Sample Schedule at-a-glance
8:00 AM - 8:45 AM
Registration, coffee and continental breakfast buffet
8:45 AM - 9:15 AM
Innovation & Transformation Meat & Potatoes
Innovation and transformation are fancy MBA-bingo, three-syllable+ words that are really about meat and potatoes business issues for builders. Fundamentals like how do you make more money, with fewer people, while putting less capital at risk…and in the end of have happier customers? Forum co-chair Tim Costello will help you make the connection from the highfalutin to the down-dirty business basics.
9:15 AM - 10:00 AM
Leveraging Digital & “Anti-Anxiety” Offers to Improve Customer Acquisition
This session looks at both the digital strategies and tactics you can use to get more buyers who spend more money alongside risk reduction supports you can leverage to get buyers across the goal line. It starts with digital listings that wow and engage and send buyers flying into your funnels and ends with financing and existing home sales assistance offers that seal the deal.
10:00 AM - 10:45 AM
The Three Ps of Winning vs. Used Houses: Product, Pricing, Promotion
One of the key concepts of Housing Transformation is stealing market share from used houses. It’s done through a multifaceted effort that includes:
11:15 AM - 12:00 PM
Profitable Personalization & The Digital Design Center: The Heart & Brains of Digital Transformation
What’s working, what’s not in personalization and options sell-through via the digital design center? What categories are doing well and why? Which are struggling and why? Where are we coming up short and doing well in presentation, merchandising strategy and conversion and where are we not? How are we doing on integration of digital design center with front-end sales and marketing processes and how can we do better? How are we doing with downstream data flow to purchasing, production and customer care and how can we do better and exploit all the advantages of digital documentation of the personalized house as ordered by the buyer? We will answer these tactical questions and the big strategic question: how can a more fulsome embrace of the digital design center generate more revenue, contain costs, increase quality and deeply delight homebuyers?
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Lunch Break
1:00 PM - 1:45 PM
Digital Twins: BIM, CAD, and a Vision for Supply Chain Nirvana
A famous politician once said, “never let a good crisis go to waste,” and, boy oh boy, do we ever have a crisis on our hands in the homebuilding supply chain. So, will we, at long last, leverage that crisis to take substantial steps forward in digitizing the management of our supply chains. Take steps toward replicating the efficiencies that arrived in the manufacturing sector decades ago? This session will dive into the key concepts, proof of performance with seminal solutions like BIM, next gen CAD and ERP for homebuilding and other green chutes of progress popping up across the industry, identifying critical next steps for builders, their suppliers and the industry collectively. We can do this and the time to forge ahead is now!
1:45 PM - 2:30 PM
Enhancing the Ownership Experience & Tapping Lifetime Value
The days of the builder’s job (and opportunity!) ending at closing ARE OVER. Builders enlightened by best practices in customer experience and the concept of tapping the lifetime value of a customer relationship are changing their approach. They understand they are not just selling the house as an item; they are delivering a living experience and financial asset to their buyers. They understand there is a lot more revenue and profit to be realized after the initial home transaction if they stay involved. The question is “how to make it happen,” and in this session we’ll tackle that. How can digital sales, marketing, production and ownership applications generate consumer data assets that can be monetized post close? (The options range from sales of consumables like water and air filters to energy and connectivity to preventative maintenance and attachment sales like furniture and décor.) The beauty of this approach is this: well-orchestrated maintenance, finishing and improvement of new homes post close is part of a superior ownership experience and a pillar in the argument for new homes vs. used houses. We’ll cover key concepts, existing small-scale successes in this space and a vision for a functioning industry ecosystem that will help make it happen.
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Floorplans & Exteriors: Real Data & Designs to Stay Ahead of the Trends
This session will help you stay ahead and inspire you on what design adjustments to make to win more market share. You’ll see the latest consumer & designer survey insights and how those insights play out in actual floor plans and elevations. Small changes can make huge differences and impact how the consumer lives and if the home sells or sits on the market.
