Monday Morning Briefing Letter - 06/15/2009 (Plain Text Version)

By Joe Robson, NAHB Chairman and
Jerry Howard, NAHB President and CEO

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Congress is on the right track to encourage green building

with the GREEN Act of 2009, said NAHB President and CEO Jerry Howard in testimony before the House Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity on June 11.

The Act, H.R. 2336, would set new green building and sustainability benchmarks for properties that receive financial asistance from HUD. While offering several suggestions to clarify the bill's intent, Jerry told lawmakers that the nation's home builders agree with its overall approach to incentivizing green building. But he also cautioned committee members that the other major piece of climate change legislation now before Congress, H.R. 2454, includes requirements that conflict with H.R. 2336, making the GREEN Act potentially obsolete before it is even signed. "It would be terribly disappointing to see the good faith effort and collaborative work on the GREEN Act displaced with unworkable federal mandates as envisioned in H.R. 2454," he said. Jerry pointed out that home builders have a major role to play in the manner in which energy efficiency and sustainable technologies are introduced into the housing stock, and said that, despite the downturn, NAHB has not wavered in its commitment to promoting green building and energy efficiency "in a manner that is affordable, effective and legitimately improves energy efficiency for the next generation of housing." Read more in our press release, or contact Elizabeth Odina, x8570.

An NAHB statement on efforts to enhance the home buyer tax credit

was released on June 11. In it, Chairman Joe Robson said:

"The National Association of Home Builders supports the Business Roundtable's efforts to promote policies that will stimulate housing demand. NAHB looks forward to working with all interested parties in the business community, on Capitol Hill and in the Obama Administration to foster new ideas and policies that will help to get housing and the economy back on track, particularly at a time when the recovery is facing a number of significant challenges.

"Due to expire at the end of November, the $8,000 first-time home buyer tax credit has proved to be an effective policy targeted toward a specific demographic group that is showing tangible results. Enhancing this credit would help to stoke the economic engine at a key point in our recovery.

"When the debate begins in earnest, we look forward to working with Congress to consider all appropriate tax measures to restore the health of housing and the nation's economy."

Contact: Bill Killmer, x8526. [return to top]

Approximately $500,000 in assistance grants to HBAs

have been approved by NAHB as part of a federation-wide program created to strengthen struggling state and local HBAs during the downturn. Available to HBAs that have fallen below specific membership and retention thresholds, each of the 66 individual grants provided are from $750 to $22,500 and designed to fund membership recruitment, retention and other core revenue-generating member programs. The program also provides discounted consulting services available through NAHB.

The $500,000 fund was established at the March meeting of the NAHB Executive Board. A task force was created to analyze and address HBA challenges caused by significant membership losses as a result of the downturn and to develop a course of action to support the struggling HBAs. That task force – made up of members who serve on the NAHB Budget, Associates, Association Planning and Membership committess as well as the Executive Officers Council – originally planned to conduct application reviews and disperse the funds throughout the year. However, after receiving state and local HBA requests of nearly $1.3 million prior to NAHB's Spring Board of Directors Meeting, the task force recommended that all of the funds be released immediately to meet the urgent need. As a result, no other applications for grants for struggling HBAs will be reviewed this year.

Overall, the grants that were approved represent projects that will touch nearly 75,000 NAHB members. Contact William "Rusty" Deiss (x8231) or visit www.nahb.org/NAHBSupportFund for more info. [return to top]

The projected market impact of the first-time home buyer tax credit

has been updated by NAHB Economics to reflect the added benefit of newly announced HUD rules that essentially give that agency's blessing to buyers wishing to use the $8,000 incentive at the closing table. Earlier this year, NAHB calculated that the tax credit would help to stimulate 160,000 incremental home sales – 101,000 of them to first-time buyers who receive the credit and another 59,000 to existing home owners who will be able to buy another home after selling their current one to a first-time buyer. In an update of those projections following HUD's announcement and including the impact of prior state monetization programs, NAHB analysis indicates that the tax credit program now will generate 192,000 incremental home sales, including 121,000 to first-timers and an additional 71,000 to move-up buyers. These transactions will add 73,000 jobs to the economy this year.

More than 560,000 taxpayers claimed the tax credit for sales in 2008, according to data from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, and NAHB forecasts that more than one million taxpayers will claim the $8,000 tax credit for 2009 purchases. Under current law, the first-time home buyer tax credit only applies to home sales completed prior to Dec. 1, 2009. More information on the tax rules of the program is available at www.federalhousingtaxcredit.com. Contact: Rob Dietz, x8285. [return to top]

NAHB's alternative proposal on ELGs,

submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency a little more than a week ago, recognizes that there are wide variations in climate, topography and soil conditions around the country that must be taken into consideration in establishing such rules. As this report has mentioned on repeated occassions, the EPA is operating under a court-ordered deadline to finalize Effluent Limitation Guidelines (ELGs) for the construction and development industry by year's end. NAHB's proposal recommends that the EPA look at five different categories in its regulation of storm water. For example, small, single lots wiithin a larger development should not require individual ELGs. Instead, EPA should continue to require builders to choose from accepted Best Management Practices to prevent storm water runoff. Similarly, ELGs are redundant in those states or jurisdictions where Low Impact Development (LID) techniques are already mandated. Sites that are already meeting LID requirements should be exempt from ELGs, NAHB said. Read more about NAHB's suggestions in NBN Online, or contact Calli Schmidt, x8132. [return to top]

A growing number of retirees and empty-nesters are looking to buy

their next home in order to downsize or obtain more user-friendly housing, according to results of NAHB's newly created 55+ Housing Market Index. This key indicator of builder confidence in the market for new active-adult housing rose to 14 for the first quarter of 2009 versus 9 in last year's final quarter. The latest reading of this measure on June 4 reveals that, despite difficult market conditions, builders who specialize in this sector are seeing more prospective buyers coming through their doors. Meanwhile, such builders exhibited guarded optimism regarding their expectations for the next six months, with that particular index component rising from 24 to 26 for single-family homes in June. Read more in our press release, and check out this quarter's data in chart form here. Contact: Ann Marie Moriarty, x8350. [return to top]

An upcoming audio seminar on AD&C lending challenges

will explore strategies for dealing with the ongoing credit crunch and help builders and remodelers use the right messaging to communicate the problem to federal, state and local government officials. NAHB Political Director Karl Eckhart will moderate the seminar, with speakers to include NAHB staff experts Chellie Hamecs and Scott Meyer, as well as Kirk Hartley of Bank of America Home Loans California. The panel will address questions from the audience that have been submitted in advance to keckhart@nahb.com. (Note, the deadline for submitting questions is June 19.) The registration fee is $79 per phone site, regardless of how many listeners are at each location. This fee also provides participants with online access to the archived seminar after June 25. To sign up, visit www.nahb.org/ADCLoanAudio. Contact: Karl Eckhart, x8126. [return to top]