"Most Trusted" isn’t something you market your way into—it’s something you earn, from the inside out.

Let me start by saying this: Trust is not your tagline. It’s not your brand promise. And it sure as hell isn’t your latest ad campaign.

Trust is the result of a thousand small decisions—most of which no customer will ever see, but every employee feels. Trust is the byproduct of how you treat your team, not how you talk to your buyers. And in an industry where the stakes are as high as they are in homebuilding, trust is your competitive moat.

At Taylor Morrison, we’ve been named America’s Most Trusted® Home Builder for 10 years in a row. And yes, I’m immensely proud of that. But here’s the real truth: We didn’t earn that by telling people we were trustworthy. We earned it by being trustworthy. Over and over again.

So in this inaugural edition of “One from the Trust Vault,” I want to break down what I’ve learned about building a trust-forward brand in one of the most emotionally complex industries on the planet—housing.

Because let’s be honest: no one wakes up and impulse-buys a $500,000 house on a Tuesday morning. Home is not a product. It’s a place. It’s a feeling. It’s belonging, security, future, family, financial leap—and often, emotional chaos—rolled into one.

Here’s what I know about trust:

1. Your employees trust your brand before your customers ever will.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it forever: Your brand starts on the inside. Period.

You can’t slap a feel-good brand story on top of a dysfunctional employee experience and expect customers not to notice. Trust doesn’t scale when it’s only surface deep.

At Taylor Morrison, our culture is the brand. When our field teams go above and beyond—like painting a child’s nursery pink as a surprise, or organizing a Disney parade for a little girl with leukemia—that’s not a PR stunt. That’s who we are.

Our job in marketing is to make sure the world knows about the trust our people earn every day—not to fabricate it.

So ask yourself: Would your team recommend your company to their best friend? If the answer is no, start there. Not with your next campaign brief.

2. Trust is built with receipts, not rhetoric.

We live in a world of screenshots, comment sections, and "gotcha" culture. If you’re saying one thing in your ads and living another behind the scenes, congratulations: your customers will find out.

At Taylor Morrison, we don’t talk about flexibility in our brand voice unless we’ve actually built flexibility into the buyer experience—things like online homebuying, transparent pricing, personalization tools. These are proof points, not platitudes.

And when things go sideways (because in this industry, they always will), trust comes from owning the mistake—not spinning it. I’d rather be known as the brand that made it right than the brand that made it disappear.

3. You can’t build external trust without internal clarity.

Let me be blunt: If your CEO doesn’t understand what your marketing team is doing, that’s on you.

If your sales team doesn’t know how your brand story connects to their pipeline, that’s on you.

If your own people are unsure of what your brand stands for—don’t expect your customers to get it either.

This is why marketing can’t just live in the creative department. It has to show up in boardrooms, all-hands meetings, onboarding sessions, and ops reviews. Your brand should be a shared belief system, not a siloed initiative.

And when trust is the backbone of that system, your entire organization moves in alignment—because it believes in what it’s doing.

4. There’s no shortcut around consistency.

Want to be trusted? Say what you mean. Mean what you say. And do it again tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that.

Being trusted doesn’t mean being perfect. It means being predictable—in the best way.

Too many marketers get distracted chasing virality, disruption, or the campaign that will “change everything.” But trust is never built in a single moment. It’s built in the long, boring consistency of doing the right thing when no one’s watching.

Trust doesn’t make a big entrance. It builds over time—and breaks in seconds.

5. Your values are your greatest conversion tool.

These days, buyers aren’t just looking at floorplans and finishes. They’re looking at your company’s heart.

Do you stand for something? Do you treat people like people? Do you show up honestly when it’s hard?

This is especially true in times of volatility. Housing affordability is at a crisis point. Customers are anxious. Budgets are tight. Emotions are high. And trust? It becomes everything.

That’s why we don’t pretend everything’s fine. We acknowledge the market reality. We offer real solutions when we can, and radical transparency when we can’t. Because empathy is the bridge to trust—and trust is the bridge to business growth.

Let's get real

Trust isn’t a KPI. It’s not a line item.

It’s the entire business model.

And in this messy, emotional, unpredictable world of homebuilding, it’s the only currency that holds its value.

So here’s my ask to every marketing leader reading this: Stop chasing "likes." Start cultivating belief. Because that’s what trust really is—belief that you’ll do what you say you will. That your team cares. That your brand has a soul.

And if you can do that? You won’t just earn trust. You’ll earn loyalty. Advocacy. Forgiveness. And yes—revenue.

This is what’s inside the vault. And next month, I’ll open it again.

– Stephanie