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The Builder’s Daily

Spanberger’s Virginia housing agenda falls short on local pushback

Affordability, Affordable housing, Policy, Residential Real Estate, The Builder's Daily, Zoning /

New Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s first-year housing agenda delivered new money and new tools for affordable housing preservation, but it fell short on the package’s biggest supply-side proposal: a statewide push to allow multifamily housing by right in many commercially zoned areas. A pair of bills would have required local zoning codes to allow multifamily […]

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California transit agency land could support 240,000 homes

Affordable housing, Housing Policy, Policy, Residential Real Estate, The Builder's Daily, Zoning /

California lawmakers have spent years passing bills aimed at increasing housing supply, with an emphasis on building more homes near transit. A new analysis from Enterprise Community Partners finds that transit agencies across the state own thousands of parcels that could, in theory, be used for housing – a potential lever as the state tries

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How FrameTec plans to cut build-cycle times and reduce waste

Construction, Homebuilders, Technology, The Builder's Daily /

Dozens of innovative companies have sprung up over the past 15 years, each vowing to revolutionize home building.  Many haven’t, don’t, and won’t make it through the “early-stage” gauntlet of A, B, and C series capital raises, where they can pay off their debt, cover their bills and sustainably generate net earnings from their operations. 

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Homebuilder confidence nudges up but remains below par

Homebuilder Confidence, Homebuilder Sentiment, Homebuilders, Marketing & Sales, Residential Real Estate, The Builder's Daily /

Homebuilding business executives maintain a guarded outlook on the homebuilding market, amid tepid demand, shrinking profit margins and weak consumer sentiment. The ongoing conflict with Iran could further complicate the outlook for builders.  The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI)’s builder confidence gauge remained subpar in March with a reading

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Wyoming refund exposes legal risk for local housing fee ordinances

Affordable housing, Housing Policy, Policy, Residential Real Estate, The Builder's Daily /

Small wins on impact fees occasionally occur in costly U.S. housing markets. Teton County, Wyoming, officials agreed last week to refund a $24,325 “affordable workforce housing” fee that a homeowner had to pay to obtain a permit to build a single-family home. The payment settles a lawsuit the homeowner filed last year in a Wyoming

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Housing muni market swells amid affordability policy debate

Affordable housing, Bonds, Housing Policy, Policy, The Builder's Daily /

Financing affordable housing development – typically for lower-income households – is one of the most challenging matters in real estate. Making the economics work on a deal requires layered “hard and soft” funding sources as developers navigate rising costs, policy instability, and structural gaps in the subsidy system. The process is so complicated that professionals

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Lennar margin ‘circuit breaker’: Is Stuart Miller right, wrong or bluffing?

Homebuilders, Leadership, New Home Sales, Residential Real Estate, The Builder's Daily /

A year ago, Stuart Miller described homebuilder margins as a “shock absorber.” The Lennar Executive Chair and Chief Executive Officer had begun doing so two or three years earlier, as mortgage-rate pathways began wreaking havoc on the post-pandemic housing market. The metaphor suited the moment. Mortgage rates had risen sharply, and buyer affordability had plummeted

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How Public Financing Wins Projects Before You Build

How Public Financing Wins Projects Before You Build

Construction, Homebuilders, Land, Launch DFA, Products, Sponsored, The Builder's Daily /

In the homebuilding business, the war is often won or lost before a single foundation is poured. The real battle takes place in conference rooms and municipal offices, where the language of annexation agreements, development agreements and special district financing documents gets hammered out. Smart builders understand this truth: The terms negotiated at the front

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Trump executive order targets regulatory barriers to homebuilding

Affordable housing, Housing Policy, Policy, The Builder's Daily /

The White House announced on Friday afternoon its effort to challenge what it calls “unnecessary regulatory barriers” to homebuilding by issuing a broad executive order to reduce environmental, permitting and programmatic restrictions that federal officials say are contributing to the nation’s housing affordability crisis. The order, signed by Donald Trump, directs multiple federal agencies to

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Contrarian Smith Douglas leans into its system, goes for market share

Earnings, Homebuilders, Leadership, Residential Real Estate, The Builder's Daily /

Uncertainty, margin compression and the gut-check math of affordability are the givens of a new-home market impatiently waiting for relief on at least one of those three fronts.  Most public homebuilders – facing this indefinite limbo – are doing the same thing: slowing down. Production starts are throttling down. Spec inventory is being sold down.

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