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  • Need Better Follow-Up?

    After report reveals Denver builders’ failure to capitalize on leads, pros stress basics such as phone calls and handwritten thank-yous.

     
  • Oregon Builder Reloads With New Communities

    Auctioning its entire standing inventory gives Buena Vista Custom Homes a fresh start.

     
  • Pending Home Sales Slow

    A marker of future home sales dipped in February, sliding 1.9 percent, according to figures released Tuesday morning.

     
  • Report: Most Builder Sales Agents Don't Follow Up With Prospects

    Timely, relevant responses to requests for information are rare.

     
  • New-home Sales Continue to Fall

    February sales down almost 30 percent from a year ago.

     
  • Sales Tick Upward for Existing Homes

    Report also finds slight decrease in housing inventory.

     
  • Builders Report Increase in Traffic and Sales in Recent Weeks

    Favorable pricing, incentives, improved access to financing, and sales training are all playing a role.

     
  • HBAs Tell Customers: Now is the Time to Buy

    Promotional campaigns encourage reluctant buyers to take advantage of market conditions that won't last forever.

     
  • Magellan Ranked as Chicago's Top Builder in 2007

    But the market's housing revenue and unit sales were way off, according to two publications' lists.

     
  • Taylor Morrison Looks North for Customers

    Florida-based builder works with sister company in Canada to lure buyers for second homes in America.

     
  • Builders Use Price Guarantees to Pull Buyers Off the Fence

    Strategy eliminates desire to wait for further price drops.

     
  • Pending Home Sales Index Holds Steady

    The Pending Home Sales Index, a leading indicator that tracks pending sales of existing homes, held steady in January at 85.9, a potential sign that the housing market may be starting to stabilize.

     
  • Why Buy New?

    Sales pros share responses to buyers weighing the choice between new and existing homes.

     
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    Driving Traffic

    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...

     
  • Waste Not, Want Not

    In late October, Prescott, Ariz., auctioned 2,274 acre-feet of effluent for more than $67 million. One month later, a huge plant in Orange County, Calif., began purifying sewerage, including runoff and household waste, into drinking water and is projected to produce 70 million gallons a day that is ...

     
  • Fighting Shape

    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...

     
  • Shine a Spotlight

    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...

     
  • Kimball Hill Homes Loses $221 Million in Fiscal 2007

    The continued existence of Kimball Hill Homes, one of the housing industry's largest privately owned builders, as a business entity now hinges on the outcome of its negotiations with lenders over the terms of its debt and finding some way to stop the cash draining from its operations. In its 10-k fi...

     
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    A Dry Season

    A 2003 United Nation report made a grim prediction: More than half of humanity will be living with water shortages within 50 years. That same year, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said 36 states expected to suffer water shortages in the subsequent decade. Those predictions have come to pas...

     
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    Liquid Diet

    As they ponder whether the parched Western U.S. will have enough water to meet the future needs of growing populations there, most builders and developers see a glass that's more than half full.