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  • Professional Builder Giant 400: Publics Diversify Products
    The Supernovas are changing, as are all the public builders. One of the notable recent changes is the vigor of public builders' movement to diversifying locations and product. They say it's to meet fragmenting housing demand. There's also evidence that public builders need to find new ways to meet Wall Street's insatiable demand for growth.
  • Professional Builder Giant 400: High-Rise Fraught with Risk
    Who knows how deep the current downturn in home sales will go? The crystal ball is cloudy for everyone. But one thing is clear: many Giants are rushing into high-density infill development — including high-rise condo buildings — just as housing demand is faltering, and that's a dangerous move.
  • Professional Builder Giant 400: Public v. Private Debate Continues
    Ask America's top private home builders if going public is a good idea and you're likely to get a smile and a cryptic, "Not for us." Still, the debate rages — public v. private — and each side has plenty of arguing points. The public companies are on a 13-year run of unprecedented growth.
  • Professional Builder Giant 400: Publics' Profits at Peak
    The public home builders' filings with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission show these companies made their best margins ever in 2005, even though they don't separate land profits from those made by building and selling houses. It will be a tough act to follow this year. "The publics are secretive about costs," says management consultant and PB columnist Chuck Shinn.
  • Professional Builder Giant 400: Even Small Private Builders Can Compete
    The common denominator is good management, not whether the company is big or small, public or private.
  • Professional Builder Giant 400: What Happens Next?
    It's been more than 13 years since the housing industry faced this kind of uncertainty.
  • In Manufactured We Truss
    While stick building remains the standard, remodelers are taking a cue from new home builders' use of pre-assembled trusses when it comes to big jobs. Manufactured roof and floor trusses can ease and expedite the process of installing the roof and floor systems in an addition, and more importantly, provide time, labor and material savings in the process.
  • Raising the Stakes
    It's a no-brainer: Every house has at least one kitchen and one bathroom. Homeowners spend a lot of time in these rooms, and they get heavy use. Trends come and go, but kitchens and bathrooms will always be big sources of remodeling business. The part that's not so obvious — at least, not to homeowners — is how to go about getting a kitchen or bath remodel done.
  • Productivity Push
    Who wouldn't want to spend his late 30s working part time, savoring time with his wife and three children in the Southern California sunshine, building a new home, and enjoying the income of a profitable, growing business? Jason Larson, CR, certainly did. So at a time in his life when many remodelers are still putting in backbreaking hours building their businesses, Larson, owner of Lars Constr...
  • Real Simple, Real Clean
    Twenty years ago, Benvenuti and Stein had designed the kitchen of this home on Chicago's North Shore. The new owners liked its basic form and function, especially the center island. But the homeowner, an art collector, wanted the space recast in the modern, minimalist Scandinavian design she loves.
  • Home Appliances and Electronics
  • Finding the Right Fit
    Referrals are the bread and butter of the remodeling business, but not all referral leads are created equal. Whether a prospective client finds a contractor via a friend or a phone book, the remodeler has the responsibility of choosing projects that will fit the company's schedule and resources and be most profitable.
  • Commercial Success
    The food at Fiorentino's outclassed the building the way grilled brie outclasses melted Velveeta. Rob and Rose Billas had opened the family-friendly Italian eatery in 1999, immediately after buying the 200-year-old building — once a restaurant, most recently a biker bar.
  • Upward Glance
    In this issue of Professional Builder , we gaze upward at the 400 largest home builders in the country — the Giant 400. We do this to provide a benchmark and get a sense of what's going on in the industry. It offers us a touchstone on our individual businesses, provides an insight to emerging trends and delivers a measurement of the movements and tectonic shifts of the industry.
  • Best Laid Plans
    To hear architect Andrés Duany of Miami-based Duany Plater-Zyberk tell it, Coastal Mississippi is about to enter a reconstruction renaissance. At the same time, he says, New Orleans has been hamstrung by indecision and conflict. "Every time they make a final plan in New Orleans, they retreat," Duany says.

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