Send us Fan Mail

Fresh off being named the Women's Leadership Circle Woman of the Year at the Jeff Shore Sales and Marketing Leadership Summit, Kristin Peck - Director of Sales and Marketing at Tuskes Homes - joins Anya Chrisanthon for a conversation about value, transparency, and working for your seat at the table.

The award moment
Kristin was scanning the room trying to figure out who was winning - until Amy O'Connor dropped the Zumba hint. For women navigating an industry where their voice doesn't always carry the same weight, the WLC award is about leading while supporting other women.

Value purity - the Summit panel takeaway
When builders lead with incentives, buyers focus on the number instead of the home. They interpret the incentive as the value. Kristin's advice: audit how your homes present value - online, in person, all the way through follow-up - before you discount anything. Because once you lead with the discount, you have to backtrack and restart when they walk through the door.

From flight attendant to sales leader
Kristin was flying for United out of Newark when 9/11 happened. As a young mom of three, she made a pivot - got her real estate license, landed with a large builder, and built a 20+ year career across sales, regional training, and leadership by continually raising her hand for the hard things.

Today's buyer isn't harder - they're overloaded
Buyers aren't more difficult. They're more educated, they've done the research, and they're drowning in information - some of it wrong. Your job is to help them navigate it. That means a "front page" - website, Zillow, MLS - that's clear, concise, attractive, and accurate. And someone who actually responds fast when they have questions, because a distracted buyer moves to the next website that will talk to them.

Why Tuskes doesn't advertise incentives
The price is the price. Tuskes prices homes to market value and leads with transparency - and buyers appreciate it. Confused prospects don't come in. Transparent ones do.

On the Anewgo Marketing App
Full transparency: Tuskes is an Anewgo client. Kristin's take on how the interactive design experience fits the buyer journey: financing and paperwork aren't fun - the app is. It lets buyers bring their vision to life, solves the "what does saddleback even look like" color-name problem, and prepares them for design decisions while having fun doing it.

Kristin's tech filter
Show me how this solves a problem, gets more sales, or enhances the buyer experience. If it can't do at least one, it's not a product for her. And on AI: general AI is great for admin, but homebuilding needs specialized AI grounded in accurate facts - not three-sink kitchens from a generic image generator.

Advice for future leaders
You're not entitled to anything you didn't work for. If you want a seat at the table, start working for it - take the hard tasks, push out of your comfort zone, and surround yourself with people who make you better.

Connect with Kristin on LinkedIn and learn more about Tuskes Homes at tuskeshomes.com. Explore Shore Consulting programs including the Women's Leadership Circle at jeffshore.com.

About Anewgo
Anewgo is an all-in-one new home sales and marketing platform. We equip builders with AI-ready homebuilder websites, interactive design tools, floorplans, sitemaps, AI Sales Assistants, and data analytics to create personalized buyer journeys. Learn more at anewgo.com or find every episode at anewgo.com/podcast.

Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/anewgo-of-new-home-sales/id1602564768

Send us Fan Mail

Before you blame the market, look at how your homes show up online. Chad Davies - founder of Davies Imaging Group (DIG), serving builders doing 500+ units a year across 28 markets - joins Anya Chrisanthon fresh off the Jeff Shore Sales and Marketing Leadership Summit, where his team captured the entire event from behind the camera.

The view from the Summit
Every conversation - on stage and at the bar - came back to the same theme: stop negotiating. Selling homes is no longer a price battle. Builders have cut as much as they can, and the differentiator now is how you capture buyer attention.

The DIG story
Chad photographed his first $2 million home at 17. Sixteen years later, DIG is a specialized team - photographers who only photograph, dedicated editors in Guadalajara ripping through post-production, virtual staging artists, and a separate video production discipline. Why? Because one person can't carry the whole weight, and the friction in builder photography lives at the front and back end: scheduling, communication, and turnaround time.

