2023 BALA Winners: The Best of the Best
You'll find plenty of inspiration in these four award-winning projects from the Best in American Living Awards
The New American Home 2024: Modern Features, Timeless Comfort
Explore the design elements and unique, luxe details that combine to create a sense of comfort and relaxed indoor/outdoor living in The New American Home 2024
Explore the Desert Comfort Idea Home
Take a virtual walkthrough of the bright and airy living spaces inside the Desert Comfort Idea Home...
Luxury Meets Legacy in a Family-Oriented Lakeside Custom Home
This project from the 2022 Best in American Living Awards is inspired by its legacy and location and creates a new foundation for future generations to call home
2022 BALA Projects: Kitchens That Cook
These kitchens from the 2022 Best in American Living Awards showcase on-trend design and innovative ideas for any price point
A Texas Empty Nester Home and Studio With Room for Family, Too
A renowned residential designer takes on the task of creating his next home, and the result is both beautiful and functional
Custom Murals
Tile has long been the selected material of designers, architects and home owners to provide a rich, luxurious look. How about adding personalized images or photos to create custom tiles? Imagine adding a family portrait to the tiles located in the foyer. What about adding the beautiful sunset captured on film while on vacation to a tiled bathroom wall? Coastal Murals, LLC specializes in transf...
Used Textures
Appearing to be recycled from a building long exposed to the elements, Stone Mountain Brick Co. introduces four new veneer styles for its brick and stone. "Used textures" have a slightly worn face with a few random indentations in each brick surface. In sharp contrast, the fresh-looking wirecut style has blunt, uneven grooves that stretch vertically across the surface of each piece.
Color Your World
Brick remains a favorite building material for many home builders and home buyers. Surveys from the National Association of Home Builders show that 60 percent of American home buyers prefer brick homes. When asked, buyers also say they prefer variety in their neighborhoods. Yet the larger the development, the harder a builder must work to differentiate one home from another — not to menti...
Price Does Not Affect Profit
When we dig into the data from our most recent Builder Financial Study (the 11th consecutive survey of Lee Evans Group clients), we find house prices in 2003 ranging from $98,800 to $3.2 million, but no direct correlation of price and profitability. Thirty-eight percent of the builders had average sales prices under $200,000, 29.
Design Sketchbook: Entryways
For years we've placed tremendous emphasis on the design and construction of front entries. From richly detailed doors to elaborate foyers with vaulted ceilings and multiple layers of crown molding, formal entryways all contribute to the initial impression of a home. At least they do if you're a guest who actually enters through the front of the home.
Expanding Market Horizons
Phoenix, a consistently strong housing market, keeps pushing its boundaries with communities on the fast-growing citiy's outer ring. One of the newest is the master plan of Verrado, a half-hour drive west of the city. There, with its Horizons neighborhood, Engle Homes' Arizona Division shattered preconceived notions of the prices the market would support at the edge of suburbia.
How to Create Community
Imagine a community where home buyers can watch their children ride their bikes along the sidewalk from their front porch without the worries of traffic being a danger. Imagine a neighborhood where residents walk to the community post office each morning to drop off outgoing mail, and stop in at the attached café for a coffee to start the day.
Design Sketchbook: Family Entryways
For years we've placed tremendous emphasis on the design and construction of front entries. From richly detailed doors to elaborate foyers with vaulted ceilings and multiple layers of crown molding, formal entryways all contribute to the initial impression of a home. At least they do if you're a guest who actually enters through the front of the home.
Zero-Energy Homes is Latest Option
San Francisco Bay area's Ponderosa Homes showcases its Zero-Energy home — one of the home builder's newest options — at The Classics at Ironwood in Pleasanton, Calif., through an inviting "Green Gallery." The gallery, located in the garage of a Zero-Energy model home, features comfortable seating, Zen-like décor, and four main exhibits: Energy Efficiency, Natural Resources, Wat...
49 Home Sales In One Day
Crosswinds Communities, headquartered in the Detroit area, recently enjoyed huge success with a lottery that resulted in 49 home sales in one day in its 727-acre, award-winning master-planned community, The Sanctuary, in Ovieda, Florida. While most lottery-style sales are used when demand far outstrips supply, Bob Kanjian, president of Building Solutions, who handles marketing and on-site sales...
