NBN Online for the week of July 23, 2007

Green Featured in Extreme Home Makeover in Billings

With the help of a volunteer army of framers, electricians, masons, their subs, suppliers and business partners, Billings, Mont. builder and state home builders association president Jeff Junkert recently built a house for a deserving family as part of the ABC television series "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition."

“It wasn’t about making money. It was about giving, and that was pretty cool,” Junkert said.

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Lumber Prices Provided by Random Lengths

Unsold Inventory Continues to Weigh on Florida Builders

Ted C. Jones, a senior staff vice president and chief economist for Stewart Title Guaranty Company, told builders attending the Southeast Building Conference in Orlando, Fla. earlier this month that they are still building at a faster pace than the market can absorb despite a sizable slowdown in production and that deterioration of the subprime mortgage market has made it even more difficult to work down unsold inventory.

“There is still overbuilding in Florida,” Jones said, and the industry is now paying the price for the real estate flipping that at the height of the housing boom became the nation’s latest get-rich-quick scheme and turned housing into the equivalent of a Yogi Berra baseball card.

‘Buy Now’ Spotlight Shines on New York City Builders

Lawrence Brinker, executive officer at the Building Industry Association of New York City, expected good things when he learned his HBA was a grant recipient of NAHB’s “Buy Now” Advertising Assistance Program — a program that provides advertising grants to qualifying HBAs hit hard by the housing downturn.

But the results he and his 120 members saw were nothing less than great.

The HBA’s advertising campaign featured an eight-week run of NAHB’s “Buy Now” print advertisements in the Staten Island Advance. The ads caught the eye of the newspaper’s real estate reporter.

“The theme resonated with her and stimulated a Sunday front-page story,” said Brinker. “That’s not an easy thing to do in the New York City market. We couldn’t have done it without the NAHB grant money.”