What 28 markets reveal
Some regions are ripping, others are slow - and the trends are shifting. California, which invented the twilight photography craze, now wants daytime shots. Lifestyle and amenity video is surging while standalone model video fades. And in competitive markets like Texas, builders are suddenly finding photography budget - because when you can't compete on price, location, or product, presentation is the only lever left.

The spec home rant
If your home exists, it needs real professional photos - not a rendering, not construction team phone pics. And if it's not selling within a month, stage the pictures. Chad's team is seeing homes that sat for a year sell in weeks after virtual staging. Buyers aren't buying a shell - they're buying a new lifestyle, and you can't show them that with an empty room. Your job as a marketer is to remove the imagination, not demand it.

The virtual staging surprise
The biggest fans of virtual staging aren't marketing teams - they're sales teams. When a stale listing gets staged, it renews the sales team's excitement to sell it. If you want to empower your salespeople, stage the sitting inventory.

Where AI fits
AI-generated video is a variation of a photo, not a replacement for video production. Use it to fill social channels and supplement your media strategy - but it's an "and," not an "or."

The biggest untapped opportunity in builder content
Mic up your construction team. The first big builder that embraces behind-the-scenes content from their superintendents - showing culture and quality instead of talking about it - is going to have a great year. As Chad puts it: you're not telling people your culture, you're showing them.

Connect with Chad on LinkedIn or on Instagram (Chad Davies), and learn more at daviesimaging.com.

About Anewgo
Anewgo is an all-in-one new home sales and marketing platform. We equip builders with AI-ready homebuilder websites, interactive design tools, floorplans, sitemaps, AI Sales Assistants, and data analytics to create personalized buyer journeys. Learn more at anewgo.com or find every episode at anewgo.com/podcast.

Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/anewgo-of-new-home-sales/id1602564768

Send us Fan Mail

93.2%. That is the Google AI Overview citation rate for the builder Anewgo has been working with on its AEO initiative - meaning when buyers ask Google's AI real questions about communities, floor plans, features, and pricing in that builder's market, the AI cites that builder's website as a source 93% of the time. In this July State of AI episode, Anya Chrisanthon - CCO at Anewgo - walks through the newest data from Anewgo CTO Keng Lim's follow-up study and rounds out the month's biggest AI news for home builders.

Finding one: the builder became part of more buyer conversations - on every platform
ChatGPT surged early (16% to 72%), gave back some ground, and finished at 61%. Gemini climbed steadily to a new high of 75%. Google AI Overview climbed at every single measurement and finished at 93.2%. Three platforms, three different trajectories, all moving up. The lesson: buyers ask the same question in different AI tools and get different answers. If you're only measuring one platform - or not measuring at all - you have an incomplete picture.

Finding two: being cited is not the same as being recommended
Google cited the builder's website 93% of the time but ranked them number one only 43% of the time - a 50-point gap. Getting found and trusted by AI is step one. Step two is making the case: clear community details, plan options, included features, real points of difference. That's what converts a citation into a recommendation.

Finding three: AEO creates value before the website visit
While AI visibility went up, website sessions dropped about 47%. The study can't attribute the traffic change to AEO - but the opposing trends prove that sessions alone can no longer measure AEO progress. A buyer can have a meaningful brand encounter with your business inside an AI answer, and your analytics never see them. The new scorecard: are AI tools citing you, are they recommending you, and are the visits you do get more engaged and qualified?

The rest of July in AI
The model race kept sprinting - GPT-5.6 shipped as a full lineup and the industry theme shifted from "best model wins" to "best fit wins." The European Commission ordered Google to open Android to rival AI assistants - one more sign that the AI on your buyer's phone is becoming a choice, not a default, and your digital presence has to work for all of them. And agent frameworks went from theoretical to shipping - moving AI from answering questions to completing work.

📊 Read Keng Lim's full article with all the charts: Case Study Update: 93% Google AI Overview Citation Rate
📖 The original case study: How a Builder's ChatGPT Citation Rate Rose from 16% to 72%
🔍 Free AEO Assessment: email your website URL to beth@anewgo.com, subject "AEO Assessment" - free, no obligation, specific to home building.

