Panic rooms are growing more common in New York’s Hamptons, as luxury homeowners rush to add these bulletproof fortresses into their homes. Residents in the area fear infiltration from the Salvadoran gang MS-13 after the chilling murder in April of four young men behind a soccer field in Central Islip and other recent incidents in the area. Southampton Town Police Chief Steven Skynecki publicly confirmed these fears last year; the news has pr
Homebuilding giant Lennar is reportedly looking to sell its real estate lending arm, Rialto Capital, as builders continue to face a stagnant housing market, The Wall Street Journal reports.Lennar has declined to comment publicly on the recent news reports, but in an investor call last week and in April it did confirm it was considering selling Rialto as part of the company’s strategy of spinning off or selling its subsidiaries. The sale cou
Homebuilders have been pointing to a severe labor shortage of contractors that are prompting project delays and new-home prices to rise. Could they turn to robots to make up for the shortage of workers?Japan’s Advanced Industrial Science and Technology Institute is showing off a humanoid bot called HRP-5P that can complete several construction tasks, such as installing drywall by hoisting up boards and fastening them in with a screwdriver. The
Amazon is partnering with homebuilders to bring its Alexa voice assistant to more new housing units as a standard smart-home feature. The online retailer recently announced it has partnered with Plant Prefab, a California-based company that uses sustainable materials to build prefabricated single-family and multifamily homes. The move comes after Amazon introduced more than a dozen Alexa-controlled smart-home devices, including a microwave oven a
Sales of newly built single-family homes eked out an increase in August, but not enough to impress economists or make up for big shortfalls in housing. Sales for new homes increased 3.5 percent in August to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 629,000 units, but the uptick was off of significantly revised downwardly reports from June and July, the U.S. Commerce Department reported Wednesday. The revised reports indicate a soft patch overall in ne
Vinyl siding and stucco were the most common exterior materials used on new homes last year, according to the Census Bureau’s Survey of Construction report. Vinyl siding was used on 27 percent of new homes in 2017, followed by stucco at 25 percent, brick or brick veneer at 21 percent, and fiber cement siding at 20 percent. Stone, rock, or other stone materials were used on just 1 percent of homes.The materials used can vary quite a bit by regio
Builders worked to add more single-family homes to many inventory-starved markets last month. Housing starts nationwide climbed 9.2 percent in August, reaching a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.28 million units, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday.Broken out, single-family starts rose 1.9 percent to 876,000 units, while the multifamily sector—which includes apartment buildings and condos—accounted for the biggest part of the uptic
Builders are being forced to raise home prices and are having a more difficult time meeting project deadlines because of the ongoing labor shortage in the construction industry, according to the latest National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index. Eighty-four percent of builders say they have had to pay higher wages to subcontractor bids, 83 percent say they have had to raise home prices, and 73 percent say they can't co
Home buyers will have a harder time finding a big yard, as lot sizes remain near record lows, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Among sold properties in 2017, the median lot size for a new, detached single-family home was one-fifth of an acre, or 8,560 square feet. Median lot sizes fell below 8,600 square feet in 2015 for the first time since the bureau started recording such data.Lot sizes vary regionally, and the nation's largest tend to be
More builders are outfitting newly constructed homes with smart-home technology, and many buyers say they’ll pay extra for it, according to research from John Burns Real Estate Consulting. Sixty percent of home shoppers say they’d spend more on a home with a smart thermostat, the consulting firm’s survey of more than 23,000 shows. Slightly more—67 percent—say they’d pay extra for an oversized kitchen.More than 60 percent of new-home b
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