Chuck Miller's (boisebuilder) Blog

All of us in the housing industry are hoping for a better year. But what are we doing to prepare.  The Building Contractors Association of SW Idaho Sales and Marketing Council is offering NAHB's Institute of Residential Marketing Course IRM 1 - Understanding Housing Markets and Consumers on Febru...

For the 80 percent of home buyers who need a mortgage to buy a home, the two major factors that determine affordability are mortgage interest rates and house prices.  It appears that many buyers have been waiting for home prices to fall further while hoping that mortgage interest rates will remai...

Welcome to the first in my series of blog posts on the Business of Building.  Let's start with a quiz.  In a normal market, what is the average Net Profit for a Builder?  Is it  •A.      21% to 30% •B.      17.3% to 20.9% •C.      3.7% to 8.7% •D.      -5% to 0%   It has been my experience as a h...

  The median size of new homes in the U.S. increased from just over 1,500 square feet in 1973 (the first year the Census Bureau began tracking new home size) to 2,309 square feet at its peak in 2007.  The median size has declined almost 10% since then.  Will the trend to smaller-sized homes persi...

The median size of new homes in the U.S. increased from just over 1,500 square feet in 1973 (the first year the Census Bureau began tracking new home size) to 2,309 square feet at its peak in 2007.  The median size has declined almost 10% since then.  Will the trend to smaller-sized homes persist...

The median size of new homes in the U.S. increased from just over 1,500 square feet in 1973 (the first year the Census Bureau began tracking new home size) to 2,309 square feet at its peak in 2007.  The median size has declined almost 10% since then.  Will the trend to smaller-sized homes persist...

The median size of new homes in the U.S. increased from just over 1,500 square feet in 1973 (the first year the Census Bureau began tracking new home size) to 2,309 square feet at its peak in 2007.  The median size has declined almost 10% since then.  Will the trend to smaller-sized homes persist...

The median size of new homes in the U.S. increased from just over 1,500 square feet in 1973 (the first year the Census Bureau began tracking new home size) to 2,309 square feet at its peak in 2007.  The median size has declined almost 10% since then.  Will the trend to smaller-sized homes persist...

The median size of new homes in the U.S. increased from just over 1,500 square feet in 1973 (the first year the Census Bureau began tracking new home size) to 2,309 square feet at its peak in 2007.  The median size has declined almost 10% since then.  Will the trend to smaller-sized homes persist...

I have read several articles regarding this topic in the past several weeks.  Trey Langford provided his Top Ten Reasons to buy the right size home (as opposed to a McMansion) in his BuildIdaho.com blog on October 10th.  It was also the subject of NAHB's Chief Economist David Crowe's article in t...