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News Flash: The sun is hot. there's renewed and widespread attention being paid to it as a legitimate home energy source—and this time that interest might stick. A perfect storm of factors has come together to keep solar solutions on the front burner, including record crude oil prices, federal tax...
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...
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.
The Southeast just suffered its worst year of drought in a century. Arizona is deep into its second decade of drought conditions. And wildfires that scorched Southern California in October provided an unwelcome reminder that this region went through 150 consecutive days without rain.
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Surely you've heard the industry's sales pitch by now: lower costs, speedy construction, excellent craftsmanship, and quality building products in a controlled setting. Builders who use modular systems say you can believe the hype. But before you run out to your local supplier or modular home...
Like most real estate agents these days, Lori McGuire has had to step it up a bit to get buyers to sign a contract. A Realtor in Orange County, Calif., McGuire is working with three different builders in Covenant Hills, a gated community in the master planned development of Ladera Ranch. Prices...
Ask builders where they'd like to expand, or start over (which is more likely the case these days), and eventually they'll mention these and a few other markets, all for the same reason: strong job growth that promises steady home sales for years to come.
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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The decision to bulldoze the ranch house that previously slouched on this narrow, shaded lot wasn't a tough one. With its dingy wood paneling and creeping structural rot, it was depressing, borderline hazardous, and not exactly coastal in feel.
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Following the great Chicago Fire of 1871, the city adopted stringent ordinances requiring that homes be built with stone or other non-combustible materials. Not being situated on municipal land, however, the community of Lakeview quickly became a boomtown for shoddy, non-regulated construction...
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The assignment wasn't exactly a piece of cake: a postage-stamp–sized lot (measuring 45 by 60 feet) in a flood plain with site requirements for a self-contained septic system and drain field. Some builders would have walked away, but Holbeck Construction teamed with the architects at Pelletier +...
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Many a well-meaning tear-down builder has incited ire in Chevy Chase, Md., even while honoring the neighborhood's venerable architectural styles. The problem hasn't been with the interpretation, per se, but rather with what happens to classical forms when they are put on steroids.
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Five likeable projects prove that not all teardowns warrant a crackdown.
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It's hard enough selling homes in a slow market; it's even harder when you're unwilling to bend on a few things—namely, energy and resource efficiencies, which often boost the price. Despite a 29-year legacy of building green before anyone called it that, Stitt Energy Systems in Rogers, Ark., still...
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While other communities around the Dallas market were trying to snare prospective buyers with home and furniture giveaways, Heartland took a different tack. For the first phase of the 8,000-unit planned community east of the city, targeted to first-time buyers and first-time move-ups (read “young...
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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...