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Spring is typically the season when people shop for houses. Many families like to complete their home purchase by the end of the summer so as to not uproot their children during the school year. And let’s face it: houses just look more enticing when flowers are out. But the real estate bust and economic downturn have made the past few housing hunting seasons rather slow. Some buyers have waited on the sidelines hoping prices had further to drop.
This year looks to be different. Already, falling interest rates, an improving economy and a last bit of economic stimulus are helping the housing market stage a revival. In April alone, sales of existing homes jumped 23% from a year ago, according to the trade organization National Association of Realtors. Sales of new homes rose even faster, up 48% from a year ago. What’s more, a growing number of economists believe the three-year plunge in housing prices is at an end. (See pictures of Americans in their homes.)
“Units, volume and sales price are up on all fronts,” says real estate broker Todd Hetherington, who is based in Alexandria, Va. “Houses that are priced well are getting multiple offers in the first week.”
For now, though, housing prices, like everything else, remain rocky. According to the S&P/Case-Shiller nationwide index, home prices fell 3.2% in the first quarter of 2010, down from the already low levels where they stood at the end of 2009. And home prices may stay down for a little longer. The continued recent slide in the stock market is hurting consumer confidence and likely to make some people pause before buying a house. Foreclosures aren’t helping the housing market either. The government’s home-loan-modification programs have helped keep a relatively small amount of home owners out of foreclosure. But more repossessed homes are now starting to land on the market, driving up the number of houses for sale and holding down prices. In addition, some economists are concerned that the expiration of an $8,000 tax credit for homebuyers, which essentially ended in April, will hurt home sales. Indeed, the Mortgage Bankers Association said last week mortgage applications for new home purchases fell to the lowest level since 1997. Lastly, mortgage credit remains tight, making it hard for some prospective home buyers to qualify for a loan. (See high-end homes that won’t sell.)
“We think the tax credit has dragged a lot of house sales forward, and we think we are going to pay for it,” says Jay Brinkmann, the chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Association. He expects home sales to drop 5% in the fall of 2010.
Nonetheless, a growing number of economists believe this spring could end up being the start of a sustained rebound in the housing market. The biggest driver of that rebound will likely be interest rates. Though rates were expected to rise this summer, the continuing problems in Europe are driving down rates in the U.S., which is still seen as a safe haven for investors. The result is that mortgage rates have fallen to their lowest point in a year and are expected to continue to drop through the summer. In general, for every percentage-point decline in mortgage rates, houses effectively become 10% cheaper.
A recent study of 92 economists by financial-products firm MacroMarkets found that on average housing prices are expected to drop slightly in 2010 and begin rising again next year. That means that for the first time in years someone who buys a house this spring will most likely see their home appreciate in the next year. And rising housing prices, just like falling ones, tend to feed on themselves.
“Low interest rates will be a powerful incentive,” says William Hummer, chief economist for Wayne Hummer Investments. “People who want to be home owners will get back into the market.”

By STEPHEN GANDEL

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Spending on single-family residential building will go up 10% to 24% per year, rising from $123.61 billion in 2010 to $232.67 billion in 2014, the Raleigh, N.C.-based group said.

In contrast, it predicted spending on multifamily buildings would drop 12% this year and 8% in 2011 before turning around in 2012 and rising 28% that year, 8% in 2013 and 9% in 2014. In constant dollar terms, the annual expenditures would go from $31.34 billion in 2010 to $43.31 billion in 2014.

As for improvements–which FMI defined as additions, alterations, and major replacements, but not maintenance and repairs–FMI looks for 3% to 5% growth annually, from $119.72 billion this year to $140.03 billion in 2014.

All these forecasts reflect the value of construction put in place. The Census Bureau defines that measure as the value of construction installed or erected in a particular year. The number includes cost of materials as well as cost of labor, contractor’s profit, the cost of architectural and engineering work, and various other costs.

