My most recent column for Builder & Developer magazine now online

My column for the January issue of Builder & Developer magazine is now online.

For the new year, I wanted to focus on what role many economic & feasibility consultants had in the housing bust:

When I first started writing market studies in the late 1980s, figuring out the demand for new homes in specific price ranges was a requirement for a full-fledged analysis. But by the late 1990s, as the market began to rebound and public home builders snapped up local companies, the only data many clients wanted to see were the prices and sales velocity of their top competitors...

Indeed, some companies offering consulting services to developers owe their entire growth strategies to their reputations for providing supposedly objective reports – at least from the unknowing point of view of compliant construction lenders – that would magically hit pre-set targets for prices and sales velocity...
Click here for entire column.