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 [...]

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 [...]

We recently talked about smaller home construction outlasting the current recession. Obviously finances are a concern for many people right now (think of the heating bills on those McMansions!) and a smaller footprint just makes sense. An article called “Downsizing the American Dream” on USA Today gave some more specifics: According to leading architect Sarah [...]

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 [...]

On Friday, this blogger had the chance to attend a forum at the Builders Association of the Twin Cities about women in the building industry. It was a fascinating topic about an underrepresented group. According to the National Association of Women in Construction, women make up only 10 percent of the industry. Amazing! So why [...]

We often think of homebuyers as consisting of couples or families, but there’s a new brand of buyer out there and she has often has purchasing power to burn. According to MSN Real Estate, single women now account for a quarter of home sales, and that number has risen since the mid-90s. So what are [...]

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 [...]

Remodeling Magazine asks this provocative question: Are you a professional? Here’s a snippet of their argument: “These remodelers may earn a wage for what they do, but is there any profit earned to compensate them for the risks they take in owning and running a company? If the business is not earning a profit the [...]

Here’s a question from the Wall Steet Journal: If a city is shrinking and plagued by high unemployment, should it still earn the label of ‘most affordable’? The troubled city of Detroit was anointed that dubious honor on Wednesday by Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC., which released a report comparing the asking prices for four-bedroom, [...]