“The residential sector is expected to begin to recover in 2010,” FMI said, but it noted that “single family put in place construction will recover at a slower rate than single-family housing starts.” This is because there’s a trend toward lower-cost housing. For instance, it takes five starts on $150,000 houses to equal one start of a home worth $750,000.

“Multifamily construction has been impacted severely by tight credit and will not recover until credit loosens,” FMI continued. “Residential improvements construction is expected to increase slightly in 2010 as consumers make improvements rather than move up, and the age of the housing stock requires improvements.”

By Craig Webb

http://www.builderonline.com/economic-conditions/steady-growth-inconstruction-upkeep-spending-forecast-thru-14.aspx?cid=BLDR100413002

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By the same token, Tom Mirabile of Lifetime Brands notes younger consumers are more concerned about living within their means, eschewing the throw-away mindset of the past half-century and demanding not only durability but techno-savvy products that perform multiple tasks and look good while doing it.

“There is a renewed expectation and renewed demand for durability,” Mirabile said in a recent interview. “We are seeing a different kind of consumer.”

The recent International Housewares Association trade show in Chicago indicated manufacturers are going back to simpler designs that work out of the box rather than trying to introduce technical marvels that demand a learning curve to operate properly. Who needs an electronic rotisserie for chicken when a beer can tucked inside the bird or a vertical roaster that goes into the oven will do?

An example of the proliferation of simpler products is the French press coffee maker — essentially a beaker with a handle, top and plunger-screen — that takes up little room and gets tossed into the dishwasher, unlike its electric brethren that make coffee, espresso and steam milk, and take up a large chunk of kitchen counter real estate. For the dieter, there was the portion-control plate that pictures where each component of a meal belongs, sized to prevent overeating.

While some older consumers relished the formal living room and separate dining room, Generation Y appears to be the kitchen generation, harking back to a time when everyone congregated in the kitchen, not only to eat but to socialize.

Lifetime Brands’s survey, “Top Trends for 2011,” found the kitchen is becoming a multipurpose room where the host demonstrates cooking skills, the kids do their homework and myriad other activities take place. The trend presents a challenge to architects and construction companies to rethink design to reflect usage, rather than forcing buyers to conform behavior to design.

A recent Better Homes and Gardens poll indicates consumers realize the real estate party is over and it’s time to look to the practical. The home office, for example, should double as a craft or hobby room. Houses also are getting smaller, with four or more bedrooms and three or more bathrooms going the way of the garret. By the same token, the survey found kitchens getting larger, with the market being driven by first-time buyers rather than move-up buyers. The National Association of Realtors notes 46 percent of sales in 2009 were to first-time buyers, with a median age of 30 to 32.

On the savvy front, the Better Homes survey found the kind of high-tech these young buyers are into is the kind that saves on energy and other utility costs.

And for those who don’t want to start their search with a Realtor, iPhone has an app for that.

by MARCELLA S. KREITER

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Green home building and third-party certification have made significant gains in the residential construction industry over the last few years. In some locations, the green segment of the market has thrived while housing sales in general have slumped.

However, achieving green does not come without added costs. Regardless of the green-building rating system used, there are three categories of costs that come with building green: construction costs, verification costs and certification fees. These additional costs may deter builders from considering building a green-certified home. But there are ways to significantly reduce or eliminate additional construction costs — and even reduce typical construction and operational costs — by examining some key areas of the construction process, eliminating any potential labor and materials waste and increasing efficiency on site.

Through the NAHB Research Center’s National Green Building Certification Program, we’ve had an opportunity to hear from a number of builders and industry consultants about how they have gone green and saved money in the process. Here are some baseline considerations.

Know where you stand
How do the homes you build now stack up against the green rating system you plan to follow for certification? You may be closer than you think to achieving an entry-level green certification in your preferred program.

For certification using the NAHB National Green Building Standard, make the free online Green Scoring Tool your first stop. The tool will score your home against the four potential levels of certification (Bronze, Silver, Gold and Emerald) based on the practices you currently use, and will identify additional practices that will improve your project’s environmental performance. Many builders have found themselves within five or 10 points of Bronze, which could be achieved with a very low- or no-cost change in one or two products they were using.

