D Kaufman Development

California’s GDP hit $4.25T in 2025. 5% growth. 16 straight years of expansion.

The doom loop is a broker excuse and a media headline. The data is something else.

Latest Kaufman Development Report 👇
https://www.tumblr.com/dkaufmandevelopment/814461586402099200/kaufman-development-the-kaufman-report-april

New episode of The Kaufman Report is live. 🎙️

Episode 6: Fire the Middleman — A Developer’s Playbook for Self-Performing and Buying Factory-Direct

If you’re a general contractor, this one isn’t for you.

If you’re a developer who’s tired of watching 15–20% of your project budget walk out the door in GC fees, overhead, and quiet buyout spreads — keep reading.

This market cycle doesn’t reward the developer with the best location. It rewards the one with the lowest cost basis. And most developers are leaving millions on the table by outsourcing work and procurement they should own.

In this episode I break down exactly how we do it at Kaufman & Company — from standing up your own construction entity to buying direct from manufacturers. Category-by-category. No fluff.

Appliances. Flooring. Cabinets. Windows. HVAC. On a 250-unit deal, the procurement savings alone can run $2–4M.

I also cover the objections — from lenders, equity partners, and your own team — and how to handle every one of them.

25+ years, 10,000+ units, $2B+ in active projects. This is how we actually build.

🎧 Listen here → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kaufman-report-with-daniel-kaufman/id1880761848?i=1000762026432

Trump spoke for nearly two hours on Tuesday night.

Housing got about four minutes of it.

For an industry navigating four-plus years of elevated rates, a chronic supply shortage, and an affordability crisis that’s now a kitchen table issue for millions of Americans — that’s a problem.

We got the institutional investor ban story. We got some numbers on falling mortgage rates (though the actual data tells a slightly different story). We got a nod to construction job growth.

What we didn’t get: zoning reform, federal construction incentives, first-time homebuyer credits, any discussion of the regulatory barriers that make building so expensive, or a clear legislative roadmap for what comes next.

The fundamentals that created this crisis — chronic undersupply, regulatory friction, high construction costs — don’t get solved by a speech. They get solved by policy that makes it easier and cheaper to build more housing, at more price points, in more places.

We didn’t get that Tuesday night.

I broke down what was said, what the numbers actually show, and what was notably missing:

👉 https://medium.com//the-state-of-the-union-said-a-lot-almost-none-of-it-was-about-housing-2b30c5570c38

We’re consolidating everything under one platform: Kaufman & Company.

All of our real estate development, data center work, capital markets activity, and long-form analysis now lives in one place.

Follow for updates, market commentary, and what we’re building across the U.S.