When today’s buyers hesitate, it’s not just about interest rates, it’s about confidence. In From Custom to Click, a recent Builder’s Daily webinar hosted by HousingWire and powered by Higharc, leaders from Tim O’Brien Homes shared how they’re tackling that challenge head-on by simplifying their offerings, connecting their systems, and giving customers a visual, online path to their dream home.
The conversation, moderated by John McManus of The Builder’s Daily, featured Danny Lowry, President of Tim O’Brien Homes; Ryan Hilgartner, VP of Marketing and Customer Experience; and Conor Sedam, Director of Customer & Partner Marketing at Higharc. Together, they unpacked what it takes to turn complexity into clarity and clicks into contracts.
Builders are Cautious, Buyers are Uncertain, and the Old Way Doesn’t Move Fast Enough
McManus opened the webinar with a reality check on market conditions.
“We’ve all seen how the housing market has shifted in 2025,” he said. “Sales cycles are stretching out, and the old way of doing business doesn’t move fast enough anymore. Every builder I talk to faces the same tension, pressure to maintain sales velocity and margins on one side, and buyers who are hesitant and harder to win over on the other.”
For Tim O’Brien Homes, that tension became a catalyst for change.
Lowry explained how the company, one of Wisconsin’s leading builders, with roughly 200 homes a year across Madison and Milwaukee, recognized that the way forward was not through more customization, but less.
“We used to have 35 or 40 plans,” Lowry said. “The top eight or nine sold 80 percent of our homes. So we asked, Why are we carrying all that complexity? Simplifying wasn’t about cutting options, it was about creating certainty for buyers and efficiency for our team.”
The Visualization Gap
Lowry described what he calls the visualization gap, a barrier that’s long held back buyers of to-be-built homes.
“Customers can visualize almost everything they buy - a car, a phone, a piece of furniture - and feel confident in the purchase,” he said. “When it comes to homes, though, they’re asked to imagine the finished product from static plans or memory. That gap creates hesitation.”
When buyers can’t see what they’re getting, they wait, or they buy an inventory home instead.
“That’s what we were seeing,” Lowry said. “Buyers would fall in love with a model, then default to something already built because they couldn’t visualize their own home or didn’t want to wait a year for it.”
That insight led Tim O’Brien Homes to Higharc, and a shared mission to make homebuilding visual, simple, and data-connected.
Now Buyers Show Up With Their Plan Ready to Go
On the sales and marketing side, Hilgartner has seen the shift firsthand since embedding Higharc into the company’s website. The new experience lets buyers explore floor plans, add rooms, and customize features online, all in live 3D.
“We launched the new site just under two months ago,” he said. “Already, we’ve had buyers walk into appointments with their plan ready to go. Salespeople tell me, ‘That was really cool, they’d already built it online, and we could move straight into next steps.’”
That excitement translates to faster discovery and more informed buyers.
“People do tons of research before they talk to us,” Hilgartner said. “The more tools we give them to explore, the more confident they are. Visualization doesn’t replace the salesperson, it makes that first conversation more valuable.”
Connecting Every System, Not Just Every Team
Hilgartner also shared a look behind the scenes at how Tim O’Brien Homes is connecting Higharc, HubSpot, and ECI MarkSystems into a single, data-driven ecosystem.
“We’re raving fans of all three,” he said. “But we don’t want to enter the same information three times. Our goal is that if something needs to flow from Higharc to HubSpot to MarkSystems, it just happens. That way, the sales team can focus on selling, not data entry.”
The integrations mean that when a customer saves a home design on the website, that plan automatically appears in the CRM, ready for the salesperson to review before the appointment.
“It’s a small thing with a big impact,” Hilgartner said. “The rep can see which options a buyer picked, what they value, and start the meeting at a more personal level.”
Ultimately, that clarity will flow all the way through pricing.
“We’re close to having live pricing from MarkSystems appear right in Higharc,” he said. “That means a salesperson can sit with a buyer, add structural options, and instantly see what it looks like, and what it costs.”
Simplify First, Then Connect
For Lowry, the first step wasn’t technology — it was simplification.
“When we were smaller, we could customize easily,” he said. “Now, at 200 homes a year, that doesn’t scale. We had to find a way to simplify first - cutting plans, defining standards - so that when we brought in new systems, they actually worked.”
That simplification made space for integration. But it also reshaped the culture.
“Change management was tough,” Lowry admitted. “We implemented a new ERP, new CRM, and new design platform all at once. But now we’re hearing the sales team advocate for it. They see how it helps them sell faster and reduces the back-and-forth with production.”
He’s already seeing measurable results: shorter lead-to-contract times, a growing share of to-be-built sales, and rising customer satisfaction.
“Our to-be-built buyers consistently rate their experience higher,” he said. “By increasing that mix, we improve both margins and service.”
The Single Source of Truth for Product Data
Higharc’s Conor Sedam has worked with Tim O’Brien Homes from the start of their digital journey. He described their progress as “a model for how top builders evolve.”
“When we started four years ago, the goal was to make Higharc the single source of truth for product data,” Sedam said. “That means one system feeding design, estimating, purchasing, and sales, so everyone’s working from the same playbook.”
For Sedam, the lesson extends beyond one builder:
“Too many homebuilders still run on systems that don’t talk to each other, or on spreadsheets that haven’t changed this century. The best builders use slower markets to get their systems right. That’s what lets them scale when the next upswing comes.”
Data, Design, and the Future of Quality
The impact isn’t just operational. It’s also transforming how Tim O’Brien Homes designs and refines its products.
Lowry described how visualization has improved collaboration between teams:
“We hold monthly design meetings in Microsoft Teams, and now we can review plans directly in Higharc,” he said. “Our sales pros spot issues earlier, things that used to surface in the field. Our designers can fix them in minutes.”
Those real-time updates mean fewer costly surprises and better product quality, benefits that ripple from design to construction to warranty.
“Walking the home in 3D before we build is becoming essential,” Hilgartner added. “It’s faster, it’s clearer, and it makes for a better customer experience.”
The Takeaway: Don’t Wait for Busy Season to Fix Broken Systems
When asked what advice they’d offer other builders, Lowry was candid:
“Whether it’s Higharc or another system, find a way to simplify. Pick a few KPIs you can improve fast, track them, and show them every week. What you measure improves.”
Sedam agreed — and added a metaphor that landed with the audience:
“You can’t start stacking sandbags once the river’s already rising,” he said. “The time to prepare your systems is now.”
Hilgartner summed up what’s at the core of their success:
“It’s not about software. It’s about data, process, and people. When those connect, the buyer feels it and that’s where trust comes from.”
Watch the Full Webinar
You can watch From Custom to Click: How Tim O’Brien Homes Accelerates Sales and Delights Buyers with Higharc on demand now and watch the whole conversation.
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