Homebuilders Need an Extreme Home Makeover
Urbanologist William Olson foresees 3 changes that major home builders should make if they expect to succeed in the new world of tightened loans, green building, and smaller homes.
The big builders are caught swimming upstream in a current that continues to pick up speed. Record losses, staggering overhead costs, bloated inventories, recalcitrant lenders--and no life vest within swimming distance big enough to get around their bulging waistlines.
There will be losers, to be sure, but there will be many winners as well. The losers, generally proscribed above, will be those stuck in the H2O and unable to shift course. The winners will be those willing to jump into the pool with a differentiated product that rides the wave of new technologies and cost-saving methods.