4:10 PM - 5:30 PM
35-minute sponsor boardroom presentations
5:45 PM - 6:45 PM
Keynote: From Concept Homes to Real Innovation
Using prototypes of future products for market testing of innovations is a long-established practice of product manufacturers. Almost everyone has seen the concept cars automakers preview at car shows. Some of the feature sets and designs make it to market in commercialized products, some don’t, but there are also powerful promotional positioning effects—e.g. the buying public sees automobile manufacturers as innovators who are continuously pushing forward with new and improved features that respond to changing needs and lifestyles. Wherefore art thou, homebuilders? In this keynote session, we’ll look at the handful of concept homes and communities the building and real estate development industry have put forward, review results and propose a means of doing more, especially through the leveraging of digital designs and experiences that dramatically lower costs and increase speed from concept to presentation.
6:45 PM - 8:00 PM
Connections Reception
Acoustic Grunge will be theme for this year’s Housing Transformation Summit, focusing on acoustic versions of music from the Seattle Grunge scene plus other famous Seattle acts like Jimi Hendrix and Heart. Live music, delicious food and drink are the backdrop to the most important element of the reception—a chance for guests and sponsors to mix and mingle and get to know each other on a personal level that will enhance their future consultations and collaborations.
8:00 AM - 9:15 AM
Tech Finishes & Integration
Tech finishes are increasingly in demand, and deciding where to spend a bit more or lean into tech can be complex. Learn which are the most sought-after systems and get a sneak peek at what is on the horizon.
9:30 AM - 11:45 AM
35-minute sponsor boardroom presentations
11:45 AM - 1:00 PM
Kitchen & Bath: Design, Materials, and the Consumer Experience
Rooms that buyers can envision themselves using and enjoying sell houses, and kitchens and baths are among the most important sales winner. These are categories where both lifestyle and design/fashion trends are incredibly important, so we’ll get you in the know on both fronts, and talk about what should be standard, what should be optional and how to get great sell-through for your options.
1:30 PM - 5:55 PM
Scheduled 1-on-1 meetings & browsing
6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Interior Logic Group Design Center Tour
Much like you configure and price your car online before you head to the dealership, or leverage technology to see West Elm furniture in your home (before making an in-store purchase), technology can likewise enhance the traditional design studio process. ILG's technology suite, collectively known as Design My Home, cultivates a blend of online and in-person experiences that, when compared to traditional models, are more comfortable for homebuyers, more profitable for builders, and more efficient for designers.
8:00 PM - 10:00 PM
Housing Transformation Holiday Happy Hour
Meet us at Fountain Wine Bar at the Sheraton Seattle (host hotel) for the Housing Transformation Summit Holiday Happy Hour with drinks on us from 8:30-9:30pm. Mingle with other HTS attendees and get in the holiday spirit with the help of your favorite spirit(s). Bonus points for those who wear their ugliest holiday sweater.
8:00 AM - 9:15 AM
Dual Session – Pricing Strategy & Homebuying Habits are Personal
In this two-part session you’ll 1st learn how pricing, price perception and consumer behavior play a role in what someone is willing to pay. Hint, value and cost are not exclusively intertwined. Then we’ll dig into online shopping behaviors, the must-haves for listings, and how to meet consumers' expectations for a truly immersive shopping experience.
9:30 AM - 11:35 AM
35-minute sponsor boardroom presentations
11:35 AM - 12:45 PM
Enhancing Consumer Experiences & Personalization to Sell Homes
What if you could help homebuyers select their home, design their home, and visualize what it would look like with their furnishings before they ever stepped foot in the sales office or a model? This session will explore how personalizing the consumer journey, utilizing artificial intelligence and technology can enhance and accelerate the homebuying journey.
1:00 PM - 2:55 PM
Scheduled 1-on-1 meetings
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Structure and Systems Innovations for Energy Efficiency & Sustainability
The conservation of energy and water and the generation of clean energy are critical concerns for our society and increasingly demanded features in new homes. We’ll review the feature sets that address this demand from building envelope enhancements to electrical and plumbing systems, focusing not only on the pieces and parts of the systems, what they do and the keys to implementing them, but also how you should market and present these features to buyers to realize sales lift.
4:10 PM - 5:30 PM
35-minute sponsor boardroom presentations
5:45 PM - 6:45 PM
Keynote: From Concept Homes to Real Innovation
Using prototypes of future products for market testing of innovations is a long-established practice of product manufacturers. Almost everyone has seen the concept cars automakers preview at car shows. Some of the feature sets and designs make it to market in commercialized products, some don’t, but there are also powerful promotional positioning effects—e.g. the buying public sees automobile manufacturers as innovators who are continuously pushing forward with new and improved features that respond to changing needs and lifestyles. Wherefore art thou, homebuilders? In this keynote session, we’ll look at the handful of concept homes and communities the building and real estate development industry have put forward, review results and propose a means of doing more, especially through the leveraging of digital designs and experiences that dramatically lower costs and increase speed from concept to presentation.
