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Pulte says it's pleased to be recognized as tops in green home performance by the recent Calvert report, but wonders whether it needs to be more vocal about its green building efforts.
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Former Jet Blue executive tells builders how a brand image starts with customer service.
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Builders expand their marketing with on-demand videos
Experts say builders' Web sites and marketing need to change to take advantage of Web technology
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Green advertising is not as effective as other forms of marketing, survey finds.
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Sales pros share responses to buyers weighing the choice between new and existing homes.
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What’s the one thing that virtually every new-home buyer (and new-home sales agent) has in common? They all have cell phones. And if they’re in their 20s or 30s, chances are they’re using text messaging on a regular basis.
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Still looking for a New Year's resolution worth keeping? Try cutting costs in 2008.
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Home builders wondering how they can calm their market while maneuvering through bankruptcy may want to take a minute to view the video on the Newmark Homes Web site.
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Most new-home sales agents have fond memories of seeing a steady stream of prospects walk through the door. In today’s market, you need a strategy for generating traffic. Fortunately, there are only two limits on the number of ways to do this—your creativity and your willingness to work hard. Here a...
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How are builders of all sizes and niches responding to the downturn? What's in their business plan for 2008? What are they doing on the sales front that seems to be working with today's seemingly all-too-patient buyer? These were the questions we sought to answer when we set out to interview four bu...
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In addition to making sure the house shines, you need to spiff up your sales process to sell inventory homes. Part of the strategy to sell inventory homes is the right marketing message. First off, don't describe them to prospective buyers as inventory or specs or field homes. Refer to them as compl...
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Chris Coleman doesn't expect his housing market to get well anytime soon. As president of Northfield, Ill.–based The Dearborn-Buckingham Group, he assumes, only half facetiously, that his company “will not sell a single home” in 2008. But don't count Coleman among the industry's doomsayers, because ...
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Most builders don't have the luxury (or burden) of providing a 14-home model complex, but almost every builder faces the problem of getting prospective buyers to visit the sales center and walk the product. At the grand opening of Verano, a 6,500-unit, Tuscany-inspired master plan in Port St. Lucie,...
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It happens all the time. People drive through downtown Escondido, Calif., on Centre City Parkway and stop for the traffic light at West Second Avenue. Across the street they see City Square, a cluster of four-story, contemporary townhomes painted in brick, mustard, charcoal, sand, and cornflower blu...
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Builders are getting better at providing service after closing, but what happens when the warranty runs out?
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One of the biggest problems for builders today is the age-old one of standing out in a market littered with homes for sale, many of them steeply discounted. Cheryl O'Connor, vice president of sales and marketing for Warmington Homes' Northern California Division, managed to do that in a big way by d...
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The Greater Atlanta Home Builders Association has completed the first phase of its Get Home Atlanta ad campaign, an effort launched this fall to persuade people that now is a good time to buy a new home. Through widespread local and some national media coverage, free and discounted advertising, and ...
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Stanley Martin Communities began preparing for what it saw as the inevitable housing downturn in a 1998 planning retreat. Nine years later, with its strategy accomplished, the company is standing strong, despite having to lay off a number of employees.
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Homebuilding companies all over the country include the word innovation in their their company's name or in a company slogan describing the work they do. In fact, innovation, or some derivation of it, might be the most popular word that home builders use to describe themselves. Embracing and demonst...
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OVER THE PAST SEVERAL months, builders have said that they are looking for marketing software that lets them generate and manage more electronic sales leads at any level in an organization, be it national, regional, or by community.