In the old days, internet-based leads that came into Bowen Family Homes' Web site would go to Internet director Kelly Kenton Fink, who would parcel them out to the on-site sales agents. Busy with flesh-and-blood prospects standing in front of them, the sales agents often set these leads to the side until they had a free moment to respond. Or not.
In the suburbs of Washington, a student housing tower gives new life to a development that's been more than 50 years in the making.
In The Gulch, Nashville's newest redevelopment area, a nifty loft project rises up through an old warehouse.
In this world of cookie-cutter projects and look-alike communities, it's hard to claim the mantle of first. But each of the three mixed-use projects profiled here can make legitimate claims to being unique. Club Casa Mina is the first private-equity residence club—a fractional—to hit Santa Barbara, Calif. Nashville, Tenn., has a good supply of old warehouses, but the folks behind Mercury View Lofts are the first to convert an old building into a mixed-use loft project. And in Hyattsville, Md., a suburb of Washington, developers chose to build a 16-story student housing building as a way to jump-start a project that has been 50 years in the making.
Do you have any idea what's in your dumpsters? You should. All of that debris is costing you money.
One Atlanta builder uses collaboration software and improved sawing technology to solve a perennial challenge:to deliver flooring systems that are accurate and on time and can be backed up by warranty in the event of a defect.
This April, The Drees Co. should complete the rollout, to all 13 of its divisions, of a program that allows its trade partners and site superintendents to submit field purchase orders (FPOs), with changes to original POs, through a Web-based portal, payment for which is vouchered automatically without the need for further approval or data entry. By streamlining its order-variance and accounts-payable activities, Drees expects to save $800,000 per year once its auto-voucher system is fully operational.
A slower pace, streamlined choices, and more education lead to higher options sales at Ryland Homes in Phoenix.
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Spring is always an important time for home builders, as nearly 40 percent of new-home sales take place between March and June. This year's spring season is more important than ever, as Wall Street, economists, and the industry at-large try to gauge whether the home building industry can bounce back.
As sales sank and cancellations crested last year, production builders insisted they could stem margin erosion by exacting concessions from their trade partners. And through the early months of 2007, suppliers confirmed that builders were pressuring them for price breaks; although, with some notable exceptions, that arm-twisting had yet to become as severe as anticipated.
TEMPORARY HOUSING HAS A WAY OF BECOMING permanent, as evidenced by the fact that many South Florida residents still live in FEMA trailers more than a decade after Hurricane Andrew. An as-yet-unknown number of Katrina and Rita evacuees in Louisiana may sidestep that fate and return to their former neighborhoods now that a prototype for safer, more sustainable (and prettier) post-disaster housing has received federal funding.
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A DEMONSTRATION HOME IN Paterson, N.J., by the chemical company BASF recently became the first house on the Eastern seaboard to receive an LEED-Platinum certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. The LEED designation means the house is 80 percent more energy efficient than the average home.
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- Chairman and CEO of Trammel Crow Residential donates $5 million to the Urban Land Institute to create a center for work-force housing.
- Emergency #811 to be operational in late April. The number will be used for builders who need to quickly contact local utility companies in case of emergency.
- The Federal Highway Administration awards a $2 million contract to the American Institute of Architects (AIA) to study the benefits of well-designed community transportation projects.
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In case the current housing market wasn't bad enough, builders should be ready for subprime mortgage underwriters to require higher credit scores or bigger down payments from borrowers—and a drastic reduction in the availability of stated-income loans.
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Usually, where there's smoke, there's fire. But in the case of reports circulating the industry like wildfire in January, that Charlotte, N.C.–based Bank of America Corp. was in discussions to buy Calabasas, Calif.–based Countrywide Financial Corp., there was only smoke. Or so says Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis.