From Want-To to Yes: How Digital Pre-Sales Became the Only Path Forward
Buying a new home has never been a “must.” Even when life events prompt people to move, choosing new construction is a want-to decision that depends on confidence and clarity.
And that’s true more so now than almost any time in more than a decade.
Buying new now requires suspending disbelief that it’s the right time. It involves feeling so compelled by a product, a price, and a place that a buyer will take a leap despite hesitation.
This is the core challenge homebuilders face heading into 2026: not pushing people to buy, but persuading people to believe.
And that belief—today—develops long before anyone steps foot in a model home. Increasingly, it begins online.
What Buyers Say They Want—And Why Builders Must Deliver Early
According to NAHB’s November 2025 special study, What Drives Single-Family Home Values, buyers overwhelmingly prioritize a core set of consistent factors:
- location access,
- modern floorplans,
- energy efficiency,
- the ability to personalize, and
- clear price-to-feature tradeoffs.
Perhaps more importantly: buyers want certainty that what they see is what they’ll get—and that the home they’re considering completely matches what they truly value. They’re wary of paying for square footage they don’t need, options they don’t want, or features they can’t visualize. They’re exhausted by friction and ready to walk at the first sign of confusion.
Pre-sales have become a new competitive front. Those who deliver the clearest, fastest, and most transparent digital experience earn the buyer’s trust before even seeking their signature.
Epcon: A Case Study in Turning Digital Into Velocity
One of the strongest real-world proofs of a digital-first approach comes from Epcon Communities, a private builder focused on communities popular with 55+ empty-nester and active-adult buyers — a segment where lifestyle and confidence are as important as price.
Epcon Communities Regional President Paul Hanson explains why pre-sales are more important now than ever and how they’re using Higharc to differentiate themselves among buyers.
“Our biggest challenge is the customer’s mindset,” Hanson says. “They want to see it. They want to know exactly what they’re getting. They want to understand how all the pieces fit together. Higharc helps us show that early in the process. That changes everything.”
He discusses how the system transforms not only buyer engagement but also internal alignment.
“When someone comes in after going through Higharc Showroom on our website, they’re already familiar with the plan,” Hanson says. “They’ve interacted with it. They know the options. They know the look. That reduces discovery time, reduces the number of appointments, and reduces back-and-forth. It also means they come in more excited.”
The shift has also been significant for operational execution.
“For us, accuracy is where the value really shows up,” he said. “Every time we have to reissue a construction set, every time a builder in the field is looking at something that’s outdated, every time the sales team sells something that isn’t actually buildable—that’s time, that’s money, and it hurts the buyer’s experience. With Showroom, we’re able to eliminate almost all of that.”
Notably, Epcon has also used the platform to evolve its product mix.
The insights we’re getting from how buyers interact with plans help guide our product decisions,” Hanson explains. “We can see what they care about, what they’re choosing, what they aren’t choosing. That gives us the ability to adjust before we spend months designing something the market doesn’t want.”
That last point may be the quiet revolution happening beneath the surface. Digital pre-sales don’t just sell homes faster—they inform product strategy, de-risk land positions, and reduce the capital drag of misaligned product assumptions.
Marketing Isn’t a Funnel Anymore—It’s a Digital Operating Model
To see what this means on the front lines of builder sales, we asked someone who has watched the shift happen in real time.
“We’re at a point where builders can’t rely on the old way of doing things,” says Jared Rogers, Senior Director of Sales at Higharc. “Buyers expect a digital-first experience. They want to configure a home, see accurate pricing, and understand how their choices change the home—before they ever talk to someone. If builders don’t meet that expectation, the buyer is gone before the first interaction.”
Rogers claims that digital marketing and digital pre-sales are no longer two separate ideas. They are part of the same system—an ongoing experience.
“Builders who are winning right now are the ones who treat digital as the center of their marketing ecosystem,” he tells me. “Showroom gives them a way to show the home, configure the home, and price the home with accuracy. That creates more qualified leads and makes the entire sales cycle faster.”
Accuracy, he stresses, is the big hinge.
“Most sales material is static or still images. The sales and marketing assets aren’t tied to real data. With Higharc Showroom, everything is connected to the plans and is automatically generated. That means what a buyer selects online is buildable,” Rogers says. “It eliminates rework, eliminates disconnects with the back office and field, and eliminates surprises.”
In other words: clarity equals confidence. And confidence is the currency of pre-sales.
When Hesitancy Is the Market, Precision Becomes the Strategy
Everything we’re seeing in today’s consumer behavior points in the same direction: buyers will not tolerate friction, opacity, or unnecessary cost. They want to buy only what they value. They want transparency. And they want to feel in control.
In a market that is “stuck” and “idling” with cautious demand, selling homes before construction has become one of the few dependable paths to maintaining pace.
Rogers’ point is blunt:
“If builders want more pre-sales and increased buyer confidence, the process has to move online,” he said. “The experience has to be intuitive, accurate, and consistent. Buyers won’t stick around for a fragmented process.”
This is also why builders who treat digital as an overlay often fail. Digital pre-sales are not a cosmetic feature—they’re a reconfiguration of how the business works.
Hanson underscores this:
“What we’ve learned is that Higharc Showroom isn’t just a marketing tool. It changes how our team sells, educates customers, communicates with the field, and prices homes. It’s part of how we run the business now.”
That integration is where pre-sales become scalable rather than episodic.
The Takeaway for Builder-Leaders
This moment in the cycle—marked by uncertainty, rising acquisition costs, hesitant buyers, and relentless pressure on margins—demands that builders rethink how and when they communicate value.
Buyers aren’t buying homes. They’re buying confidence in the decision.
Digital pre-sales are emerging as the most efficient, most accurate, and most buyer-aligned way to deliver that confidence. The combination of self-guided exploration, real pricing, real build rules, and high-fidelity visualization moves buyers from want-to to yes faster—and with fewer errors and less organizational drag.
As Rogers puts it:
“Digital is no longer optional if you want to grow. It’s not a trend. It’s the new operating model.”
Hanson attests to this, operationally:
“Tools like Higharc Showroom help us meet the buyer’s expectations while protecting our own operations. That’s the future. That’s where builders gain an edge.”
The message to the industry is straightforward:
If pre-sales are your lifeline in this market—and they are—your digital experience is now your most important community, your most important model home, and your most important salesperson.
