Taylor Morrison CEO on the value of trust in a challenging market

For Taylor Morrison, trust is more than just a buzzword. 

The company was ranked as the most trusted homebuilder on Time’s 2026 list of America’s Best Companies, was named America’s most trusted homebuilder for the 11th consecutive year in 2026 by Lifestory Research and earned a spot on the 2026-2027 best companies to work for list by U.S. News & World Report. 

Taylor Morrison CEO Sheryl Palmer, during a session at the HousingWire Homebuilder Summit on Tuesday, detailed how this trust can be a competitive advantage, particularly when market conditions worsen. 

In Palmer’s words, trust is what gives Taylor Morrison room to maneuver when the market turns more challenging, whether that means reworking a land deal, resisting pressure to discount or empowering employees to solve problems on their own.

With Berkshire Hathaway as its new owner, Taylor Morrison now has a patient parent company, which Palmer says makes it easier to keep prioritizing trust and long-term strategy over short-term thinking.

Trust allows room to navigate a tougher market

For Palmer, trust is a practical principle, not an abstract ideal. It shapes how Taylor Morrison’s leaders treat their partners and employees, and it influences how the business runs day to day. Ultimately, it comes down to the golden rule: treat people how you’d want to be treated. 

“It’s just real relationships, and if you can give that forward in every relationship, I think good things happen,” Palmer said during the session. 

This philosophy shows up in how Palmer talked about land sellers. Land deals are negotiated often years before a home is built and sold, and the assumptions behind them don’t always hold. When the market becomes more challenging, as it is now, Taylor Morrison sometimes has to revisit the terms of deals it has already agreed to.

The company’s trust-oriented relationships with land sellers are, to an extent, what make those conversations possible. 

Palmer clarified that Taylor Morrison isn’t renegotiating some land deals “for sport.” The ability to renegotiate is crucial, because Taylor Morrison was not immune to the industry’s aggressive land buying during the pandemic-era boom. 

The company saw land prices rising 20% to 30% in 2023. Looking back, Palmer believes that was the time to walk away from land deals instead of overpaying, but she acknowledged how difficult that was when land was highly competitive. 

“As good a job as I think we did, we still screwed it up,” she acknowledged. 

According to Palmer, a trusted relationship gives Taylor Morrison more flexibility to respond when land that looked attractive years ago no longer makes economic sense. Without that foundation of trust, the company would be left with a lose-lose choice: hold onto a deal that no longer works or walk away from a partner. 

With trust in place, both sides can sit down and negotiate in good faith. 

“I don’t know what the market’s going to do next year, and if we really believe that price is the problem and prices are going to drop, the land we’re buying today is probably not going to work. So how do we…have the courage to change the rules of engagement?” Palmer said during the session. 

Consumer trust and avoiding the incentives race

For Palmer, cultivating trust with internal partners, such as land sellers, trade partners and rank-and-file employees, is a prerequisite for superior customer service. Once trust is established company-wide, it can flow down to the individual homebuyer. 

“Do what’s right for the customers. You know, it’s a business. So, you have to treat your internal customers that way to even begin to imagine you’re going to treat your external customers that way,” Palmer advised. 

Palmer’s clearest customer-service advice is that customers deserve complete communication, even when the answer is difficult.

“Our industry has suffered from not closing the loop on customer issues. Sometimes we get 80% there, but our customers deserve 100%…if we can, especially in this market where emotions are flying so hard. We don’t know what’s happening in our customers’ lives. Everything is going to be dramatized. We have to close the loop,” she said. 

She also cautioned that technology can support the customer experience, but can’t replace human connection. 

“Technology cannot deliver emotion. It cannot deliver relationships. Don’t ever think that we can replace the human touch in this process,” she cautioned. 

However, that customer service philosophy is getting a difficult test right now. Palmer argued that the housing industry has trained today’s buyers to expect more and more concessions, particularly in a difficult market. 

“We, as builders, created this environment,” she said. “We created this place where the longer the house has been sitting there, the more we’re going to give you.”

She then compared the current discounting and incentive environment to dining at a restaurant with an extensive menu. 

“I’ll take some salad, and you know that’s a discount, and I’ll take the main entree, and how low are you going to buy down my rate? I mean, I want something on every part of that buffet today,” she said of customers’ expectations. 

The answer, she said, isn’t to offer no incentives or ignore the very real affordability pressures that buyers are facing. However, Palmer also wants Taylor Morrison to regain its confidence in what it sells, because growth has to come at the right price. 

“We have to gain the courage back to sell based on the strengths of our community and our product,” she said.

How trust scales to a national builder

Taylor Morrison sells about 25,000 homes annually, meaning that no single individual can personally manage all customer and partner relationships. The real challenge, therefore, is scaling and institutionalizing that trust and accountability across the organization.

Palmer starts with trusting people in the organization to do what they do best, so long as they follow the company’s overarching philosophy. The company uses scorecards, healthy internal competition and daily huddles to advance this culture.  

“You have to have guardrails. For us, they’re pretty light. It’s integrity and honesty, but beyond that, do what’s right for the customers,” she said. 

Palmer gave an example of how Taylor Morrison’s “Love the Customer” philosophy can come to life, even after the sale. She told the story of a Taylor Morrison employee who learned that a young girl living in a Taylor Morrison community had leukemia. She dreamed of going to Disneyland, but her family couldn’t afford a trip. 

“So, the employee rallied neighbors and local police and firefighters to bring a Disney-themed parade to the community. The parade brought joy not only to the child and her family, but also to the neighbors. 

The point isn’t only the extraordinary experience the employee created. It’s that the employee had the autonomy to act without waiting for corporate approval. 

“You have to have the basic skills. You have to know what you’re doing. “Once you’ve done that, you have to give [employees] room,” Palmer explained. 

For Palmer, this leadership approach dates back to when she became CEO of Taylor Morrison, following the merger of Taylor Woodrow and Morrison Homes. She had run operations before, but integrating and running an entire homebuilding company was new territory. While she had areas of strength, she also had to surround herself with and lean on people who could fill gaps that weren’t her strengths. 

“It was a little bit of fake it till you make it back then,” she said. “This was a whole new venture for me. I had run operations, but running a company and integrating a company was a new experience, but I think when that happens, you kind of fall back on the things that are most natural. And for me…it’s people, and you surround yourself with really talented people.”

The future with Berkshire Hathaway

Palmer noted that Taylor Morrison’s new owner, Berkshire Hathaway, is a good philosophical and cultural fit because of the long-term approach to capital and decision-making that comes with the conglomerate’s oleadership.

Palmer detailed what Berkshire Hathaway CEO Greg Abel told Palmer after the acquisition closed earlier this year. 

“You get to do exactly what you’ve been doing. Run a responsible, good business, but you get to do it with real patience and a long-term lens. Don’t make any decisions for next quarter. Don’t even make decisions for next year. Do what’s right for the business as far out as you can see,” Palmer recalled Abel telling her. 

That patience matters right now, when conditions have, if anything, only worsened over the course of 2026. When Taylor Morrison was publicly traded, it had to answer to shareholders quarterly. This reality may pressure some builders to make decisions that prioritize the short-term over the long run. 

Ownership that values the long view makes it easier will likely make it easier for Taylor Morrison to sell on the strengths of its communities and product rather than offering the largest incentives and price concessions.

That emphasis on long-term thinking aligns with the culture of trust that Palmer has spent nearly two decades building at Taylor Morrison.