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With a starting salary of $28,280, a first-year teacher has little hope of buying a home in Durham, N.C., where the median price for an existing home is $173,100.But owning a new home in Durham isn't quite so impossible if it's built by Westfield Homes, an East Coast division of California-based...
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Whether tapping into credits, tax reductions, or special employee incentives, reducing the financial burden on buyers calls for innovation and flexibility.
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There's at least three ways builders can deal with the rise of home technology.Village Homes in Littleton, Colo., is one of the real home technology leaders, having launched its TechTouch division six years ago, which markets, installs, and tests home technology products.
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It's noon on Friday, and the company's project manager copies an important spreadsheet from the network file server to her laptop before heading out to the jobsite. Monday morning, the project manager shows up and saves her copy back to the file server, effectively wiping out all the work the...
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By BUILDER Magazine Staff. Shea Homes for Active Adults, a division of Shea Homes, had such a positive experience using Alpha Vision's virtual presentation system for sales presentations during its initial 18 months using the tool that the builder integrated Alpha Vision into its overall sales...
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Design Center Solutions is offering a Web-based training program geared to help design consultants sell more upgrades and improve customer satisfaction.
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By BUILDER Magazine Staff. Your audiophile customers will love the bottom end from Sonance's new CR801 speakers. The speaker's high-flux magnetic assembly and design produce a better defined bass sound, and its shallow 4-inch depth makes it easier for builders and contractors to install.
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Plus Consulting, which spent the past few years as a reseller of customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning, and business intelligence software, has developed a new portal product, Plus Construction Power Portal 1.0. Steve Smith, managing partner at Plus Consulting, says the...
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By BUILDER Magazine Staff. Most builders may think that pre-wiring their communities with Cat-5e cabling, which supports 1-gigabit voice and data transmission, is more than enough. But Genesis Cable Systems is pushing the standard even further with the release of CatLink 6 Plus, Cat-6 cabling that...
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About four years ago, The Drees Co. in Ft. Mitchell, Ky., knew it wanted to grow, but unlike many other builders, Drees understood that the way to manage increased workload and keep costs down was through technology.So in 1999, Drees hired Michael Rulli as its director of information systems to...
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Builders are certainly seeing an increase in attempts by local governments to pass off higher impact fees and other ways for government to shift off the costs to new-home buyers. While the full impact of California's budget deficit hasn't hit yet, builders are seeing pressure in the form of higher...
Before you claim you offer all shoppers a fair shake and don't discriminate among home buyers, consider this shopping test to evaluate discrimination, conducted last year by HUD and the Urban Institute.Nationally, real estate sales professionals favored white shoppers over blacks with the same...
The Arundel (County) Habitat for Humanity chapter constructed these homes as part of a project co-ventured with The Hanley Foundation, Builder magazine, Speight Studio Architects, and the NAHB Research Center. Before desegregation, Clay Street was a thriving mixed-income neighborhood, home to many...
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By David F. Seiders. The Federal Reserve is deeply concerned about the possibility of price deflation in the U.S. economy, a phenomenon that has helped keep the Japanese economy in the tank for more than a decade. The Fed's expression of concern actually has supported house values so far, and...
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The 2001 Annual Consumer Practices survey garnered a respectable 8,200 responses -- but when the NAHB Research Center put its annual consumer survey online to gather the data for its 2002 survey, it collected more than 40,000 responses. NAHB Research Center market researchers designed its consumer...
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- The NAHB supports the bipartisan resolution in the House of Representatives calling for open trade between the United States and Canada on softwood lumber.
- The House of Representatives approves the Healthy Forests Restoration Act.
- The Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the...
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Housing needs advocates, and in Washington and across the country there is no better housing advocate than the NAHB. On the front lines of housing advocacy, there is no greater fighting force than the NAHB's 205,000 grassroots members and their employees, their colleagues in housing-related...
Despite the seemingly endless decline of the Dow and the NASDAQ, manufacturers are still betting that consumer demand for luxury products will remain high -- or at the very least stable. As a result, a batch of new players and existing manufacturers are keeping the shelves stocked with glossy goods.
The manufacturer answers that question with Neorest, a high-tech toilet/washlet cleansing system with new flushing technology and a wealth of techno features. People will embrace some products quickly, such as an electronic faucet, because it is familiar and affordable, but a pricey electronic...
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After a week of revelations about management changes and accounting practices at Freddie Mac, the country's second-largest buyer of mortgage loans, two questions loomed: Was the housing market going to deflate like a bubble popped by the pin of Freddie Mac's troubles? Was Freddie Mac's firing of...
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The NAHB Research Center recently challenged the conventional pave-and-drain method of site development, at a place called Kensington Estates, in Pierce County, Wash. Research Center experts redesigned the site using new technologies and techniques intended to reduce environmental impact. The...
Part of a series of three ads and an overall branding campaign, this color print ad for Hedgewood Properties entitled "... "With a branding campaign, you have to trust the ad and believe that it's important simply to tell your message without a direct sales result," says Pam Sessions, president of...
Village Homes of Colorado in Littleton, Colo., devised a clever direct mail idea to get prospects to the then-empty site of its Village of Five Parks in Arvada, Colo., prior to the project's opening in early 2002. At $1.25 per unit, including list purchase, postage, printing, and creative costs...