Frame the issue

advertisement If you are currently using stick-built construction to frame your homes, you may want to consider using panels or trusses. These techniques are labor- and resource-efficient, resulting in less on-site waste and potentially lower labor and material costs. As a bonus, fabricated systems often create greater thermal efficiency over stick frames. Wall panelization also results in more precision in the construction process, which can make it easier to implement and control other construction changes, such as a transition from 2×4 to 2×6 construction. Many green rating systems, including the National Green Building Standard, also award points for use of panels and trusses, providing a win-win for your budget and green-certified projects.

If you choose to frame on site, there are several optimum value engineering techniques that can save on material and labor costs, while generating green points at the same time. Look into options such as:

•Ladder blocking — Uses less wood; makes more room for insulation; gets green points
•Two-stud corners — At least one less stud at each corner; allows for more fully insulated corner; gets green points
•Switch from 2×4 @ 16 inches on center to 2×6 @ 24 o.c. — May result in small cost increase initially, but gets a lot of green bang for your buck
Another simple method for cutting costs is to develop a cut list — a set of cutting instructions and guidelines for your field crew that ensures the material you purchased for a particular application is used for the intended purpose. For example, a job might require two 8-foot-long, 2×10-inch headers and the purchasing manager was able to save some money by ordering one 16-foot-long, 2×10-inch piece of lumber that could be cut in half and used without any waste. Without a cut list, the field crew will likely pick up the first 2×10 material they see — maybe two 12-foot-long 2×10s — and cut it to fit the immediate need, which, in this case, would result in 4 feet cut off each piece and thrown away as waste.

Don’t let your ducts run amok
Optimizing duct runs and centrally locating the mechanical room can result in material cost savings and increased energy efficiency. Be sure not to have more ducts or longer duct runs than are needed in any part of the house. In addition, make sure that your HVAC contractor is using Manual J or D calculations to design the most efficient placement of ducts.

Using a central return also reduces material costs and, in combination with transfer grilles in spaces like bedrooms where doors may be frequently closed, is a simple system that can provide adequate circulation and cost savings to both you and your buyer.

Placing all HVAC equipment, including ducts, in conditioned space within the home is also a smart move. In addition to creating significant energy savings and earning green points, this practice may also allow you to spec smaller, less-expensive HVAC equipment and limit or eliminate the need for additional insulation for the duct system.

Bigger is not always better
If you are already building energy-efficient homes or plan to increase the energy efficiency of your plans as you embark on green construction, don’t be surprised if the HVAC equipment you are currently using is larger and more costly than you need. A tighter, more efficient building envelope significantly reduces the HVAC burden for the home, as less conditioned air is leaking out and less unwanted unconditioned air from outside is leaking in.

Water pipes everywhere
When designing the plumbing system, look for efficiencies in both labor and material. Consider employing a stacked approach, where rooms that require plumbing runs are aligned so that less piping is required. In addition, consider PEX piping over more traditional materials. While PEX comes with a slight first-cost premium, it does not require pipe cuts or joints, reducing material and labor costs. Finally, consider centrally locating your water heater to reduce the length of piping runs.

Quality assurance is key
In many respects, a green certification program can also help boost the overall quality of the homes you build, and the residual customer satisfaction. Regardless of the material or design, having an explicit underlying quality assurance plan in place is always going to be a cost-saver. Quality assurance takes a holistic look at practices throughout your business and helps you determine where there are inefficiencies and how you can remedy them.

Consider the cost of a callback. How much does it really cost your company to call a tradesperson back to a jobsite to repair or replace something? Couldn’t you or your superintendent be doing something that would generate revenue, rather than attending to callbacks? And what about getting a red tag from a building inspector? Doesn’t that waste valuable time and money for your company? Wouldn’t it save you precious resources to eliminate callbacks and red tags altogether by making sure things are done right the first time, every time?

