I spent ten years selling new homes for builders.
I've lived in Phoenix most of my life. I've lived in Uptown, Biltmore, Arcadia and now Downtown. I've watched this city grow outward, upward and, lately, back inward.
And right now, real estate is having a rough year.
Interest rates are high. The national average for a 30-year fixed mortgage was 7.03% as of September 24, 2026, according to Freddie Mac.
Home prices went up faster than a lot of people's paychecks. Insurance costs more. HOA payments matter. Closing costs matter. And even buyers with good jobs and good credit can look at the total monthly payment and wonder how exactly they're supposed to make the numbers work.
So yes, the market is hard.
But when something isn't working, my brain immediately goes to: okay. What are we going to do about it?
I don't want the answer to be sitting around waiting for 2021 to come back.
And, frankly, I don't think we should be trying to recreate the old market exactly as it was. Because it didn't work for everyone either.
so who are we missing?
This is the question I keep coming back to in my business.
There are people in Phoenix who want to own homes.
Maybe they have a solid income but haven't accumulated $80,000 in cash.
Maybe they could handle a mortgage but can't handle the mortgage plus a giant HOA payment.
Maybe the down payment isn't the problem but closing costs are.
Maybe they assume they need 20% down because nobody ever told them otherwise.
Maybe they walked into a lender's office once, heard "no," and assumed that was the end of the conversation.
It isn't always.
For example, Freddie Mac says qualified borrowers may be able to purchase with as little as 3% down through programs such as Home Possible and HomeOne. Fannie Mae's HomeReady program can also allow eligible borrowers to purchase with as little as 3% down, with flexible sources for down-payment and closing-cost funds. FHA financing can go as low as 3.5% down for qualifying borrowers.
And there are local resources too.
The City of Phoenix currently offers an Open Doors Down Payment Assistance Program for qualifying first-time buyers purchasing within Phoenix. It can provide assistance toward down payment and closing costs, subject to income, purchase-price and other eligibility requirements.
That doesn't mean every program works for every person.
It means ask more questions before assuming the answer is no.
part of my job is knowing what questions to ask
This is one of the biggest things I'm working on in my business right now.
I want to understand as many financing options as I reasonably can.
Not because I'm trying to become a lender. I'm very much not a lender. I'm a real estate agent.
But I never want to be the reason someone hears "no."
I spent a decade on the builder side of the transaction, and one thing that experience taught me is that the headline number isn't always the number that matters most.
Sometimes a builder incentive applied toward a rate buydown changes the equation.
Sometimes seller-paid closing costs matter more to a buyer than another $10,000 off the purchase price.
Sometimes it's a down-payment assistance program.
Sometimes it's choosing a different loan product.
Sometimes we need to look at a different type of house altogether.
That's the part of this market I find interesting.
Instead of: Can you afford this house?
I'm much more interested in: What is keeping you from being able to buy, and is there actually a solution to that problem?
Those are very different questions.
we also need to talk about what we're building
This is where my former builder-sales-person brain and my current real-estate-agent brain collide.
Because financing is only half of this conversation. We also need the right houses to finance.
Phoenix has an incredible history of building modest, interesting homes.
John F. Long started building subdivisions here in the late 1940s and ultimately helped shape entire Phoenix communities, including Maryvale. His approach wasn't only about individual houses. His developments incorporated neighborhood amenities, retail, schools and parks as the community grew.
And if you've followed me for more than five minutes, you probably know how I feel about Ralph Haver.
Haver became known for modest modern tract homes designed for ordinary families. Modern Phoenix describes his work as an effort to bring good modern design into affordable postwar housing rather than reserve architecture for custom-home buyers.
Seriously, go fall down this rabbit hole:
Those houses weren't 4,000 square feet.
They didn't have six bathrooms.
They didn't need a "wellness room."
They were places for people to live. And many of them were really, really good.
somewhere along the way, we lost a lot of the first rung
This doesn't mean I think developers are sitting in conference rooms plotting how to make houses unaffordable.
I've worked for builders. I know better.
Land costs money. Labor costs money. Materials cost money. Infrastructure costs money. Entitlements cost money. Financing a development costs money.
And if it costs nearly as much to entitle the land and install the infrastructure underneath a smaller home as it does a larger one, I understand why the economics push developers toward bigger, more expensive houses.
But understanding the problem doesn't make the outcome any less important.
If almost everything we build starts at the middle or upper rung of the ladder, how is anyone supposed to get onto the first one?
That's why I've become so interested in infill.
Not because infill automatically equals affordable housing. It absolutely does not.
But because using land differently gives us more possibilities.
Smaller homes. Townhomes. Duplexes. Fourplexes. Accessory dwelling units. Adaptive reuse. Missing-middle housing. Homes in existing neighborhoods where streets, businesses, parks and infrastructure already exist.
Phoenix itself has identified increasing housing options as a major policy goal. The city's Housing Phoenix Plan calls for creating or preserving 50,000 homes by 2030 and specifically identifies zoning changes that make more housing types possible.
Phoenix has also adopted a Middle Housing Overlay District, which can allow up to four homes on a qualifying lot.
This is the world I want to spend more of my career working in.
How do we thoughtfully add housing inside the city we already have?
How do we build something new without pretending nothing was here before us?
How do we build smaller without building worse?
How do we make walkability, good design and community part of the conversation?
And how do we create more entry points into homeownership?
because smaller doesn't have to mean bad
I think our industry occasionally confuses luxury with square footage.
They're not the same thing.
Give me less square footage and better windows.
Give me a smaller kitchen that was actually designed for someone who cooks.
Give me a front porch.
Give me natural light.
Give me a great tree.
Give me a house where I can walk out the front door and get coffee.
Give me 1,300 intelligently designed square feet over 2,500 square feet of weird hallways any day.
That's one reason I'm so interested in Phoenix's older neighborhoods and why I've become so focused on infill construction.
The question isn't just: How many houses can we build?
It's: What kind of life are those houses helping create?
and yes, I believe housing is a human right
That belief influences how I look at my job.
It doesn't mean I believe everyone has to buy a house. Homeownership isn't automatically the correct financial decision for every person at every stage of life.
It means I believe people deserve safe, stable housing and that our industry should care deeply when huge groups of people feel permanently locked out of it.
Real estate professionals can't solve housing affordability by ourselves.
Neither can builders. Neither can lenders. Neither can cities.
But each of us controls a small piece of it.
And I control mine.
I can learn the financing programs.
I can ask lenders more questions.
I can negotiate closing costs.
I can learn which builders are willing to get creative.
I can advocate for smaller and more thoughtful housing.
I can help infill developers understand what actual buyers need.
I can point people toward programs they didn't know existed.
And I can refuse to be the person who hears someone's situation and says "you can't buy a house" before we've done the work to find out whether that's actually true.
I'm not waiting for the old market to come back
Would lower interest rates make things easier? Of course.
Would cheaper construction help? Absolutely.
But I'm not particularly interested in spending the next few years complaining that real estate isn't what it used to be.
Markets change. Cities change. People change. Our industry should probably change too.
So that's the question I'm asking as I build the next chapter of Roche Home Co.:
Who are we missing? And then: what would we have to do differently to make room for them?
Maybe it's financing.
Maybe it's construction.
Maybe it's zoning.
Maybe it's smaller houses.
Maybe it's infill.
Maybe it's negotiating differently.
Most likely, it's a combination of all of them.
I spent ten years selling new construction.
Now I'm back in it from a completely different side of the table, working in the neighborhoods I actually live in and care about.
And increasingly, I think this is the work I want to do:
Help figure out what Phoenix needs to build next, and help more people find a way into it.
— Bri