6:45 PM - 8:00 PM
Connections Reception
Acoustic Grunge will be theme for this year’s Housing Transformation Summit, focusing on acoustic versions of music from the Seattle Grunge scene plus other famous Seattle acts like Jimi Hendrix and Heart. Live music, delicious food and drink are the backdrop to the most important element of the reception—a chance for guests and sponsors to mix and mingle and get to know each other on a personal level that will enhance their future consultations and collaborations.
8:00 AM - 9:15 AM
Structure and Systems Innovations for Resilience & Integrity
Used to be resiliency was about a home standing up against wind, rain and tremors, but now we need to add extreme heat, dryness and fire to the mix. And integrity, a fancier name for the solid bones of a home that buyers crave, continues to be an area of quiet interest for buyers. It is a felt-more-than-seen-or-heard indicator of quality construction that sits in the gut of buyers as they consider new homes. In this session, we’ll tackle the ways your company can deliver resiliency and integrity within the structure and major systems of the homes you build and, again, how can you market your upgraded plays here to make this a winner on homes sold and price points realized.
9:30 AM - 11:45 AM
35-minute sponsor boardroom presentations
11:45 AM - 1:00 PM
Structure and Systems Innovations for Health & Wellness
Air quality, water quality, quality of light and sound are all aspects of a healthy home, and all may be delivered in part or whole by the structures and systems of a new home. This session will explore the design and product particulars of delivering the so desired health and wellness benefit and, again, how do we market our investments in this space to achieve a return on the revenue and profit side of the equation.
1:30 PM - 5:30 PM
Scheduled 1-on-1 meetings & browsing
6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Interior Logic Group Design Center Tour
Much like you configure and price your car online before you head to the dealership, or leverage technology to see West Elm furniture in your home (before making an in-store purchase), technology can likewise enhance the traditional design studio process. ILG's technology suite, collectively known as Design My Home, cultivates a blend of online and in-person experiences that, when compared to traditional models, are more comfortable for homebuyers, more profitable for builders, and more efficient for designers.
8:00 PM - 10:00 PM
Housing Transformation Holiday Hams After Hours
The Housing Transformation Community will gather to connect socially while taking in live music and Holiday Hams performances, featuring star performers from our Summit guests, sponsors and staff. Be on the lookout for theme drink tickets distributed by AE Ventures staff for acts of community kindness, camaraderie and genius! And get ready for AE staff doing their striking renditions of Adam Sandler’s “Hannukah Song” and Hawaiian favorite “Mele Kalikimaka.”
8:00 AM - 9:15 AM
Incremental Utilization of Prefabricated Components & Panels
Faced with jobsite labor shortages and the continuous process improvement imperative of boosting quality while reducing costs, more and more builders are increasing their use of prefabricated components and panels. In this session we will get a look at the state of the market on component and system availability, dive into design needs and limitations, explore the logistics hurdles and explore make vs. buy considerations.
9:30 AM - 11:35 AM
35-minute sponsor boardroom presentations
11:35 AM - 12:45 PM
Whole-Hog Prefab & Panelization for the Starter & First Time Move-up Markets
Many builders have all but abandoned the low end of the market with their stick-building business, but is that the right strategy given the huge overhang of demand for affordable housing. Some trailblazers steeped in traditional stick-building are taking the plunge into housing that is almost entirely prefabricated and requires minimal labor to assemble after land development and site work is done. Is this a strategy for your company. We’ll tell the story of the trailblazers, and you can decide whether it warrants additional research and development for your company.
1:00 PM - 2:55 PM
Scheduled 1-on-1 meetings
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Topflight Top-of-the-Funnel New Home Digital Marketing
Builders need to seize the digital high ground in home sales with bigger and more ambitious plays in the online marketplaces where most buyers start their research. They also need to fully leverage mid-funnel toolsets like virtual tours, interactive floorplans, visualization and video storytelling on their websites to grab ahold of buyers, educate and drive them closer to an affirmative decision. This session will look at examples of excellence in current practices, identify essentials and discuss high-performance differentiators for builders who want to run ahead of the pack.
