One of Tom Miller's precepts at Drees Company is that it never hurts to ask. And so he did. In early spring, he put to the city of Erlanger, Ky., a proposal. He suggested that two of home building's frequent adversaries embark on a joint effort to develop a park and open space system.A dual approach would not only enhance a local Drees community, he reckoned, it also would help the city preserve more land for public use. Soon after, they contributed $60,000 (Erlanger $40,000, Drees $20,000) to hire Human Nature, a Cincinnati landscape architecture firm.
There's a reason why most people don't go into the land development business. Sit down with any developer and you'll hear stories about pitfalls and capricious character. In this profession, survival demands the patience of Job and the optimism of Pollyanna. Every victory is hard-won, and the entitlement process is perhaps the grimmest outpost known today. Yet, developers live to tell their tales.
The passage of defect legislation in California brings welcome change to the state's construction-dispute laws, long the affliction of the condo market.
Prompted by tight borrowing conditions for manufactured-home buyers, manufacturers are shifting away from the industry's traditional chattel lending to real estate lending. Unlike the losses reported by Champion and Palm Harbor in the June 2002 quarter, Clayton, based in Maryville, Tenn., reported a 32-percent earnings-per-share increase, which Diffendal says shows the value of having such an operation in place.
For the first time, one of WCI Communities' models will be completely green. WCI is moving away from the experimental stage and bringing green building into a more production-related environment," says Ken Plonski, director of communications for the builder.
