Earthcraft New Home Going Up in Chesterfield, VA
This week’s Richmond Times Dispatch has a great article about building energy efficient homes. Thomas and Lewis, along with Mark Waring, vice president of Richmond-based Bain-Waring Builders, are building a home in Chesterfield County that’s so energy-efficient it’s among the first to be certified as such in Virginia. Thomas and Lewis are building a zero-energy home, one that produces as much energy as its uses, therefore canceling... [Read More...]
New-home sales rise fastest in 47 years
As regular readers know, we’re leery about extrapolating national data onto the Richmond Virginia market (usually because we’re doing better than the national average) but this item from CNN/Money caught our eye. New home sales improved in March at the fastest single-month rate in 47 years, according to a government report released Friday, as buyers snatched up properties ahead of the tax credit that’s set to expire. New-home sales... [Read More...]
Another ‘green shoot’: Demand for construction begins to rebuild
The age-old question when trying to call the ‘bottom’ is: Do you wait for the data to look good, or is it enough for the data to stop getting worse? A recent article in Bizsense bounces between these two extremes. One the one hand: New home construction is still down 34 percent from 2008 levels in Chesterfield. And overall activity (commercial, new homes and renovations) is down 50 percent from the first quarter of 2008, when Chesterfield... [Read More...]
Home sales contracts leap higher
Another solid piece of news regarding homes sales emerged this week. Contracts for the sale of existing homes rose sharply in February, possibly indicating a second surge of home sales due to the extended homebuyer tax credit, a widely watched industry report said Monday. In the single-biggest monthly rise since October 2001, the National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) Pending Home Sales Index rose 8.2% in February to 97.6 from a downwardly... [Read More...]
Richmond New-Home Market Expected Strong
A new report/study from Builder Magazine contains some good news for local builders and buyers interested in new homes. The Richmond area is expected to be among the healthiest new-home markets in the U.S. this year, according to Builder magazine. Based on a formula using 2009 building-permit data and weighted 2010 projections for household formations, resale values, job growth and income growth, the recently released Builder Market Health Index... [Read More...]
Richmond Trying to Get Google Fiber
Richmond has responded to an RFI (request for information) from Google to be selected by the internet giant to get the experimental Google Fiber. The Google Fiber for Communities Project is an experiment to build an ultra-high speed broadband network that will deliver internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today. The planned network will offer speeds over one gigabit per second in the fiber-to-the-home connections.... [Read More...]
Reading A Site Plan
Winchester Homes, an active builder in the metro Washington DC area, created a pretty good video tutorial on ‘How To Read A Site Plan’ that we thought might be helpful if you’re thinking about building a new home. What do you think? Do you find the video helpful? For more information, see Richmond VA New Homes. Read More →
Richmond Housing Market Seen One Of Nation’s Strongest
Industry magazine Builder includes a study this month by a research firm called Market Intelligence that suggests that the Richmond area is likely to be one of the early beneficiaries of an improving economy. Housing economists have long held that the housing rebound, when it comes, will be uneven. The markets that benefit first will be the ones with the strongest core dynamics; places where house prices never got out of hand, cities where a diverse... [Read More...]
The Housing Clock
In 2007, the bottom fell out. We all lost equity. We lost jobs. We lost money. We burned through savings. Our 401k’s got hammered. It was not fun. From a housing standpoint, for the most part, we just stopped. We all stopped buying, selling, moving, lending or pretty much anything else to do with real estate. When we tried to sell, the offers that we got (if we got one at all) were very low with tons of strings attached. If it was a contingent... [Read More...]
Are you qualified?
When I ask if someone is qualified to buy a new home, most people think I am referring to their mortgage qualification. I am not. While mortgage qualification is always a concern, the even larger concern in my mind, is whether or not a buyer is qualified to BUILD the home. Huh? Building a new home (or more correctly spoken, having one built for you) is hard work. It is time consuming. It is frustrating. It is confusing. It is emotional. It... [Read More...]