4:10 PM - 5:30 PM
35-minute sponsor boardroom presentations
5:45 PM - 6:45 PM
Keynote: From Concept Homes to Real Innovation
Using prototypes of future products for market testing of innovations is a long-established practice of product manufacturers. Almost everyone has seen the concept cars automakers preview at car shows. Some of the feature sets and designs make it to market in commercialized products, some don’t, but there are also powerful promotional positioning effects—e.g. the buying public sees automobile manufacturers as innovators who are continuously pushing forward with new and improved features that respond to changing needs and lifestyles. Wherefore art thou, homebuilders? In this keynote session, we’ll look at the handful of concept homes and communities the building and real estate development industry have put forward, review results and propose a means of doing more, especially through the leveraging of digital designs and experiences that dramatically lower costs and increase speed from concept to presentation.
6:45 PM - 8:00 PM
Connections Reception
Acoustic Grunge will be theme for this year’s Housing Transformation Summit, focusing on acoustic versions of music from the Seattle Grunge scene plus other famous Seattle acts like Jimi Hendrix and Heart. Live music, delicious food and drink are the backdrop to the most important element of the reception—a chance for guests and sponsors to mix and mingle and get to know each other on a personal level that will enhance their future consultations and collaborations.
8:00 AM - 9:15 AM
Virtual Model Homes: Strategy, Execution, Investment Justification
Virtual model homes are becoming a clear winner for many builders. Done right, they accelerate sales in new communities, increase take rates for options, enable quick changes in floorplans and features to respond to trends and consumer data, and save vs. the cost of building multiple models per community. We’ll dive inside the winning strategies, tactics and consumer experiences and map out pitfalls to avoid and keys to successful strategy and implementation.
9:30 AM - 11:45 AM
35-minute sponsor boardroom presentations
11:45 AM - 1:00 PM
Presenting Home Experiences Digitally
Traditional options like flooring, cabinetry, counters, tile and wall accents are well-presented and sold within today’s digital design centers, but what about lifestyle options like tech and healthy home that are more experiential and functional than visual? What are the best practices in showing, telling and selling these features in the digital design center? We’ll take a look at some good examples and provide a vision for the best ways to incorporate them into you digital options selling scheme.
1:30 PM - 5:30 PM
Scheduled 1-on-1 meetings & browsing
6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Interior Logic Group Design Center Tour
Much like you configure and price your car online before you head to the dealership, or leverage technology to see West Elm furniture in your home (before making an in-store purchase), technology can likewise enhance the traditional design studio process. ILG's technology suite, collectively known as Design My Home, cultivates a blend of online and in-person experiences that, when compared to traditional models, are more comfortable for homebuyers, more profitable for builders, and more efficient for designers.
8:00 PM - 10:00 PM
Housing Transformation Holiday Hams After Hours
The Housing Transformation Community will gather to connect socially while taking in live music and Holiday Hams performances, featuring star performers from our Summit guests, sponsors and staff. Be on the lookout for theme drink tickets distributed by AE Ventures staff for acts of community kindness, camaraderie and genius! And get ready for AE staff doing their striking renditions of Adam Sandler’s “Hannukah Song” and Hawaiian favorite “Mele Kalikimaka.”
8:00 AM - 9:15 AM
Digital Design Center CX for Optimum Sales & Buyer Satisfaction
How do homebuyers explore, decide and order their options purchases within the digital design center? Like almost everything else in homebuying and homebuilding there is no single answer, so in this session we’ll layout a variety of buying scenarios and variety of customer experience (CX) functionality that can optimize sales and buyer satisfaction.
9:30 AM - 11:35 AM
35-minute sponsor boardroom presentations
11:35 AM - 12:45 PM
Leveraging BIM: From Architectural Drawings to Bill of Materials & Work Orders
This session focuses on info-flows and workflows from design to production and purchasing in the age of digital transformation. How do we get the information right and delivered on time for execution and how do we handle reverse-flows of information when pieces and parts are not available as planned, both in terms of alerting buyers to substitutions and delays and in updating the digital documentation of the as-built home. It’s all about leveraging the digital design center for on-time and on-budget delivery while keeping buyers informed and meeting requirements.
1:00 PM - 2:55 PM
Scheduled 1-on-1 meetings
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