporate leadership often drives that activity.

I’ve talked to builders who say, ‘We had the mission to go through everything we own and control and—with a new magnifying glass—really look at it and decide what we might want to convert to cash,’” Kahn said.

The market “hotness” for land—a proprietary John Burns index drawn from broker surveys—reflects this cooling. A year ago, about 80% of top land brokers rated their markets “hot” or “on fire.” That’s now down to just 25% signaling strong demand. 

We see the current new home environment at any moment in time translating pretty quickly to the activity level in the land market,” Kahn said.

But while builders adjust their strategies and renegotiate where they can, landowners themselves remain largely unmoved when it comes to reducing prices. Pricing stickiness remains the norm putting added pressure on builders’ land strategy pivots going into 2025.

The sellers of land tend to be very sticky on pricing,” Kahn said. “They’ll negotiate on terms—like a longer predevelopment period or adjusted takedowns—but they are not big fans of reducing prices, and slow to do it.”

One reason? Most large-scale landholders aren’t under financial pressure to sell.

A lot of the biggest landholders have no debt on their land,” Kahn explained. “They’re not in a situation where they think, ‘Geez, we have a bank payment coming up, and so we have to sell lots.’ Maybe some smaller landowners are like that, but in general, the biggest land sellers are sitting in a position where they can wait and see if home sales rise and drive more demand.”

That pattern echoes what Kahn observed during a prior pause in 2022.

Especially the master-planned community developers just kind of waited it out,” she recalled. “They didn’t really meaningfully adjust price. They figured at a certain point the housing demand would come back, and then those lots would be in demand.”

So while builders are taking a hard look at what they own and control, land owners remain largely patient and price-resistant. Burns’ land survey confirms finished lots and undeveloped land prices are declining in outlying locations. Buyers classically shift to closer-in locations in a "flight to quality” while builders are refocusing on land that will yield lots in 3-5 years.

A Market of Micro-Climates—and Micro-Adjustments

The current landscape defies national generalizations. Kahn says it’s more accurate to describe conditions as a “market of micro-climates,” where the same builder might be thriving in one MSA or submarket and treading water in another.

We had one operator say: We have one division where things are fine, and another where we’re just trying to hold the line,” Kahn says.

For example, Texas markets—especially Dallas-Fort Worth and San Antonio—continue to benefit from in-migration, though affordability gaps are widening. The Southeast remains active, but pockets of oversupply are weighing on prices. Meanwhile, some Western markets are seeing continuing pressure from insurance cost volatility.

Builders are making pricing and speculative starts decisions based on very local data,” says Kahn. “And they’re changing things on the fly.”

This local focus has strategic implications. National and regional builders are re-empowering their division and area teams to make more real-time calls. The top-down playbook of 2021–2022 doesn’t apply anymore.

An Unexpected Demand Wild Card: Immigration Policy

Perhaps the most surprising insight from this mid-month builder survey? Several builders mentioned that H1-B visa policy—specifically, uncertainty in visa issuance and the new $100,000 tax on these visas—is affecting their traffic and buyer conversion in certain markets.

This fee is supposed to apply to new visa requests, not renewals of current visas,” Kahn says. “But builders in markets like Atlanta, Raleigh-Durham, Dallas, Chicago, Seattle, and parts of Northern California indicate they're seeing hesitancy among international buyers—often tech workers—who are either waiting out visa uncertainty or holding back on big purchases.”

While not a dominant trend nationwide, it’s a signal that housing demand is increasingly sensitive to broader policy shifts beyond interest rates or inflation.

Housing is always a local business,” says Kahn. “But this is a reminder that it’s also deeply connected to national policies—on immigration, on interest rates, on fiscal policy. All of that trickles down to our industry.”

Strategic Takeaway: Be Nimble, Not Passive

What should builder strategists take from all this? Kahn’s advice is clear: don’t wait for clarity that may not come. Instead, stay nimble, listen closely to field teams, and rethink what success looks like in Q4 and beyond. 

This is not the time to be passive,” she says. 

Instead, she recommends revisiting land underwriting assumptions, focusing on submarket-level data, managing inventory, finding opportunities to differentiate from competitors, and aligning incentive strategies to buyer pain points—not just sales goals.

Builders that are agile and pragmatic right now are the ones who will be positioned to grow when conditions improve,” Kahn says.

Risk Repricing Is Underway

The October Land Survey makes one thing clear: risk is being repriced—by builders, capital providers, and buyers alike.

The industry is not panicking,” Kahn reiterates. “But it is recalibrating. And that’s exactly what this moment demands.”

From slower sales paces to shifting preferences for land, from overlooked policy effects to pricing fatigue, this is a moment of active rethinking—not retreat. And it’s one where sharp listening and faster feedback loops may be the most important strategic advantage a builder can have.