Yearly Archives: 2017

Now in its 37th year, NAHB’s national sales and marketing awards program, The Nationals?, is open for entries. Honoring the best in new-home sales, marketing and design, The Nationals competition pays tribute to superior new-home sales and marketing achievements by individual sales and marketing professionals, home builders and associates, and local sales and marketing councils.

Hanley Investment Group Real Estate Advisors, a nationally-recognized real estate brokerage and advisory firm specializing in retail property sales, announced today that the firm completed the sale of a new two-tenant retail building occupied by Dunkin’ Donuts/Baskin Robbins Drive-Thru and MOD Pizza at 26722 Portola Parkway in Foothill Ranch, Calif. The 4,150-square-foot pad building is part of Foothill Ranch Towne Centre, a regional shopping center in Orange County that includes major tenants Target, Hobby Lobby, Michaels, Old Navy and 99 Cents Only Stores. The sale price was $5.7 million.

The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) today called on Congress to pass the Affordable Housing Credit Improvements Act of 2017 (S. 548), legislation that would promote the construction of sorely needed rental apartments and help alleviate the nation’s affordable housing crisis

The National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) released the “Reforming the Mortgage Interest Deduction: How Tax Reform Can Help End Homelessness and Housing Poverty” report today calling for Congress and the Trump administration to use mortgage interest deduction (MID) reform to end homelessness and housing poverty in America.

U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson today announced an additional $178.5 million to help hard-hit areas in several states recover from severe flooding that occurred in 2015 and 2016. The grants announced today are provided through HUD’s Community Development Block Grant – Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) Program.

Construction spending in June declined from May but increased from a year ago as public investment shrank for nearly every type of structure, according to an analysis of new government data by the Associated General Contractors of America. Association officials cautioned that the significant declines in public-sector construction spending come at a time when much of the nation’s public infrastructure is deteriorating due to age or overuse.

Roderick Jackson is the new laboratory program manager for buildings-related research at the Energy Department's (DOE's) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Jackson comes to NREL from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), where he was the group manager for Building Envelope Systems Research.

While many design professionals in the U.S. building industry use building information modeling tools, many people still require and rely upon computer-aided design (CAD)-based, two-dimensional drawings for project information delivery. In 2014, the developers of the United States National CAD Standard® (NCS)—The American Institute of Architects (AIA), Construction Specifications Institute (CSI) and National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS)—released NCS Version 6 (V6), which includes a new section on implementing BIM.

“Using Facebook To Dominate Your Neighborhood” is the attention-grabbing title of the session that nationally-renowned digital marketing expert Jimmy Mackin, co-founder of Curaytor, will present at Inman Connect at the San Francisco Hilton, August 7-11, the nation’s largest real estate technology conference.

After declining for three straight months, pending home sales reversed course in June as all major regions, except for the Midwest, saw an increase in contract activity, according to the National Association of Realtors®

 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has awarded $2,057,000 to the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) to help protect human health and the environment through two Nonpoint Source Program Clean Water Act Section 319 grants. These grants are given to states to implement environmental programs that address nonpoint source pollution in surface and groundwater in order to meet and maintain water quality standards.

The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) today announced that Dan Mathews will be appointed Commissioner of the Public Building Service (PBS). Mathews will oversee GSA's real estate portfolio, which includes more than 370 million rentable square feet in more than 8,600 active assets across the country.

Over 40 percent more wind power projects are under construction or advanced development in America than at this time last year, according to second-quarter results released today by the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA).

“Could Predictive Analytics Become Tomorrow’s QR Code?” is the thought-provoking title of a session that San Francisco General Counsel and General Manager Abbie Higashi of McGuire Real Estate will co-present at Inman Connect at the San Francisco Hilton, August 7-11, the nation’s largest real estate technology conference.

International award-winning firm KTGY Architecture + Planning reports that the firm’s residential designs at two brand new neighborhoods by Toll Brothers in The Cliffs village of Summerlin, Granite Heights and Ironwood, have been selling at a brisk pace. Ironwood opened their models on June 8, 2017, and they have already sold 16 homes. The models at Granite Heights opened a week later, and the team has had 14 sales to date.

The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) today commended bipartisan legislation introduced in the House that would help small businesses and boost housing affordability by clarifying under the law what constitutes a joint employer. The standard of joint employment was vastly expanded by a 2015 decision issued by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in which it adopted a broad and ambiguous new definition

The Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) International, in collaboration with research firm Kingsley Associates, recently released its 2017 Office Experience Exchange Report (Office EER) and 2017 Industrial Experience Exchange Report (Industrial EER).

The Alliance to Save Energy released the following statement from President Kateri Callahan in response to the U.S. House of Representatives passing the Make America Secure Appropriations Act (H.R. 3219)

The Boulder Group, a net leased investment brokerage firm, has completed the sale of a single tenant new construction Dollar General located at 4314 State Route N in Pomona, Missouri for $1,141,000.

Calmwater Capital, a leading national direct real estate lender, has provided $7.6 million in senior debt to Nelson Brothers Professional Real Estate, LLC to acquire and upgrade a student housing complex near Washington State University. The 184-bed property, known as College Crest Apartments, is located at 1555 NE Merman Drive in Pullman, Washington.