"In merchandising, the purpose is to engage all of the senses," says Gabe Pasquale, vice president of marketing for Spectrum Skanska, a builder in Valhalla, N.Y. "Color engages both emotion and feel. "We wanted to be playful with color and texture," says Pasquale, who warns that such a tactic...
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Companies that buy less than $400,000 of equipment in 2003 can expense the first $100,000.Companies that buy less than $400,000 of equipment and expense the first $100,000 can deduct up to 50 percent of the remainder.
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With the well-documented increase in allergy-sensitive individuals has come a predictable increase in stand-alone devices claiming to remove allergens from indoor air. It's virtually impossible to 'purify' indoor air," notes Bob Moffitt, communications manager with the ALA. "These devices are not...
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No-growth fans are lauding the "farmland security perimeter" in Madera, Calif. Funded through an initiative of the American Farmland Trust, farmers have been paid to keep their farms out of the reach of home developers.Agriculture in California is especially important, not only economically -- it...
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By Christina B. Farnsworth. The importance of housing and the defeat of "dream-killer bills" were the focus of building industry participants as they rallied at the state capitol in Sacramento, Calif.The California BIA held its sixth annual rally May 14. Housing's profound effect on the California...
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The timing seems a little suspicious to Brendan ONeill, executive vice president and CFO at Beazer Homes in Northern California. The kicker: When Beazer pulled the files for homeowners participating in that group lawsuit, there wasnt a single outstanding warranty claim.
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By Matthew Power. Ever spent half the day patching together a wobbly, temporary handrail for an open stairway or balcony? Safety Maker Inc., based in Houston, has created a simple solution with its Safety Boot product.
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Just about everyone has heard of eBay, but the average builder wouldn't readily think of eBay to buy tools and accessories--until now. Recognizing that its business is changing, the online auctioneer launched the eBay Business brand in January for B2B buyers and sellers.
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By Steve Zurier. SunCor's Golden Heritage Homes in Tempe, Ariz., reports annual cost savings in excess of $500,000 in salaries alone after switching to NewStar's Homebuilder integrated construction management system.But instead of laying off all those employees and pocketing the savings from...
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A recent cradle-to-grave study from the Portland Cement Association (PCA) compares the long-term environmental impact of lightweight concrete houses with conventional, 2x4 wood-framed houses, and finds a close race.Their results found that 99 percent of all life-cycle energy usage over that time...
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The insurance horror stories never seem to end. Premium increases that seem to defy reason. Hefty deductibles and minimum coverages. Wrap policies that end up costing, not saving, money for builders.It's a critical issue for many small builders, who can no longer find affordable liability insurance...
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According to Specialty Consultants, a construction and real estate recruiting firm in Pittsburgh, salaries and bonuses for division presidents are rising as private builders up the cash ante to compete with public companies' stock packages.
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A Florida developer has found a way to make residential sprinklers more than pay for themselves. A spokesperson for Wayne Automatic, one of the sprinkler providers, says builders first reacted with skepticism and had to be convinced that home sprinkler systems could work--at the same time saving on...
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The Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish counties in Washington state has launched www.masterbuilderinfo.com, a Web site that helps consumers research home building issues.
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Driven by the lowest interest rates in more than 40 years, mortgage originations will hit a record $3 trillion this year, according to the latest forecast from the Mortgage Bankers Association of America.
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Builders throughout the Southwest must control dust or be in violation of air pollution standards. The 31 percent reduction in Colorado River water delivery caused the Coachella Valley Water District to deny the development water for dust control.
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By Alison Rice. BankAtlantic Bancorp, the owner of Florida active adult builder Levitt and Sons, plans to spin off the Levitt Corp. and all its associated businesses by year's end into a separate publicly traded company. Coscan, now privately owned, specializes in residential high-rise construction...
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The Bush administration has announced its intention to dismantle and transform the nation's 30-year-old public housing assistance program--Section 8 rent vouchers. The Bush team describes Section 8 as "fundamentally flawed," and inefficient, and hopes to replace it with a new system of less...
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By Loretta Williams. Let us know: Enter the 2004 America's Best Builder contest. For an entry form or more information, contact Loretta Williams at 202-736-3455 or by e-mail at lwilliam@hanley-wood.com.
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With all the focus on boomers reaching retirement age, builders may be forgetting the current makeup of the retirement market, says marketing consultant Sharon Brooks, of Sharon Brooks & Associates in Richmond, Va. Boomers won't even begin to retire until around 2013. Overlooked, she says, is the...
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The subject of our special report this month, workforce housing, strikes particularly close to home. Fortunately, the political winds seem to be shifting slightly in favor of doing something about this pressing national problem.The National Housing Conference, a Washington-based organization that...
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The people priced out of today's homes in your area are running your fire department, feeding your kids, and keeping your streets clean and safe. The list of occupations that fall short of housing's high costs grows longer every day, as wages stagnate and home values escalate. The Flores family...
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The rallying cry for many a defender of the move-up approach to building and selling homes in the United States has been that about two-thirds of Americans own their homes. The Center for Housing Policy in Washington published a report this year titled "America's Working Families and the Housing...
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As middle-class wages stagnate across the nation, housing costs continue to rise, leaving millions of hardworking families unable to afford adequate housing. What can builders do to prevent a bad situation from mushrooming into economic disaster?