Archive for November, 2009

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BuildingGreen Announces 2009 Top-10 Green Building Products

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

BuildingGreen, LLC, announced the 2009 Top-10 Green Building Products. This eighth annual award, announced at the U.S. Green Building Council’s Greenbuild Conference in Phoenix, recognizes the most exciting products drawn from recent additions to the GreenSpec Directory and coverage in Environmental Building News.

“Our selections of the Top-10 Green Building Products represent a wide range of product types in many different application areas,” noted BuildingGreen founder and executive editor Alex Wilson. This year’s list is particularly diverse, ranging from a recycled-content concrete block, to a flywheel energy storage system for data centers, a mobile solar generator for job-site power, and an advanced modular classroom for schools.

Energy-saving products among the Top-10 include a line of mineral wool insulation, an integrated rain-screen/insulation wall cladding for commercial buildings, a heat-pump water heater, an energy control system for lighting in commercial buildings. A structural matrix system, Silva Cell, provides a support system for urban tree roots, helping trees survive in largely impervious environments and helping to manage stormwater runoff.

One of the nation’s most innovative furniture makers, Baltix, is being recognized for new products that incorporate a variety of biobased, FSC-certified, and recycled-content materials. “Many of the Top-10 products this year have multiple environmental attributes,” said Wilson.

BuildingGreen’s Top-10 product selections, as in previous years, are drawn from new additions to the company’s GreenSpec product directory. About 200 product listings have been added to the GreenSpec database during the past year. “New products are being introduced all the time, making it a challenge for our staff to keep up,” said Wilson. “We also continue to come across products that have been on the market for years, but were under our radar screen.” The GreenSpec database includes more than 2,100 product listings.

A major driver of the development of green products continues to be the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED® Rating System (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), which awards points for the use of certain product types, such as certified wood, or for the energy savings that green products can achieve. “Designers of LEED buildings are looking for green products, and manufacturers are responding,” said Wilson. In the online version of GreenSpec, users can find products organized by LEED credits as well as by building category and the CSI MasterFormat structure.

The 2009 Top-10 Green Building Products are listed below. More complete descriptions and contact information are provided on the attached pages:

  • Pozzotive Plus CMUs and Concrete Brick from Kingston Block
  • Thermafiber Mineral Wool Insulation Products
  • Invelope Integrated Wall Insulation and Rainscreen System
  • Baltix Recycled- and Biobased-Content Office Furniture
  • Project FROG Modular Green Classroom
  • Rheem HP-50 Heat-Pump Water Heater
  • Convia Energy-Management Infrastructure
  • Pentadyne GTX Flywheel Energy Storage
  • Silva Cell Subsurface Tree Protection and Stormwater System
  • Mobile Solar Power Generator

Source: www.buildinggreen.com

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Housing Affordability Record-High Level for Third Consecutive Quarter

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

Nationwide housing affordability, bolstered by affordable interest rates and low house prices, hovered for the third consecutive quarter near its highest level since the series was first compiled 18 years ago, according to the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index (HOI) released today.

The HOI showed that 70.1 percent of all new and existing homes sold in the third quarter of 2009 were affordable to families earning the national median income of $64,000, down slightly from a near-record 72.3 percent during the previous quarter and up from 56.1 percent during the third quarter of 2008.

“At a time when housing is at its most affordable, we applaud the recent actions taken by Congress and President Obama to stimulate housing by extending the federal tax credit beyond its Nov. 30 deadline and expanding it to a wider group of eligible home buyers,” said NAHB Chairman Joe Robson, a home builder from Tulsa, Okla. “With interest rates now lower than last quarter, the tax credit will encourage even more home buyers to enter the market and help stabilize housing and the economy by creating new jobs, stimulating home sales, reducing foreclosures, cutting excess inventories and stabilizing home prices.”

Indianapolis was the most affordable major housing market in the country during the third quarter, a position the metro area now has held for 17 consecutive quarters. Almost 95 percent of all homes sold were affordable to households earning the area’s median family income of $68,100.

Also near the top of the list of the most affordable major metro housing markets were Youngstown-Warren-Boardman, Ohio-Pa., and three Michigan metropolitan areas, Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn; Warren-Troy-Farmington Hills; and Grand Rapids-Wyoming.

Five smaller housing markets posted even higher affordability scores than Indianapolis, with Kokomo, Ind. outscoring all others. There, 96.7 percent of homes sold during the third quarter of 2009 were affordable to median-income earners. Other smaller housing markets near the top of the index included Springfield, Ohio; Bay City, Mich.; Mansfield, Ohio; and Elkhart-Goshen, Ind.

New York-White Plains-Wayne, N.Y.-N.J., was the nation’s least affordable major housing market during the third quarter of 2009, the New York metro area’s sixth consecutive appearance at the bottom of the list. Slightly more than 19 percent of all homes sold during the third quarter were affordable to those earning the New York area’s median income of $64,800.

The other major metro areas near the bottom of the affordability scale included San Francisco; Honolulu; Santa Ana-Anaheim-Irvine, Calif.; and Nassau-Suffolk, N.Y.

San Luis Obispo-Paso Robles, Calif. was the least affordable of the smaller metro housing markets in the country during the third quarter. Others near the bottom of the chart included Ocean City, N.J.; Santa Cruz-Watsonville, Calif.; Santa Barbara-Santa Maria-Goleta, Calif.; and Brownsville-Harlingen, Texas.

Source: www.nahb.org

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NAHB Connects Builders with New Financing Sources at the 2010 International Builders’ Show®

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

Wall Street and Main Street will come together at the International Builders’ Show® (IBS) this January, thanks to an exciting new offering called the Partnership Pavilion that is being developed by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB).

“The severe lack of available credit for acquisition, development and construction (AD&C) financing constitutes a significant threat to thousands of home building and development companies, as well as to the immediate and long-term future of the housing industry,” said NAHB Chairman Joe Robson, a home builder from Tulsa, Okla. “Given the current situation, an innovative approach was called for to help our members find new sources of debt and equity financing while reinvigorating the traditional sources of housing credit, and that is the aim of the Partnership Pavilion.

“NAHB members build roughly 80 percent of all new housing in this country every year, and about 95 percent of them are the key decision-makers within their business – including presidents, CEOs, owners and managing partners,” Robson continued. “Many of them are already planning to travel to the International Builders’ Show (IBS), which is the largest and best-attended annual building industry tradeshow in this country. It just makes sense to provide a confidential setting within that venue for such professionals to meet one-on-one with potential new backers for their projects.”

As envisioned, the pavilion will be a centrally located forum with private office space and concierge services at the International Builders’ Show, which takes place Jan. 19-22 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Here, NAHB members will have the opportunity to discuss their funding needs with representatives of a variety of capital sources and financing advisors.

Builders and developers who are interested in participating in the Partnership Pavilion will need to qualify in advance of the show by providing specific information on their proposed projects via an online portal soon to be available on NAHB’s Web site. At that time, potential funding sources will review the information, and those who are interested in further exploring a given deal will be able to set up a meeting at the pavilion with the designated applicant. Additional information and a sign-up form for financing and investment companies who wish to participate are available at: www.nahb.org/partnership.

“At a time when credit for housing production is extremely difficult to come by, we hope that the Partnership Pavilion will provide a new channel through which home builders, developers and potential investors can communicate and conduct business while attending our industry’s most important trade show of the year,” said Robson.

Source: www.nahb.org

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