About Anewgo
Anewgo is an all-in-one new home sales and marketing platform. We equip builders with AI-ready homebuilder websites, interactive design tools, floorplans, sitemaps, AI Sales Assistants, and data analytics to create personalized buyer journeys. Learn more at anewgo.com or find every episode at anewgo.com/podcast.

Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/anewgo-of-new-home-sales/id1602564768

Send us Fan Mail

What's really happening in your sales offices when you're not there? Leah Turner, national sales coach and trainer at Melinda Brody & Company, is back on the show for the 40th anniversary year of one of the most unique research studies in new home sales. In this episode, she and Anya Chrisanthon dig into the 2025 Annual Benchmark Report - and what the data reveals about where sales teams are winning and where they're still leaving sales on the table. Listen to a previous episode with Leah here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/secrets-to-successful-realtor-engagement-with-leah/id1602564768?i=1000623849874

What video mystery shopping actually looks like
Shoppers walk into your sales office with a hidden camera. The full interaction is recorded, scored, and sent to the sales manager. But what makes Melinda Brody & Company different is the one-on-one call before the shop - where the shopper is briefed on the specific challenges that sales manager wants to address. It's not a gotcha. It's a baseline.

The builder story gap - still
Only 49% of sales associates shared the builder story in 2025. Leah says the problem isn't awareness - it's the introduction. Salespeople don't know how to bring it up naturally. Her fix: start with "Have you ever built a new home before?" and let the answer lead you in. And whatever you do - say the builder's name. One associate described the warranty, the quality, and the energy efficiency for several minutes and never once said who the builder was.

The model demo jump
From 84% to 95% in one year. The biggest shift Leah has seen: top producers are bypassing the sales office entirely and taking buyers straight into the model. Into the kitchen. Let them walk. Join them. The forced "sit down in the sales office first" approach was raising everyone's anxiety - including the salesperson's.

Closing is not a moment - it's the whole presentation
Closing sits at 52%. Leah's take: salespeople treat closing like something that happens at the end, which makes it terrifying. If you ask "what's important to you in a home, a homesite, a builder, a community?" upfront - and customize everything around those answers - the close at the end is just a natural next step. You've earned the right to ask.

The buyers walking in today are already qualified
Buyers use technology to disqualify. If they made it through the research phase and walked into your sales office, they are interested. They are a hot lead. As Leah puts it - they're more like a B-back than a first-time visitor. Treat them that way.

Follow-up jumped from 51% to 67%
Technology and CRMs are helping. But Leah's warning: generic follow-up is worse than no follow-up. If your message is "thanks for coming out, call me if you have questions" - don't bother. Make it specific. Make it memorable. Reference something real from the presentation. Better yet - shoot a 30-second video of yourself.

The cringiest things caught on camera
Smoking cigarettes on the home site. Painting fingernails. Eating lunch. Not standing up when a prospect walks in. And the shift Leah has seen over the last ten years: top performers now ask to be video shopped. They want to see themselves. They want to improve.

Connect with Leah: leah.turner@melindabrody.com
Connect with Ben Marks: ben.marks@melindabrody.com
Melinda Brody & Company on LinkedIn and Facebook

About Anewgo
Anewgo is an all-in-one new home sales and marketing platform. We equip builders with AI-ready homebuilder websites, interactive design tools, floorplans, sitemaps, AI Sales Assistants, and data analytics to create personalized buyer journeys. Learn more at anewgo.com or find every episode at anewgo.com/podcast.

Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/anewgo-of-new-home-sales/id1602564768

Send us Fan Mail

Imagine you have an old analog TV from the nineties. Right now there is the most incredible programming available - streaming, 4K, immersive audio, interactive everything. But you're watching it on that old boxy TV with rabbit ears. You're not getting a fuzzy version. You're getting static. Because the technology delivering all of that content is simply not compatible with the hardware you're using to receive it.

