One of Queensland’s leading builder brokers Emily Pollard on display homes, data, and the slow collapse of trust between builders and the people hiring them.

There is a version of the construction industry that Australians still remember. Builders were respected. The work was trusted. You hired someone, they built your home, and that was that.

That version feels distant right now.

Walk through any display village in Southeast Queensland and you will find free pools, free upgrades, and price lists that may not have been updated since before COVID. Talk to the people who work with clients every day, and a different picture emerges. One where buyers do not know what questions to ask, builders do not always know what clients actually want, and the gap between the two is widening.

Emily Pollard, founder of Nesta Builder Brokers, sits inside that gap. She works with clients and builders across Southeast Queensland, running what she calls a 135-point data process to help people choose the right builder for the right reasons. Not because of the kitchen finishes they fell in love with on a Saturday afternoon, but because of licensing, inclusions breakdowns, and a clear-eyed look at what they are actually getting for their money.

What she sees every day is instructive, and a little confronting, for anyone who cares about this industry.

The Display Home Problem

People are still choosing builders based on display homes.

Pollard is not surprised by this. Display homes exist for a reason. They work. The emotional pull of walking through a finished, styled space and imagining your family in it is not accidental. It is the product of deliberate, well-funded marketing.

But here is what most buyers do not know. The display home is typically not a representation of what they are buying. It is the absolute top of the range, built to showcase every upgrade and inclusion a builder has to offer. The base price, the version most buyers will end up building, can look and feel very different.

Go and ask to walk through a house under construction. That is going to be like yours. See what it is. I do not bother sending people to display homes anymore. Let us see what the quality is like near completion.

Pollard describes walking through a display village and asking builders directly what the completed display would cost to build today. Several could not answer accurately. Some were quoting figures from before the current building cycle, when costs were significantly lower. The display had not changed. The price had.

This is not always deliberate deception. But it is a problem. Buyers making one of the largest financial decisions of their lives are doing so on the basis of incomplete, sometimes outdated, sometimes misleading information.

The ‘Free Pool’ Trap

Few things in construction illustrate the trust problem more clearly than the free inclusion.

Pollard tells the story of a client she worked with at Stroud Homes who waited 18 months for land registration, watched the land value rise by $250,000 due to sunset clauses, and then decided to leave the builder she had been working with because another builder offered a free pool.

The maths did not add up. The alternate build was 60 square metres smaller, had one fewer bathroom, but came with a pool included. The contract sums were almost identical.

The client got the pool. They did not get the house they originally planned.

I could have ripped everything out and given you a pool. But I do not want to mislead you. That is what happens in this industry. People want something for free and they do not understand that nothing is actually free.

This pattern repeats across the industry. A channel partner who alters a price document in Canva to make it appear a builder is offering $10,000 off a package. A salesperson who closes a client on the emotional high of a display visit without walking them through what they are actually signing. A contract sum that looks competitive until you start comparing like for like.

Pollard is not dismissive of marketing or sales. She spent years in sales management herself. She understands why it works. But she is clear about where the line is, and the industry is frequently crossing it.

What Clients Actually Need

The most useful observation in Pollard’s work is also the most straightforward. Clients do not know what questions to ask.

This is not a reflection of intelligence or education. She describes working with town planners, doctors, tradies, teachers, and people with multiple university degrees who have never built a home and have no framework for evaluating the person they are about to hand hundreds of thousands of dollars to.

Most people build once, maybe twice in a lifetime. They are dealing with sales consultants who do it every single day. The information asymmetry is enormous.

The consensus is that builders have intentionally not told them something. Sometimes their processes are just not set up well for the client. It may not be intentional, but regardless, the outcome is the same.

Her approach is to strip back the emotion and replace it with data. QBCC licence checks. Inclusion breakdowns. Side-by-side comparisons of contract sums. A clear conversation about the three variables every buyer has to manage: quality, time, and price.

She is direct with clients who come to her wanting all three at the lowest possible cost. You cannot have the best quality, the quickest build, and the cheapest price at the same time. Somewhere in that triangle, something gives. A builder who tells you otherwise is selling you something.

The Wholesale Shift

One of the more significant changes in how Queensland clients are approaching new builds is the growth of the wholesale market, and the builder broker model more broadly.

Pollard describes a construction market that has diversified substantially. Her panel of 20 builders includes wholesale operators, standard retail and residential builders, and boutique and custom operators. Each serves a different part of the market. Each requires a different type of client education.

The wholesale space in particular has grown sharply over the past 12 months. Builders who have not considered this channel, or who are not thinking carefully about how they present to brokers who conduct thorough due diligence, may find themselves at a disadvantage.

The model is simple in principle. Informed intermediaries connect educated buyers with vetted builders. The emotion is reduced. The data is central. The client arrives knowing what they are getting.

For builders who have nothing to hide, this is an opportunity. For builders whose business model depends on information gaps, it represents a genuine threat.

What a Good Builder Looks Like From the Outside

Pollard’s definition of a good builder is not particularly complex, but it is consistent.

Transparency. A process that works for the client, not just the sales cycle. Honest communication about what can and cannot be delivered. A willingness to be assessed rather than just marketed.

She talks about builders who ran display homes with a full breakdown of every upgrade cost clearly displayed. Brochures that showed the base price, the upgrade price, and the gap between them. People took those brochures home in stacks of 50 on weekends. Not because they were the cheapest builder. Because they were the most honest one.

That approach is not complicated. It just requires confidence in the product you are actually delivering.

Transparency provides trust. Lack of transparency creates distrust. It is that simple from a client experience perspective.

The builders Pollard is most confident recommending are not always the biggest names or the best-looking displays. They are the ones who can withstand scrutiny. Who do not flinch when someone asks hard questions about their licence, their inclusions, their process, or their reviews.

The Broader Reckoning

There is a larger conversation happening in this industry, and it is one that both Aaron and Emily believe is inevitable.

The client is getting smarter. Online forums, review platforms, and conversations like this one are giving buyers better questions to ask and better frameworks to evaluate the answers. The information asymmetry that once protected lazy operators is shrinking.

At the same time, the industry is facing a housing supply crisis that demands it build more, faster, and more reliably than ever before. Queensland alone needs tens of thousands of homes. The builders who will be part of delivering that supply are the ones with the capacity, the systems, and the trust to win clients on substance.

The ones still selling free pools and outdated display prices face a more uncertain future.

There was a time, not so long ago, when being a builder in this country carried real weight. GJ Gardner was a name you trusted. PJ Burns was a brand that meant something. Builders were contributors to their communities, not just vendors in a transaction.

Getting back to that is not about nostalgia. It is about the practical, operational reality that trust compounds. It is the difference between a business that survives one cycle and one that builds something worth handing on.

Emily Pollard is betting that the industry is ready for that shift. The numbers coming through her door suggest the clients already are.

To get in touch with Emily, you can visit https://www.nesta.com.au/

Author: TGB Editorial