- Trust has overtaken price as the biggest factor influencing new-home buyers' decisions.
- Builder stability, transparency, and communication are now key competitive advantages.
- Technology matters, but only when it supports better processes and a stronger customer experience.
For most of the past two decades, selling a new home came down to price, product and a display village that looked the part. Homecorp founder and chief executive Ron Bakir argues that era is firmly over – and that the builders who haven’t noticed are the ones most at risk.
“The biggest change has been the level of pressure across the whole system,” Bakir says, rattling off land, construction costs, labour, approvals, finance and affordability all tightening at once. “Buyers are just a lot more cautious. They’re more informed, they’re more selective.”
It’s a shift Bakir has watched from a useful vantage point. He built Homecorp from a single Gold Coast block in 2004 into a developer-builder responsible for more than 10,000 dwellings nationally. Homecorp is majority owned by Prime Life Technologies – a company backed by global giants Toyota and Panasonic.
From building houses to guiding buyers
The defining change, Bakir says, is transparency. Buyers now arrive having done the homework before they ever pick up the phone.
“Buyers research everything before they speak to a builder,” he says. “They compare reviews, inclusions, timelines, finance options, design choices.” That has quietly rewritten the builder’s job description. “It’s no longer just about building a house. It’s about guiding the customer through a complex process and giving them confidence at every step that you’ll still be here in five and ten years’ time.”
That last point is not theoretical. A run of high-profile builder collapses has left buyers wary, and Bakir says the single question that now sits underneath every enquiry is a blunt one: can I trust that this builder will still be around?
“They want clear inclusions, clear pricing, clear communication and clear, realistic timeframes,” he says. “Gone are the days of plus, plus, plus, plus. People are used to digital convenience in every part of their lives, so they expect the home-building process to be transparent and easy to follow.”
“It’s no longer just about building a house – it’s about giving them confidence at every step that you’ll still be here in five and ten years’ time.”
Ron Bakir, Homecorp
The questions buyers actually ask
To pressure-test that thinking, Homecorp recently ran a pilot session with around 30 prospective buyers in a room, simply listening to what was on their minds.
“The consistent theme was: how financial are you? Are you going to be around?” Bakir recalls. “These customers aren’t just asking what the price is. They’re asking who they’re dealing with. What have you delivered? What do other customers say about you? Can we trust you?”
It’s a marked change from the headline-price shopping of a few years ago – and, Bakir suggests, the reason a backer with deep pockets has become a genuine selling point rather than a footnote. Substance now signals safety.
New versus established: a more analytical buyer
Affordability pressures haven’t just made buyers cautious; they’ve made them analytical. When weighing a new build against an established home, Bakir says, the comparison has widened well beyond the sticker price.
“They’re looking at maintenance, energy efficiency, stamp duty, location, incentives – all of it,” he says. “A new home can give buyers certainty around design and lower maintenance, but buyers need help to understand the full picture, not just the headline price.”
His example is the established home that looks cheaper on day one. “What’s my net position after 20 years of maintenance costs? That’s what the smart buyer is now working out.”
Process first, technology second
Ask Bakir about technology and AI and he’s quick to reframe the question. Yes, he says, it’s reshaping every part of the business – sales, design, estimating, procurement, construction management, customer communication and post-handover service. The biggest single benefit is visibility: good systems let teams spot issues earlier and make better decisions, reducing friction across the build.
But he’s emphatic that the tools come second.
“Technology only works if the underlying process is good,” he says. “You can’t use technology to cover up bad processes. You fix the process first, then use technology to make it faster, more consistent, more transparent and more efficient.”
Where AI has earned its place, he says, is in understanding what buyers are really asking for. “It helps us bed down the customer’s enquiry – and what we’re seeing is that people want to know not just the price, but who they’re buying from.”
The transparency philosophy shows up most concretely in how Homecorp tracks a build for the customer. “If you tell a customer the frame will be up on the 21st of July, you need to show them it’s on track,” Bakir says. “Then on the 22nd, they can log in and see – my frame is actually up. It’s those little steps of trust along the way that build confidence.”
That, he says, is the whole point. “Our model isn’t to sell a home once. It’s to have customers keep coming back and want to be part of Homecorp. One of our mantra’s is customers for life.” He returns repeatedly to a line he says he drills into his team: “If you’re not prepared to hand the home over to your mother, your sister, your brother – someone dearest to your heart – then don’t hand it over to the customer. People spend a lifetime saving for this moment. It’s our duty to make it seamless and special.”
The outlook: value, certainty – and the affordability ceiling
Looking one to three years out, Bakir doesn’t sugar-coat the backdrop. “The world is in turmoil,” he says plainly. In that environment, he expects smart buyers to gravitate toward value, certainty and long-term liveability: homes that are well-located, energy efficient and – a theme he says keeps surfacing – low maintenance.
“People are time-poor,” he says. “The big backyard you spend the weekend mowing is losing its appeal. Add kids into the mix and you’ve got a real problem.”
Smart-home technology is part of the answer, but Bakir is candid about its limits. “Smart homes will keep growing, but it always comes back to affordability,” he says. “Everyone wants the bells and whistles. The question is: can you afford them? That’s the key.”
But for all the talk of technology, Bakir keeps returning to the same point. People buy a home perhaps once or twice in a lifetime, and they should feel guided and looked after at every step of it. The builders who earn lasting loyalty, he argues, won’t be the ones with the flashiest tech, but the ones who nurture the customer through the whole journey, from the first enquiry to the day the keys are handed over, and who can still be trusted to be there long after.
This article is based on an interview conducted by The Property Tribune. Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
