Rich Binsacca has been covering residential construction for nearly 40 years. He put himself through college working on job sites, landed his first housing magazine job in 1987 at Builder Magazine, spent roughly two decades freelancing, did a four-year stint working on a marketing program in Saudi Arabia, and eventually became Head of Content for Pro Builder and Custom Builder — the former a print magazine that has been published since 1936 and the official media partner of the National Association of Home Builders.
Michael sat down with Rich for a wide-ranging conversation, and the thread running through most of it is culture.
“The best builders that I know are committed to a culture, and typically that culture is customer-focused, customer-centric. They really do a great job, operation wide, taking care of their customers and making sure that they deliver a high-quality product that meets and exceeds their expectations.”
For a smaller, local builder competing against nationals with deep pockets, that kind of consistency is a real competitive asset. Rich explains why larger builders structurally find it difficult to deliver the same experience, and he’s specific about what the customer journey looks like when a builder gets it right:
“When you’re smaller and you’re local and you’ve got a dedicated warranty team or warranty person that’s watchdogging everyone and meets these people personally, and there’s a salesperson that passes the baton carefully and considerably to construction, which passes it on to warranty or post-occupancy — then you’ve got a breadcrumb trail that the homeowner can rely on.”
Consolidation in the mid-size builder segment is one of the more important conversations in the episode. Some of the acquisition activity is strategic — large builders pursuing land positions or market entry. A quieter part of the story is something else entirely:
“Because we’re seeing more diversity among buyers, not just other builders, but private equity firms, Japanese conglomerates, and land banks, we’re seeing more mid-size builders opening themselves up for sale, saying, ‘Look, I’m open to a conversation that you can acquire me.’ And I think part of it is just this uncertainty, and even since the pandemic, just this kind of rollercoaster economy we’ve been on. They’re like, ‘Look, I just wanna get out. I’m just done with this. I’ll go be a consultant or I’ll maybe work for another builder, but I don’t want my own company anymore. It’s too hard.'”
The affordability and buyer behavior section gets into territory that might shift how you’re thinking about your product mix. Younger buyers are recalibrating expectations around square footage, lot size, and ownership itself — but Rich adds a historical footnote about millennials that reframes the Gen Z story before you draw too many conclusions about where demand is headed:
“When you look at Gen Z now, it’s kind of the same narrative, and I’m just waiting for them to go through the same life changes and say, ‘Well, no, we still want single family homes.’ Right now we don’t, but in 10 years, 15 years, when we’re maturing and we’ve got maybe a kid or two — yeah, I want a yard. I want a single family home.”
On labor, Rich doesn’t offer reassurance that isn’t there. The structural obstacles to rebuilding the workforce the industry lost after the Great Recession are real. His thinking on the practical path forward is direct:
“We have to look at how do we utilize the labor that we have and are probably gonna have, without much of an increase in numbers, to still deliver the homes that we need.”
There’s a segment on data centers that builders may not have fully factored into their planning yet. Rich’s read is straightforward — communities are beginning to understand the resource implications, and the land competition is real. On technology, he walks through two specific tools: Fordje, which synthesizes municipal code for builders crossing county lines, and ARX, which has compressed months of land evaluation legwork down to minutes with 90-plus percent accuracy. He also recommends the book, AI for Residential Construction by Grace Mase as a rare, genuinely useful resource in a space currently flooded with noise.
Woven through all of it is a conversation about video — why the low-fi phone walkthrough earns more buyer trust than polished production, and the real reason it works. Rich closes the rapid fire with a thought that might be the most useful line in the episode:
“The builders who will struggle most over the next 10 years are the ones who don’t embrace technology and innovation.”
Rich Binsacca has spent close to four decades earning his perspective on this industry. This is a good conversation.
About Rich Binsacca
Rich Binsacca is a nationally award-winning journalist, editor, and communications professional. He serves as Head of Content for Pro Builder and Custom Builder, overseeing editorial strategy across print, digital, and live platforms, and as Community Builder and host for ProConnect Events — a forum connecting home builders, design professionals, and developers with leading product manufacturers and service providers. When he’s not working, you’ll find him on a tennis court, on his bike (usually headed to tennis), out on a trail, or behind a camera photographing things most people walk right past. He lives in Corvallis, Oregon with his wife of 24 years and two cats.
Connect with Rich and Pro Builder:
- Pro Builder: https://probuilder.com/
- Custom Builder: https://custombuilderonline.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rich-binsacca-389124a/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/richbinsacca/
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