SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA—Developers must realize they can't build the same home design in 50 different places because consumers want customization in their living spaces, Woodside Homes' CEO Joel Shine tells GlobeSt.com. This year, Woodside was named the number-11 top-largest private builder in the nation, according to Builder magazine. We spoke exclusively with Shine about the industry and what he expects to happen in 2016.

GlobeSt.com: What were the most interesting changes or trends that took place in the housing industry during 2015?

Shine: Things change every year, but here are some of the trends I've seen. The industry has finally grown to the level where we're beginning to stress our own base in terms of labor. The first-time home-buyer market is much stronger than people think it is. We have also done well with multi-generational houses, which are the equivalent of a one-bedroom apartment inside a house. People may set it aside for an elderly parent some day or a yo-yo kid who comes back after moving out. The mortgage market was relatively boring, and there's a trend toward getting qualification rations back to where they should be. There's an overall trend of people beginning to come back in to the home-buying market. It was not a year where a lot of big things happened; nothing dramatic, not a game-changer.

GlobeSt.com: What trends do you see emerging in this sector for 2016?

Shine: Generally speaking, more of the same. We're seeing a strong push into and a great concern about creating affordable housing. If you think about what's gone on in the last several years: the Great Recession, and how the typical American had his balance sheet pretty severely impacted—it took a lot out of the home-buying market. Now, a lot of people have lived beyond the point where foreclosure is on their record.

There were a lot of wounds that hurt the American buyer's ability and desire to buy a house. Six months after younger people saw their friends and their parents lose their home, they were not eager to do so; for them, who have never seen home prices go backwards, it was a scary time. But, as people gain the perspective of time, at the end of the day owning your own home is the best savings account and retirement plan available to most people.

GlobeSt.com: What are the greatest challenges the housing industry faces going forward?

Shine: The labor shortage will continue to be an issue. We're only building about half as many homes as we should be building as an industry. With the demographics and immigration growth, we as an industry should be building 800,000 to 1 million homes, and we are at about half that. How are we going to have enough labor to build 900,000 homes? We will move more into home building this year and having intelligent discussions about immigration, what it means and how it works. A lot of it just takes time to get healed and solved, but it's an ongoing issue. The basic trend is that Millennials tend to get married and have children later, but they will step into the stage of life where they will want to buy a home. The trend in home design has clearly been a more casual style of living, with great rooms and no separate dining rooms, really allowing the architecture of the house to reflect a less formal way of living.

GlobeSt.com: Where do the greatest opportunities lie for this market?

Shine: There are still an awful lot of people out there who want to buy homes, but we as an industry want to deliver reasonably priced homes for them. They still have to have some sizzle, though, because the industry is selling 10 times as many resales as starts. There is a lot more to be captured for the new-home market. Part of the problem is the tendency to think you can standardize things throughout geography. You can't assume you can build the same thing in 50 places; this ignores the way people buy things today—everything is customized.