According to a new survey from the National Association of Home Builders, kitchen and bathrooms continued to lead the way in remodeling projects in 2011 as homeowners decide to stay in their current homes longer. Kitchen and bathrooms are generally the most complex rooms in the house, so it’s only natural homeowners would hire professionals. [...]

Perhaps you’ve seen or heard a story about Williston, North Dakota, the Great Plains boomtown that nearly doubled its population from 2009 to 2011. A modern day black-gold rush has everyday laborers flocking to western North Dakota for the promise of overnight prosperity and boundless opportunity. A byproduct of the boom: Builders simply can’t keep [...]

Death to the McMansion Slate “Let’s start at home. If you’re in a deleveraging, after you triage the crash, you need to create or find a massive pool of demand and an equally large pool of credit-worthy borrowers. Where is there a great pool of demand? Right under our noses. In fact, it’s us. There [...]

We’ve written plenty over the past year about Americans shifting their sights to smaller homes. Countless surveys support the claim, but the reality is while more Americans may prefer smaller homes compared to five years ago, they are still buying big. What gives? Brad Plumer of the Washington Post reports the size of new homes [...]

Lean Builder Blog: IBS and the Learning Organizations Housing Zone “Peter Senge wrote one of the best business books of the 1990’s, The Learning Organization. It is one of those on my list to pull off the shelf and read again, if I ever catch up with the stack of unread volumes on my credenza [...]

The 2012 NAHB International Builders’ Show officially kicks off today, as thousands of builders, architects, designers and vendors (including Integrity Windows and Doors) have converged on Orlando for the four-day event. Our RSS feed is filling up with great stories and posts from IBS 2012, so we’ve compiled a list of must-reads to help you [...]

For its annual “State of the Industry” survey, Builder Magazine tapped a group of345 readers for their take on the building industry. The general sentiment: Maybe the sky isn’t falling after all. The survey suggests resiliency and a willingness to adapt among builders who now understand the industry isn’t going through temporary turmoil, but rather [...]

Green Building Megatrends for 2012 BUILDER “Yudelson unveiled a list of 10 other green megatrends destined for growth in 2012, both in the U.S. and abroad. And while, like the rest of the home building industry, green building will certainly face headwinds in coming days—such as squeezed budgets among families and governments—the market is poised [...]

This week, the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) delivered another good news/bad news combo platter. The good news: The NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index, which measures U.S. home builder sentiment, rose to a score of 25 — the fourth consecutive month of improvement and the highest score since June 2007. The not-so-good news: A [...]

What does 2012 hold for home building? Best as anyone can guess — more uncertainty. But builders should take heed of Builder Magazine‘s list of 10 business trends to look for in 2012 as they gather themselves and strategize for the year ahead. After all, one shift in strategy could be all it takes to [...]