Sure, buyers may like the house they’re considering, but do their pets? It’s a question that’s coming up more frequently, and it’s causing builders to put the needs their clients’ four-legged friends front and center.
From designing homes with amenities including ‘smart’ pet doors and elaborate washing and grooming areas, to creating separate living spaces for pets, it’s clear that pets are an important factor when helping clients buy or remodel a home.
A survey conducted exclusively among millennial as part of the Responsive Home project – a venture between Builder magazine and Pardee Homes to design, build and sell the ideal home for the 21st century buyers – identifies the driving factors behind new age home buying habits and de-bunks millennial home buying myths.
U.S. housing starts rebounded strongly in June and building permits surged to a near eight-year high, pointing to a rapidly strengthening housing market. Groundbreaking increased 9.8 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 1.17 million units, the Commerce Department said recently. Permits for future home construction increased 7.4 percent to a 1.34 million-unit rate, the highest level since July 2007. A survey on Thursday showed builders’ confidence held at a more than 9-1/2-year high in July, suggesting that both permits and groundbreaking have scope to rise further.
The outdoor kitchen and two-story foyers are starting to lose favor among new home shoppers, while energy efficiency and bigger closets are gaining in popularity, according to a new survey from the National Association of Home Builders. NAHB asked builders to rank home features from 1 to 5 on how likely they were to include them this year in single-family homes they build this year.
Could you imagine living in 97 square feet? Tiny houses – some might even call them teeny-tiny – are growing in popularity among buyers in the second home market. Some are even making them their primary residence.
An increasing labor shortage among homebuilders reportedly is causing more new homes to be delivered late, and buyers say they’re getting frustrated that builders don’t come back to fix common issues such as sticky doors and loose floor tiles after they move in.
“Builder tardiness” is a growing problem because the economic downturn drove hundreds of thousands of craftsmen and laborers away from housing and into other industries — and they’ve yet to return to construction, the Los Angeles Times reports. The labor shortage has become “substantially more widespread” since last year, according to the National Association of Home Builders.
“The incidence of reported shortages is now surprisingly high relative to the current state of new-home construction,” NAHB economist Paul Emrath noted in a recent report.
About two out of every three builders report paying higher wages due to the labor shortage. What’s more, nearly as many say they’ve had to raise home prices, too. Builders report that their direct labor or employee costs have risen 2.9 percent over the last six months, while subcontractor costs have increased 3.8 percent, according to NAHB.
Whether a reimagined form or an entirely new structure, these great triumphs of contemporary architecture are sure to surprise, seduce, and inspire!
The top 20 master-planned communities in the country sold 15,338 homes in 2013, which is an 11% increase over 2012. With 9 communities, Texas dominated the list. Florida had 4, Nevada had 3, and California had 2. Colorado and the DC area round out the list.
Only 5 new communities joined the list, and 9 of the top 20 remained the same as last year, which is a reflection of how few new master-planned communities have started recently. Our consultants know this will change, however, as we consulted on dozens of planned new communities in 2013.
Ever wondered why, in the face of a sharp inventory shortage, new home construction still lags so far behind other housing indicators? According to Trulia Chief Economist Jed Kolko, there are two reasons…
Each month, Trulia’s Housing Barometer charts how quickly the housing market is moving back to “normal.” They summarize three key housing market indicators: construction starts (Census), existing home sales (NAR), and the delinquency-plus-foreclosure rate (LPS First Look). For each indicator, they compare this month’s data to (1) how bad the numbers got at their worst and (2) their pre-bubble “normal” levels.
In July 2013, all three measures improved: construction starts and existing home sales rose, while the delinquency + foreclosure rate notched downward.
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