Start pace fit model

Starts released against absorption you can see the derivation of, with every standing home's ninety-day crossing forecast and priced. Release the right number this week instead of discounting it in five months.

$3.6M

Reference-scale value

Data sets in the model

10 weeks

Build and deploy

Derived

Evidence grade

The decision this model makes

Monday morning, someone decides how many homes to start this week. The inputs are a standing inventory count, last month's traffic and a construction manager's read on what the trades can absorb. The meeting is short because the inputs are thin.

Start too many and the spec inventory ages. Start too few and the sales team sells from a brochure while a buyer walks into a competitor's finished home.

The cost of the first mistake is visible five months later and by then it looks like a pricing problem. A home standing past ninety days carries $3,900 a month and leaves with a concession attached, and the concession gets blamed on the market.

The model reads absorption forward by community and price band, forecasts which standing homes will cross ninety days, and checks every recommendation against the trade roster before it is made.

Cause 01

Aged spec

Homes standing past ninety days. Carry plus the concession an aged home takes at sale. The whole argument.

Cause 02

Pace-driven incentive

Incentive spent moving inventory a better pace would not have created. Shared with the elasticity model.

Cause 03

Burst release

Starts released in clusters, colliding on the trade schedule. Priced by the trade capacity model.

Cause 04

Under-pace

Contracts delayed by an inventory gap. Real, and a timing effect — this model claims none of it.

Want more detail?

The rest of this model — the data sets it runs on, the cause split, the working behind the reference figure and a sample output — goes out by email. Two fields, nothing else.