While there are numerous ways to increase the quality assurance quotient on your jobsites, one prime area to focus on is the scheduling of trades and creating job-ready conditions for each crew that comes to the site. If the work of each trade crew is not done correctly and in the right order, it results in numerous dry runs and re-dos — all of which correlate to real costs. Sit down with your trade crew supervisors to determine what needs to be done, and with what precision/tolerance, before their crew can completely do its job. Then be sure to write what constitutes a complete job, ready to turn over to the next crew, in the scope of work you create for each trade group. These simple steps can shave days off the production schedule.

At midnight on April 30, buyers interested in the receiving the first-time homebuyers tax credit and the repeat homebuyers tax credit will have to have a home under contract and close on that home by June 30.

Nearly 56,000 North Carolina taxpayers have collected $400 million in first-time homebuyer credits, according to a press release from the Internal Revenue Service. The first-time homebuyer tax credit gives eligible recipients up to $8,000, and repeat homebuyers are eligible for $6,500.

Nationally, nearly 1.8 million Americans filed returns to collect $12.6 billion in tax credits for homes that they purchased in 2008 and 2009 through mid-February.

Realtors said the tax credits have helped boost home sales. The contract deadline falls in the spring home shopping season, when a lot of homes are traditionally put under contract anyway.

“You’ve still got plenty of time,” said Exit Realty Broker-in-Charge Kim Privette. “As long as your contract is signed, you are good.”

Exit Realty, like other agencies around Statesville, is seeing an increase in contracts and upcoming closings.

ReMax Properties Plus Broker Barry Sechrist said his firm will be busy in the next couple of weeks. Sechrist said he’s written up two contracts already this week.

“We are definitely seeing some people taking advantage of the tax credit,” said Coldwell Banker United Realtor Broker-in-Charge Edwin Hunter.

Hunter said sales are up 24 to 25 percent right now.

Privette said some properties that were on the market for a year or more are getting two or more offers.

Not all of the buyers in the real estate market are eligible to receive the tax credit, she said.

“I don’t think this tax credit is stimulating the market as much as they hope,” Privette said. “People are scared to buy houses if they are not sure if they have a job or not.”

Hunter said part of the problem is people need the money immediately for down payments.

“It’s definitely helped some people,” Hunter said. “It’s helped the economy.”

Hunter said the influx of supply on the market has driven the price of houses downward.

“The number of foreclosures coming onto the market, the lenders are wanting out of their inventory and they are marking down the houses considerably,” he said. “That’s not encouraging me to put my house on the market. I’m not only facing my normal competition, but I’m also facing the competition of foreclosure.”

Hunter said if he tried to sell his house today, it would go for a couple thousand dollars less than it would have a few years ago.

By Bethany Fuller, Statesville Record and Landmark, N.C.

To see more of the Statesville Record & Landmark or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.statesville.com.

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Single-family housing starts in March were at a rate of 531,000; this is 0.9 percent below the revised February figure of 536,000.  The March rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 88,000.

Privately-owned housing units authorized by building permits in March were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 685,000.  This is 7.5 percent above the revised February rate of 637,000 and is 34.1 percent above the March 2009 estimate of 511,000.

Single-family authorizations in March were at a rate of 543,000; this is 5.6 percent above the revised February figure of 514,000.  Authorizations of units in buildings with five units or more were at a rate of 120,000 in March.

Privately-owned housing completions in March were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 656,000.  This is 3.1 percent below the revised February estimate of 677,000 and is 21.2 percent below the March 2009 rate of 833,000.

