As buyers increasingly begin their home search online, the new-construction market has been drawing growing attention as builders compete more aggressively on affordability, offering incentives and competitive pricing on newly built homes.
Yet new-construction listings continue to lag behind resale housing when it comes to accessible, centralized listing data. Information is often scattered across builder websites, sales centers, email updates and third-party platforms, making it difficult for agents and buyers to get a clear, up-to-date picture of what’s available.
Technology companies are working to close that gap. New Estate Only (NEO), a startup that participated in the 2025 REACH program through Second Century Ventures, is building tools designed to make builder-approved inventory, pricing, incentives and project details more transparent and accessible to real estate agents.
Paulo Bethencourt Neto has spent more than a decade leading international sales and marketing initiatives for the home builder Lennar Home, and now as president and chief growth officer at NEO, he’s bringing builders and real estate professionals together to reshape accessibility to new-home listings.
Many buyers start their home search online, but new-construction inventory can still be difficult to navigate compared to resale listings. What are the biggest challenges buyers and agents face when trying to find accurate information about pre-construction and under-construction homes?
Bethencourt Neto: The challenge begins with the fact that new construction operates differently from resale. A resale transaction typically revolves around a single home. New construction revolves around an entire project that evolves over time. Pricing changes, incentives change, inventory is released in phases, floor plans are updated and construction timelines shift.
As a result, information is often distributed across builder websites, sales centers, PDFs, email updates and various third-party platforms. In an era when consumers expect real-time information in virtually every industry, the new-construction market still relies heavily on fragmented information flows. The opportunity for the industry is not simply to create more data, but to make existing data more accessible, accurate and easier to compare.
To do that, does the relationship between builders and real estate professionals need to evolve?
Bethencourt Neto: Like most industries, homebuilders have looked for ways to reduce customer acquisition costs. Rising land prices, labor costs, financing expenses, insurance and regulatory pressures have put increasing pressure on margins. Naturally, builders have explored ways to generate more business directly with consumers.
That led to significant investment in digital marketing, search advertising, consumer portals and other direct-to-consumer strategies. What many builders have discovered is that generating leads and generating buyers are not the same thing.
Real estate professionals continue to be the most effective customer acquisition channel in the industry because they bring something technology cannot: trusted relationships, local market expertise and qualified clients who are ready to make a purchase decision.
The future relationship between builders and real estate agents is likely to become even more important as the market grows more competitive. Builders need efficient access to qualified buyers, and buyers need knowledgeable professionals who can help them navigate an increasingly complex marketplace.
Where do you think the biggest technology gaps still exist in the new-construction segment, and how are companies like NEO addressing them?
Bethencourt Neto: The biggest technology gap in new construction is distribution. Even in markets with hundreds of active communities, most real estate professionals only have access to a small portion of the available opportunities. Researching the broader market often requires building relationships with individual builder sales representatives, visiting communities, and spending significant time gathering basic information that should be readily accessible. As a result, many agents end up selling the same builders and communities repeatedly.
At NEO, we’re focused on helping solve that problem by making builder-approved information more accessible to real estate professionals. The goal is simple: Help agents spend less time researching and more time advising their clients.
One criticism of the new-construction market has been that information can quickly become outdated as projects progress. How has your company attempted to solve this with the use of IFRAMEs for agents?
Bethencourt Neto: One of the most common causes of outdated information is duplication. Our approach is to reduce duplication wherever possible. Through embedded IFRAME technology, agents can display builder-approved information directly from the source rather than maintaining separate copies on their own websites.
This means that when a builder updates inventory, pricing, floor plans or project details, those changes are reflected automatically wherever the information is embedded.
From the consumer’s perspective, the experience feels more current and reliable. From the agent’s perspective, it reduces the time spent verifying information and increases confidence in what they are sharing with clients.
The resale market has long benefited from centralized listing systems. Do you think the new-construction sector is moving toward a similar model of transparency and accessibility?
Bethencourt Neto: I believe the new-construction industry has spent years trying to force a complex category into the wrong model. Most consumer-facing platforms have treated new construction like a variation of resale: a searchable database of listings, monetized through advertising, paid placement or lead sales.
New construction does not behave like resale. A resale listing usually represents a single home with a defined price, location and condition.
At the same time, many of the industry’s largest consumer platforms are built around selling leads directly to builders. Their business model depends on connecting buyers with builder sales teams, effectively bypassing real estate agent representation.
We believe that is a mistake. Every builder has trained sales professionals whose responsibility is to represent the builder’s interests. Buyers deserve professional representation as well.
The more complex the purchase decision becomes, the more important representation becomes. A knowledgeable real estate agent helps buyers compare communities objectively, evaluate incentives, understand financing options, identify trade-offs and often uncover opportunities they would never find on their own. That’s why we don’t believe the future of new construction is another portal designed to sell buyer leads.
At NEO, we built a different model. Rather than competing with real estate agents, we equip them with builder-approved inventory, floor plans, pricing, incentives and project information so they can better serve their clients. We believe agents should own the client relationship, not the platform. Technology should not replace representation. It should strengthen it.
And when buyers are represented by informed professionals, builders receive better-qualified customers, consumers make better decisions and homes are chosen based on merit and value—not simply on who spent the most on advertising.
