Solution to Calm Financial Storm Centers on Housing

With the Bush Administration working around the clock with congressional leaders on the enactment of emergency legislation to implement a rescue plan to extricate the U.S. financial system from its worst crisis since the Great Depression, the NAHB Senior Officers and staff are remaining in close touch with policymakers in Washington.

At the fall meeting this week of the association’s board of directors in San Diego, addressing the turmoil in the financial markets, which reached grave proportions with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on Sept. 15 and the bailout of insurance giant AIG on the following day, is expected to be the overriding concern. ...

Nation's Building News Will Not Be Published Sept. 29

Nation's Building News will not be published on Sept. 29. Regular weekly publication will resume Oct. 6.

Soft Remodeling Market Looks Good to Home Builders

Even with the remodeling industry in the midst of its most challenging cyclical downturn since the early 1980s, a substantial number of home builders are diversifying into the home improvement and maintenance market, making the competition for jobs even tougher, according to remodelers attending the Sept. 9-12 Remodeling Show in Baltimore.

Home owner improvements, the key segment of the remodeling sector, were falling at a 4% annual rate by the end of last year, and that decline is expected to accelerate to a 9% pace by the end of this year and 11% during the first quarter of 2009, according to Kermit Baker, director of the Remodeling Futures Program at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. ...

Fire Official Surge Sweeps Sprinkler Mandate to Victory

Fire sprinkler mandates will be part of the 2009 International Residential Code and will be required in all one- and two-family homes and townhouses that build to the code as of Jan. 1, 2011.

The sudden — and controversial — arrival on Saturday of 900 fire officials eligible to vote at the International Code Council's final action hearings in Minneapolis swelled the number of sprinkler proponents and the measure was approved by a vote of 1,283 to 470 on Sunday morning. ...