Happy New Year readers! Here’s to 2011 being a year of recovery, rebuilding and well, just plain old building. Before we begin blogging this year, we wanted to take a look back at the top five posts of 2010. Enjoy! Amazing builder videos DeWalt-16 Nail Gun by David Wiggins Q&A with green builder Matt Risinger [...]

Hire Locally Will Become the Law in San Francisco New York Times “Under the ordinance, city contractors and subcontractors working on city-financed construction projects worth $400,000 or more would be required to hire at least 20 percent of their workers from San Francisco. The requirement will increase by 5 percent each year until it reaches [...]

Marketing Tips for Green  Homes EcoHome “Energy efficiency, water savings, and health issues are the three green hot buttons that most consumers respond to, a panel of industry experts told attendees during the Greenbuild International Conference & Expo in Chicago. But officials of Pulte Group, American Standard, and USA Today also said that buyers not [...]

Saving Costs Residential Architect “Now more than ever, architects who hope to increase their market share must respect their clients’ limits. More importantly, they need a clear understanding of costs, a process flexible enough to adjust as the project evolves, and the creative know-how to do more with less.” Pending Home Sales Rose 10.4% in [...]

The New Water Cooler BUILDER “Builders are slowly revising their perceptions about social media being time consuming to sustain and difficult to track. Builders that dip into these waters also realize that social media don’t sell houses, at least not in the traditional ways other advertising and marketing do. Social media’s power lies in its [...]

Green Building Goes on a Budget Wall Street Journal “Casa Feliz is one of a growing number of affordable-housing projects nationwide that have been built “green”—that is, with nontoxic materials, highly energy-efficient appliances, and features such as green roofs and solar panels. Thanks to tax credits designed to attract private capital and aggressive cost-cutting on [...]

By way of the Daily 5 Remodel newsletter, we learn of a report that finds “Substantive growth in remodeling spending, coming off a three-year decline, seems likely in 2011,” according to the latest quarterly Leading Indicator of Remodeling Activity. The findings of that report are summarized in this release, which sums up the matter as [...]

In honor of, well, nothing in particular, today’s industry news round-up is focused on a series of news items about “green” homebuilding and design. We hope you’ll find something interesting and informative in the stories below. Home Appliance Industry to Develop Sustainability Standards Builder Online “Interest in greener appliances is moving beyond measurements of energy [...]

Will the Real Home Buyers Please Stand Up? Builder Online “Business may be slow, but some serious customers are still shopping hard—and buying. Who are they? And what do they want? … Here’s a quick look at what the numbers show.” 6 Inspiring Examples of Groundbreaking Green Technology Inhabitat “Green technology isn’t just about wind [...]

According to the Wall Street Journal, “Home builders, who aren’t selling too many homes these days, appear to be using their downtime to sharpen quality and service.” It makes sense. Without the housing boom engine powering sales, builders all over the country have to re-tool their plans. Of course, we’re not saying that a few [...]