Ben Caballero, like scores of real estate professionals, started the year optimistic. After all, 2025 was supposed to be rock bottom, setting — as the old adage says — the foundation for a market comeback.
But 2026 has been a mixed bag at best, with new-home sales, days on market, sales as a percentage of list price, active listings and pending listings flat or barely eking out gains.
“I thought, with the tax cuts, the Fed chairman was going to be leaving, and we’d see some interest rate cuts. That hasn’t happened, and now they’re talking about raising interest rates instead,” he told Inman. “We’re seeing that our builders’ inventory is high. In some cases we see improvement over last year in terms of the numbers, but I don’t see improvement in sales prices.”
However, Caballero hasn’t let those headwinds, matched with quickening consolidation, deter him from pursuing another banner year. Grit, resilience and the good ‘ol problem-solving skills developed in the military and his years running a property management business using a pay phone are still working in his favor.
“Well, my philosophy is: As the owner of a company, what I deal with most of all is problems — whether it’s paying the bills, paying employees, whatever it is, there are going to be problems, and my job is to solve them,” he said. “I first identify the problem and make sure I understand it, and then I stop talking about the problem. I don’t want to hear about the problem anymore — I want to work on solutions.”
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Inman: It’s good to chat with you. Let’s get into your latest venture, SpecDeck. How did that platform come to fruition?
Caballero: Well, we’ve been doing this since 2007. Back then, technology wasn’t nearly as advanced, so a few years ago we decided we needed to update, refine, and incorporate more services. That took us quite a while, and that’s what SpecDeck has become — it’s updated with new technology, and we’ve incorporated a number of services specifically for builders.
Builders have a different need than someone buying or selling a house — they’re dealing in hundreds, sometimes thousands, of homes. What they need is a way to manage that efficiently, and that’s what SpecDeck does for them. It automates many of the processes that are needed, and some are automated to the point where they don’t have to do anything.
I didn’t really start covering the homebuilding market until 2020, because the COVID-19 pandemic was wreaking havoc on the supply chain and other parts of the industry. Where are things now? What are the main challenges homebuilders are facing today?
Well, the market continues to consolidate. Lennar and D.R. Horton built over 80,000 homes last year — that’s just mind-boggling. With consolidation, builders have been able to hire better architects, better designers, do better purchasing and access better materials. They now have full-blown marketing departments, sales departments and purchasing departments.
The other thing I see is that floor plans are so much better. When I was building homes, you had to have a living room and a dining room when you walked in, and you’d use the living area or den as kind of a big hall that opened onto the bedrooms and kitchen. Now the plans are much more sophisticated — one particular design has what we call a “company kitchen,” and then a sub-kitchen where you do all the messy work.
The quality, in my opinion, is better, too — it’s just an overall better product than what I built back in the ’80s.
The resale side of the industry is also going through a period of major consolidation among brokerages, and there’s the ongoing debate about multiple listing services and who truly owns listing data. Do you see any parallels between that and the consolidation on your side of the market?
Well, I think technology is making that possible, though I won’t blame it on technology, because I don’t think it’s technology’s fault.
When I started this service, primarily SpecDeck, just in Dallas, I had to belong to seven or eight MLSs — Garland, Arlington, Lewisville; all of them had their own MLS. Now, the MLS I belong to here in Dallas has 17, 18, maybe 19 MLSs all incorporated under NTREIS — North Texas Real Estate Information Systems — which covers everything from Shreveport to Abilene, and from Ferris, Texas, to Sherman, Texas. That’s a huge area, and with one MLS, I now have access to all of that.
What’s happening now is that MLSs are sharing data — so I can list a home in Dallas and it’ll be shared with Houston, and Houston’s listings get shared with Dallas, San Antonio and Austin. That’s an almost incomprehensible shift. The internet has enabled us to have systems and communications that make this possible. Back in the day, there’s no way anyone could have built 81,000 homes in a year — but now, with technology and the internet, they can.
It’s the same story with builders, MLSs and brokerages — they’re all consolidating. That’s just the way the world is working right now.
You’re right. I read your origin story and how you started your first business, which was a property management firm, on a pay phone. And we’re light years away from that technology. What’s your advice to agents starting now? How can they be adaptable and stay open to changing how they operate as new technologies and ways of doing business emerge?
Well — you’re going to adapt, or you’re going to die. There will still be some agents holding on to how things used to be, but their business will slowly erode, their clients will erode, and eventually, they won’t be around anymore. This is a world for the young and the adaptable.
And you’ve proven those aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive terms.
Of course, this is causing a lot of concern about job losses, but I really believe it’s going to work out for the betterment of humanity. I could be wrong, but—
You’re talking about artificial intelligence, right?
Well, AI is just the latest thing. When I started this business, builders were just beginning to have computers in their sales offices — and I don’t think they were even on the internet at first. Now everything is hooked into the main office; contracts are downloaded from the office, filled out and sent back electronically. Now everything is connected.
Pausing on what you said about ‘adapt or die,’ how do you build the skill of being adaptable? How do you become a better problem solver?
Well, my philosophy is: as the owner of a company, what I deal with most of all is problems — whether it’s paying the bills, paying employees, whatever it is, there are going to be problems, and my job is to solve them. I first identify the problem and make sure I understand it, and then I stop talking about the problem. I don’t want to hear about the problem anymore — I want to work on solutions.
What I’ve found is that in my company, we’ve never had a problem we couldn’t solve by bringing everyone together — whoever the specific people are that it applies to. That’s been particularly helpful, given that I’m a leader who started out not even knowing what a browser was. I don’t code, but I can meet with developers — that’s what we call the people who write the code — and through logic and their help, we can usually come up with a solution we all agree on.
I see people who find a problem and wallow in it, almost with glee, for way longer than makes sense — like they’re not even looking for a solution anymore; they’re just wallowing in it. That’s a waste of time, a waste of money — that’s all it is.
