Industry News
March 31, 2005
Wood University, the free online education portal of the APA-The Engineered Wood Association, now offers a course on building structurally sound wood-framed structures. WU 201: Design of Wood Connections is broken down into four successive/...
March 31, 2005
Many a builder has faced the quandary of building homes with steel, which can be costly but more consistent or building with wood, which can warp and be labor intensive. One company has brought an innovative solution to the marketplace. FrameMax, a...
March 31, 2005
Architectural Traditions — designers and manufacturers of crafted doors, windows and hardware — created a program on its website where builders and consumers alike can design doors specific to the house being built. Visitors to the site...
March 31, 2005
The Sharrow Group, a Rochester, N.Y.-based executive search firm specializing in the housing industry, has created a quick checklist of questions a builder should ask prospective management hires during interviews:
March 31, 2005
Recent research at the Lusk Center for Real Estate at the University of Southern California shows persistent racial gaps in U.S. home ownership rates. However, that bad news has a good side: there's an untapped market, especially in America'...
February 28, 2005
Las Vegas may soon look like Manhattan, with condo skyscrapers rising up out of the flat desert. The question is, can traditional single-family home builders make a living in a town like this? That's not an idle inquiry — because Las Vegas may not...
February 28, 2005
When you're walking a land parcel before acquisition, don't forget to look up...and remember the story of one land owner who moved a little too fast for his own good in an attempt to capitalize on Southwest Florida's red-hot land market. Last year,...
February 28, 2005
Construction superintendent is arguably the most important management position in a home building company. After all, this front-line manager has responsibility for the quality of the delivered product and controls direct construction costs that...
February 28, 2005
Fifty members of Connecticut's home building industry attended a pilot event in November to learn how to sell homes with the ENERGY STAR® rating, how to approach customers about building an energy-efficient home and how building energy efficient...
February 28, 2005
At this year's International Builders' Show in Orlando, national sales trainer Bonnie Alfriend, MIRM, president of Alfriend Sales and Marketing Solutions, Pebble Beach, Calif., presented advice for putting sizzle back into selling in 2005. Titled "...
February 28, 2005
At a recent groundbreaking ceremony, Paramount Homes, Asbury Park, N. J., gave press members something they could really work with — clipboards emblazoned with the builder/developer's new community logo and phone number. This take-home gift not only...
February 28, 2005
It pays to protect the environment. The Warwick Grove master plan in Warwick, N.Y., boasts a diversity of wildlife, including federally protected bog turtles that roam the marshy outskirts. When the state of New York requested developer-builder...
February 28, 2005
Builders have yet to be selected for the 2,043-acre Canyons South golf and residential community south of Denver in Douglas County. Lots for the 400-home first phase won't be offered until the second half of 2006, but John Waggoner, president of...
February 28, 2005
In Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., Discovery Cove at Half Moon Bay sits on 12 acres of highly desirable riverfront, just steps from a boat marina and near the commuter rail into New York. But the site sat dormant for roughly 20 years before WCI Northeast U....
February 28, 2005
Predicting the Future is tricky business. Last year, housing experts uniformly predicted that home building would come off its hot streak, but record results proved them wrong. Now they agree that decline will come this year. According to the NAHB,...
February 28, 2005
"Concrete Floors and Moisture," a new 164-page book from the Portland Cement Association, explores ways to present unwanted moisture in concrete floors. Problems from excessive moisture include deterioration and debonding of floor coverings, trip-...
February 28, 2005
Notice one less label on gypsum products lately? You will if you haven't already. The task of specifying gypsum board products just became easier as a single ASTM International reference standard, ASTM C 1396, has replaced eight standards...
February 28, 2005
In a study of more than 400 consumers nationwide that are either owners of newly constructed homes or prospective buyers of the same, researchers found that 49% of the target consumers, presented with at least one home technology option, made a...
February 28, 2005
The Council of Community Services and the Art Museum of Western Virginia hosted some of the world's top leaders in design, housing and sustainable development on January 14 for the Cradle to Cradle Housing Design and Construction Competition. A team...
