Posted on 02/04/2008 11:22:29 PM PST by Lorianne
As home builders feel the squeeze from the housing slump, they are aiming to save money by reducing the choices they offer to buyers.___ Coast to coast, Lennar Corp.'s potential home buyers see different scenery, but they might encounter the same kitchen faucets.
The nation's second-largest home builder is whittling down options and moving toward a one-faucet-fits-similar-price-points model, seeing standardization and simplification as tools in a cost-cutting drive aimed at saving millions of dollars and surviving the housing slump.
Other home builders are taking similar steps. Beazer Homes USA says it reduced its carpet offerings by 85%. Pulte Homes cut back to 400 floor plans from more than 2,000, and Centex cut its roughly 4,500 plans in half, and more reductions are under way.
Variety, builders have realized, costs money. That wasn't much of a problem during housing's heyday, when gross margins were as fat as 25%. Now margins are thin, and builders' stocks are in tatters; one index has them down more than 55% in the past year. Saving money has gained urgency.
"When you can raise prices every Monday morning, like it was during the boom time, it's hard to get the organization's attention on something as mundane as lowering cost," said Pulte Chief Executive Richard J. Dugas Jr.
(Excerpt) Read more at realestate.msn.com ...
Doncha just love it? We looked at old and new construction, ranch homes, houses in town and out, all kinds. But my heart kept coming back to this one (the first one we looked at actually.) It was the one house I could see myself living in and making into our home. In 16 years, I’ve never once regretted it. And we’ve had far less problems (just routine maintenance) than my mom with her newly constructed townhouse.
Our houses have character, don’t they?
One thing that I noticed is the bigger the houses the smaller the families. I think some people are choosing to have a bigger house rather than a bigger family.
Taliesin. One of a kind.
Don’t live there if you have a problem with incontinence.
Nope. Wrong house. Taliesin was the house that wright lived in himself.
Taliesin west was a school of architecture in arizona founded by wright. I think it’s still functioning.
Character...yes. Our house even has a ghost. I never believed in them until we “met” ours.
My incontinence is easier to clean up with the river running through it.
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