That is exactly the situation a lot of home builders are in with their websites right now.

In this solo episode, Anya Chrisanthon - CCO at Anewgo - rolls up the June AI brief and answers the question every builder needs to be asking: can your website actually keep up with what AI is doing right now?

The June AI brief
Google announced the best ads must now be answers - already testing a format in real estate where buyers ask questions inside an ad and get answers pulled from your website. Apple rebuilt Siri from the ground up as an agentic AI that takes actions across apps on behalf of the buyer, introduced Visual Intelligence in the camera so buyers can point their phone at your model home and ask what elevation it is and what it costs, and quietly built infrastructure for buyers to swap ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini inside Siri. AI Overviews now reaches 2.5 billion users. AI Mode searches run three times as long as traditional searches. Buyers are asking AI questions before they ever visit a website.

That is the programming that's available right now. The question is whether your website can receive any of it.

Three things an AI-ready website can do that traditional builder websites cannot

First - it can be understood by AI. AI systems aren't reading your website for emotion or brand vibes. They're looking for specific, structured, consistent information. Vague taglines, generic community descriptions, and marketing language that sounds great to humans give AI nothing to work with. An AI-ready website is written so AI can read it, understand it, and summarize it accurately to a buyer who asks. That is AEO - Answer Engine Optimization.

Second - it connects to the platforms buyers are already using. An AI-ready website isn't just a destination. It's a connected node in a larger ecosystem. Anewgo's ChatGPT integration lets buyers design their home inside ChatGPT and arrive on your website already identified, already engaged, already partway through the journey. A traditional builder website built on a standard CMS has no pathway to that experience. It doesn't matter if your website is new or was just launched. If it wasn't built for AI, it's already outdated.

Third - it learns. Every buyer who visits, every floor plan they view, every color they select, every question they ask the AI assistant - all of that is behavioral data that feeds back into the intelligence layer of your platform. 99.5% of your website visitors never fill out a form. On a traditional website, those buyers are invisible. On an AI-ready website, they have a profile.

Two things from today:
(1) Free AEO Assessment - email your website URL to beth@anewgo.com, subject "AEO Assessment" - no obligation, no cost, specific to home building.
(2) See what a fully AI-ready builder website looks like: anewgo.com

About Anewgo
Anewgo is an all-in-one new home sales and marketing platform. We equip builders with AI-ready homebuilder websites, interactive design tools, floorplans, sitemaps, AI Sales Assistants, and data analytics to create personalized buyer journeys. Learn more at anewgo.com or find every episode at anewgo.com/podcast.

Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/anewgo-of-new-home-sales/id1602564768

Send us Fan Mail

Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference just happened - and the message for home builders is bigger than most people realize. In this solo episode, Anya Chrisanthon - CCO at Anewgo - breaks down the biggest announcements from WWDC 2026 and translates them into plain language for home builder sales and marketing leaders.

Siri goes agentic
Apple rebuilt Siri from the ground up - powered by Google's Gemini and Apple's own on-device models. The new Siri doesn't just answer questions. It takes actions across apps on behalf of the user. Composing emails, managing files, performing multi-step tasks without manual navigation. The home buying version of this - scheduling tours, requesting brochures, getting answers about a specific floor plan - is coming. The builders whose digital presence is ready for it will have a significant advantage.

Visual Intelligence in the Camera app
Apple introduced a dedicated Siri mode inside the camera app. A buyer standing in front of your model home points their camera at the exterior - and Siri tells them the elevation, color scheme, community, and starting price if that information is structured and accessible online. Apple just built the infrastructure for a visual AI layer that sits on top of every physical space a buyer walks into. That changes what a model home experience looks like.

