Next week I’m releasing my quasi-annual forecast for the housing market heading into 2026, where I’ll lay out both the bullish and bearish cases for a potential sellers’ market. In the meantime, I finally carved out a moment to announce something I should have shared months ago: I wrote a book. It’s called The Builder Is Not Your Friend, and I finished it about a year ago, published it six months ago heading into the spring market, and then never promoted it as the Spring Market and existing clients took priority.
I wrote this book for one reason. Buyers of new-construction homes keep walking into sales offices thinking the builder is their partner in the process. They’re not. The cost of misunderstanding that relationship can be brutal. My job has always been to pull back the curtain. Anyone who has worked with me knows I’m not shy about calling out the games, the misaligned incentives, and the dishonest sales tactics that routinely put buyers at a disadvantage. Builders and community sales managers know me as the guy who never hesitates to call them out, and that’s fine. Someone has to tell the truth.
This book is for anyone considering a new construction home from a national production builder. Whether it’s the initial negotiation or simply trying to get the home to the finish line, the real battle in new construction isn’t theoretical. One deal last year had us at the house fourteen times in the final two weeks just to force the builder to address basic quality and structural issues. That’s the reality buyers walk into, and it’s exactly why I wrote the book. It’s blunt, practical, and written from two decades of watching buyers get steamrolled by a system designed to keep them uninformed.
I’ll be updating the book early next year. The industry has shifted again, and what I’ve seen in this new era deserves its own chapter. For now, if you are buying new construction, or even thinking about it, or you know someone already in the middle of the process, you can get the free kindle version of the book here: https://a.co/d/2AiGDpd
Thanks for reading! If you do check it out, would love for you to share a review online :)
