20 Trends for 2026: What They Signal for Community-Driven Living

The New Home Trends Institute, in partnership with John Burns Research and Consulting, recently presented their 20 Trends for 2026. The trends spanned consumer behavior, home design, master-planned communities, building products, build-to-rent, and multifamily housing, offering a wide-angle view of where the industry is headed.

Dubbing 2026 a “A Year of Realignment,” the research organized these shifts into three core themes: Realigning for Constraint, Realigning for Human Scale, and Realigning for Resonance. While all twenty trends were thought-provoking, three stood out to us at Alosant because they closely mirror what we’re seeing play out across the communities we support every day:

• Community Fabric as a Marketing Strategy
• Comfort Hubs
• From Futuristic to Functional Tech

Each of these trends points to the same underlying truth: community success is no longer defined by what’s promised at opening, but by what’s experienced and sustained over time.

Community Fabric as a Marketing Strategy

A clear shift is underway, and the presentation articulated it well: today’s homebuyers are placing greater value on a community’s vibe, culture, and sense of belonging than on a checklist of amenities.

Historically, community marketing leaned heavily on location, scale, and amenity lists. Now, lifestyle leads. Buyers engage with a community’s identity long before they compare floor plans. They want to understand what life feels like there, how people gather, what’s celebrated, and whether the culture aligns with their own.

Lifestyle-first marketing shows up as:

• Bold visual language and personality across digital touchpoints
• Clear signals of how local culture influences programming, events, and daily life
• Expressive experience, identity, and belonging 
• Thoughtful storytelling around why amenities exist, not just what they are

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Alosant sees this shift firsthand in the resident interactions and everyday moments unfolding across the communities we serve. By creating a single, shared source of truth for community activity, Alosant helps turn daily life into living stories, capturing how spaces are actually used, how programs evolve, and how residents engage with one another. That visibility allows communities to market something authentic, not a static vision, but a lived experience that continues to unfold.

Comfort Hubs

It’s no surprise that Comfort Hubs resonated so strongly, especially alongside Community Fabric as a Marketing Strategy. If buyers and residents are seeking the right “vibe,” communities must intentionally create the conditions for it to exist.

This trend reflects a move away from headline-grabbing amenities toward the smaller, repeatable moments that bring structure and reassurance to daily life. Familiar rituals, steady programming, and neighbor-to-neighbor connections build comfort, trust, and emotional well-being over time.

The Comfort Hubs trend reinforces that a sense of home is built through consistency, familiar routines, and neighbors showing up for one another over time. We’re seeing strong growth in resident-led clubs, groups, and events; organized, communicated, and sustained through community apps powered by Alosant.

By giving residents the tools to find one another, organize around shared interests, and participate with ease, Alosant helps communities move closer to becoming true Comfort Hubs. Not by forcing connection, but by making it visible, accessible, and repeatable.

From Futuristic to Functional Tech

Technology is moving away from flash and toward function.. Instead of “what’s possible,” consumers are asking, “does this make my life easier?”

As noted in the presentation, homeowners want reliability, speed, and fewer friction points in how they live, work, and connect. Technology should fade into the background, supporting daily routines without demanding attention.

Resident apps play a central role here. Tools like real-time notifications, live amenity bookings, event scheduling, and centralized resources give residents and prospects easy, always-current access to community life without added complexity.

Functional technology also shows up in practical infrastructure, such as mobile access control for gyms, pools, and shared spaces. Replacing key fobs with seamless, app-based access removes friction from everyday moments and supports the routines residents value most.

The role of Alosant is to place technology where it meaningfully enhances daily life across communication, access, scheduling, and engagement, while keeping the experience intuitive and dependable.

Where These Trends Converge

Taken together, these trends point to a common outcome: communities that win in the next cycle will be the ones that operationalize lifestyle, not just market it.

The work shared by leaders at the New Home Trends Institute and John Burns Research and Consulting reinforces what we’re already seeing on the ground. Community identity, comfort, and functionality are no longer abstract ideas. They are measurable, operational realities that shape resident satisfaction and long-term value.

As communities realign with these signals, platforms like Alosant help ensure that intent is preserved, daily life is supported, and the story being told externally reflects what’s truly happening inside the community. That alignment between vision, operations, and experience is what turns trends into lasting momentum.

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