The hidden feature Apple didn't announce
After the keynote, developers discovered a hidden Extensions framework in the iOS 27 developer beta that lets users swap ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini inside Siri - infrastructure Apple built but chose not to announce. Apple is hedging. Siri becomes the container. The AI model underneath can be whatever the user prefers. When a buyer asks their phone about your homes, it might be Siri answering. Or ChatGPT through Siri. Or Claude. Or Gemini. If your digital presence doesn't give any of those AI systems enough specific, accurate, structured information to answer with confidence - you're not in that conversation. This is exactly why AEO matters across all platforms, not just one.

Search gets faster
Apple rebuilt the foundation of search across Spotlight, Mail, and Photos - and the new infrastructure indexes new files and data almost immediately. The lag between publishing content and having it surfaced by AI systems is closing. A community page that hasn't been updated in six months is going to look stale in a way it never did before.

📋 Three things from today:
(1) Free AEO Assessment - email your website URL to beth@anewgo.com, subject "AEO Assessment"
(2) Marketing App 3.0 webinar replay
(3) See what a fully connected AI-ready buyer experience looks like: anewgo.com

About Anewgo
Anewgo is an all-in-one new home sales and marketing platform. We equip builders with AI-ready homebuilder websites, interactive design tools, floorplans, sitemaps, AI Sales Assistants, and data analytics to create personalized buyer journeys. Learn more at anewgo.com or find every episode at anewgo.com/podcast.

Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/anewgo-of-new-home-sales/id1602564768

Send us Fan Mail

Google Marketing Live 2026 just happened - and the message wasn't about features. It was a warning. In this solo episode, Anya Chrisanthon - CCO at Anewgo - breaks down the biggest announcements from GML 2026 and translates them into plain language for home builder sales and marketing leaders.

The headline nobody said out loud Google's Chief Business Officer opened with "I'm not exaggerating when I say we have made a decade's worth of innovation in the last year alone." That's not marketing speak. That's a warning for anyone still in wait-and-see mode.

How your buyers are already searching differently AI Overviews now reaches 2.5 billion monthly users. AI Mode has passed 1 billion. Searches in AI Mode run three times as long as traditional searches. Your buyer is having a conversation with AI right now - and if your website doesn't give AI enough to work with, you're not in that conversation.

The best ads must be answers Google's VP of Ads said it directly on stage: "The best ads must be answers." Google introduced a Business Agent for Leads - already being tested in real estate - where buyers can ask questions inside an ad and get answers pulled directly from your website. If your website doesn't have clear, specific answers to real buyer questions, AI has nothing to pull from.

AI Brief: great news for smaller builder marketing teams AI Brief lets advertisers give Google's AI a creative brief in plain language and let it handle execution. The role of your marketing team is shifting from doing to directing - and that levels the playing field against national builders with big agencies.

The Universal Cart - and why John Lee called this years ago Google's Universal Cart follows buyers across Search, Gemini, YouTube, and Gmail without losing their place. John Lee has been talking about this exact connected, agentic buyer journey for years. Anewgo's ChatGPT integration - where a buyer designs their home in ChatGPT and arrives on your website already identified and engaged - is the home building version of this. It exists today.

Measurement finally grows up Google's Meridian marketing mix modeling tool is now inside Google Analytics 360. For the first time, builders have infrastructure to show leadership exactly which channels are driving sales - not just leads.

📋 Three things from today:

(1) Free AEO Assessment - email your website URL to beth@anewgo.com, subject line "AEO Assessment" - specific to home building, no obligation.

(2) Watch the Ecosystem Webinar replay with John Lee

(3) Register for the Anewgo Marketing App 3.0 launch webinar - June 9th, open to everyone: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_w0K2dtK9QW2Bp26h9vZu_A

About Anewgo Anewgo is an all-in-one new home sales and marketing platform. We equip builders with AI-ready homebuilder websites, interactive design tools, floorplans, sitemaps, AI Sales Assistants, and data analytics to create personalized buyer journeys. Learn more at anewgo.com or find every episode at anewgo.com/podcast.

Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/anewgo-of-new-home-sales/id1602564768