The two keynote speakers for last month’s 11th annual Women in Residential Construction Conference both had the same warning: builders keep building and selling homes that don’t always match who’s buying and living in them.

Teri Slavik-Tsuyuki, co-founder of the America at Home Study, shared that while 64% of American households are made up of just one or two people, only 4% of new homes built each year are coming in under 1,400 square feet. It’s a gap she called “a 16x mismatch.”

“We have an affordability crisis that is structural. It’s not cyclical,” Teri said, meaning things won’t correct themselves as rates move down or as prices adjust; it changes only when the industry changes how it thinks about what to build. “Life is the input, not the outcome,” she said. Stop thinking about the building first.

Teri says the mismatch also exists for couples raising kids. That cohort makes up just 17% of American households, yet 40% of new homes are sized at 2,400 square feet or larger.

Later in the program, Erin Willis, former chief insights officer at Sekisui House U.S., described a similar mismatch. Single women made up 20% of all home buyers, compared to just 8-11% of men. With that, 89% of home-related financial decisions are directly controlled by women, who also make those decisions for their children and parents. In short, a woman’s impact reaches across three generations.

And yet, builders still default to the male partner. “We tend to collect his information at the sales office,” she said. “We tend to talk finance with him. We tend to talk construction with him.” 

Erin described a mismatch in finished homes, too. “When we look sideways at our competitors and copy what we think is their best-selling floor plan, we’re not necessarily understanding the actual function of the home,” she said.

Her team found evidence of the gap: homeowners running extension cords because the house gave them nowhere to iron or steam, or people asking for bigger pantries when what they really needed is one closer to where the groceries come into the house.  

Designing around what a customer actually does in a house, rather than copying a competitor's checklist, is what Erin calls "an intelligent design for the work of living."

Both Teri and Erin had the same warning: that you can’t assume you’re on the right track just because product is selling. Teri pointed to the Ford Model T, the best-selling car of its era, until Henry Ford wouldn’t change with the times and, in her words, “Chevy ate his lunch.” 

Erin made a related point about her research. Most homeowners respond positively to a general satisfaction question, whether or not the home actually worked for them. But when they are asked about a specific experience inside the home, women reported less satisfaction than men on every measure she tested.

The brand that fills that need, she said, will earn what she called "three generations of loyalty."