Single-family housing completions in March were at a rate of 486,000; this is 5.9 percent above the revised February rate of 459,000.  The March rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 161,000.

above the revised February estimate

above the revised February estimate

Matt Phair, HousingZone Contributing Editor

http://www.housingzone.com/article/CA6726515.html?nid=&rid

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Released at the 2010 International Builders’ Show in Las Vegas last month, the Commentary provides valuable insight to the intention and implementation of the practices and provisions found in the standard.  Developed with the input of members of the ICC 700-2008 Consensus Committee who developed the standard, the Commentary is a useful resource for any designer or builder using the ICC 700-2008 as a rating system for developing or renovating residential properties of all types, to reduce their relative environmental impact.

The National Green Building Standard is a scoring tool and certification protocol that assures projects have met stringent benchmarks in energy, water and resource efficiency, indoor environmental quality and lot and site design. It is the first such system to be approved by the American National Standards Institute. The standard covers single-family homes, apartments and condos, residential land development and home remodeling projects, and is administered by the NAHB Research Center, which also accredits local verifiers around the country.

“This new resource allows readers to better navigate the National Green Building Standard,” said Bob Jones, NAHB Chairman and a home builder from Bloomfield Hills, Mich. “Each chapter breaks down the different components contained in the standard, allowing builders and remodelers to learn the best way to build green in their own communities.”

www.nahb.org

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“The fact that both starts and permits for new housing production rose last month is a good sign that we’re headed in the right direction, albeit slowly, on the road to a housing recovery,” said Joe Robson, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and a home builder from Tulsa, Okla. “That said, the November improvement was primarily on the multifamily side, and poor job markets and other economic factors are still keeping many potential buyers on the fence for the time being.”

“Home builders remain very cautious about starting new homes, and overall housing production is still down on a three-month average basis,” noted NAHB Chief Economist David Crowe. “Understandably, it will take some time for the newly extended and expanded home buyer tax credit to start boosting sales in individual markets – just as it did the last time such an incentive was enacted. However, the fact that permits increased in November is a hopeful indication that the desired impact of the tax credit on housing demand may be forthcoming early in 2010. In the meantime, credit for new housing production remains extremely difficult to come by, posing significant obstacles to builders with viable projects.”

Single-family housing starts made up some of the ground they lost in October, posting a modest 2.1 percent gain to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 482,000 units in November. Meanwhile, multifamily starts rebounded from an all-time record low in the previous month with a 67.3 percent gain to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 92,000 units in November.

Gains in housing production were registered across all regions of the country in November, with a 16.4 percent increase in the Northeast, a 3 percent gain in the Midwest, a 12.3 percent increase in the South and a nearly 2 percent gain in the West.

Permit issuance, which can be an indicator of future building activity, rose 6 percent in November to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 584,000 units, its highest level in a year. Single-family permits rose 5.3 percent to 473,000 units, while multifamily permits rose 8.8 percent to 111,000 units.

Three out of four regions posted gains in housing permits for November, with a 4.7 percent increase reported in the Northeast, a 10.7 percent increase posted in the South, and a 2.7 percent gain registered in the West. The Midwest posted a 1.9 percent decline

Source: www.nahb.org

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Marking a decade of history, NCSE’s signature national conference will engage leading thinkers and doers from a diversity of disciplines, sectors, and perspectives in a structured conversation about the meaning of the green economy and how investment in green education, research and jobs can help solve both the economic and environmental crises.

Welcoming over 1000 attendees, The New Green Economy will bring together leaders in sustainable business, environmental policymakers, civil society, university faculty, students from across the nation, and educated citizens.

NCSE leverages a multi-disciplinary and multi-sectoral approach to bring together involved scientists and decision makers from a wide range of organizations. Our conferences are highly interactive, including renowned speakers, topical symposia to explore issues in more depth, and breakout sessions to develop (and publish) recommendations on how to advance science and connect it with policy and decision-making

Source: www.oikos.com

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Ultimately, even though the report quantifies a range of benefits, I don’t think it intends for those numbers to be taken too literally. The report represents the results of a thought exercise about how LEED is doing at accomplishing what it set out to do. And that’s a great thing, because it gets us all thinking about the things that LEED was created to address in the first place.

Source: www.BuildingGreen.com

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