Home Builders Research Articles

Medical home builders tackle reimbursement, coding issues

In the two years since the Academy agreed to support 11 state teams in launching medical home programs, four teams are now mentoring new states on how to provide special needs children with a single physician or practice committed to overseeing their health care needs.. In January, the mentor teams

Digital Homes — For Richer for Poorer, Who are They for?

Networked homes which support and use high technology services are usually seen as the domain of top-of-the-range, executive properties. However, there is growing evidence that this is not necessarily the case and that technology can be used to bring cost-effective benefits to a wide range of people. This paper looks at the digital home from a ‘customer’ viewpoint, where the customers are home builders or developers, housing associations or local authorities, home owners or tenants. Their individual requirements and expectations are explored, along with a framework for identifying and delivering the advantages of the digital home.

Customer Satisfaction in Home Building

To successfully compete in the long term, a company must be sure current customers are satisfied. Providing superior quality and keeping customers satisfied are rapidly becoming the ways companies differentiate themselves from competitors. This study examines empirically home builders' performance as measured by the degree of home buyers' satisfaction. Sixteen Florida-based home builders agreed to participate in the study and to allow contact with their recent home buyers. Nearly 300 of these home buyers provided valuable input to the study. A model was proposed, describing home-buyer satisfaction as a three-dimensional composite of satisfaction with house design, house quality, and service. All three dimensions were found to be significant predictors of overall home-buyer satisfaction. Service emerged as the most important component in shaping the overall satisfaction. However, service was the area in which home builders demonstrated the poorest performance. The study results suggest that service deserve...

A model for research efforts: evolutionary not revolutionary

The U.S. home builders and suppliers, funded by the Federal government, have developed new methods and technologies to improve the energy efficiency and reduce the cost of single-family housing. This report by Michael Crosbie, one of the researchers involved in the effort, reviews the work done so far and looks ahead to future collaborative efforts to advance this huge sector of the U.S. economy.

Portraits of Emigration: Sour Milk and Honey in the Promised Land

This article analyzes the moral tones of public emigration stories through an exploratory analysis of newspaper stories published between 1990 and 1993 in a region in Poland with a century‐old tradition of out‐migration. Media stories are fertile ground for examining values and myths because they negotiate between the micro‐level process of individuals constructing meanings and the macro‐level process of political economies producing meanings. I identified two sets of contradictory stories: (1) stories about the sending country cast emigrants as either home builders or home wreckers, and (2) stories about the receiving country depicted America as either Horatio Alger's land of possibility or a morally degenerate place where greed corrupts the soul. To explain these contradictions, I compare the institution of migration to (post)modern culture and note that both contribute to social diversity and structural differentiation which lead to value inconsistencies.

Impact of Total Quality Management on Home-Buyer Satisfaction

Providing superior quality and keeping customers satisfied are rapidly becoming the ways construction companies differentiate themselves from competitors. Many companies are, however, frustrated in their efforts to improve quality and customer satisfaction through the implementation of total quality management (TQM). The primary objective of this study was to increase understanding of how TQM affects home-buyer satisfaction. For the first time an empirical study has confirmed that implementation of TQM is positively associated with home-buyer satisfaction. Supplier quality management has emerged as the most important factor in shaping home-buyer satisfaction, but it is the area in which home builders do not practice extensively.

Use of 222Rn-resistant techniques in new home construction.

The objective of this project was to assess the status of the use of 222Rn-resistant construction techniques in new home construction in the eight Zone 1 counties of North Carolina. Zone 1 counties have an average predicted indoor 222Rn screening potential greater than 148 Bq m(-3)(4 pCi L(-1)). To facilitate a response from builders, a brief survey form was designed and printed on the back of a self-addressed, postage-paid postcard. This survey form was mailed to 460 home builders in the Zone 1 counties. The response rate was 17%, which can be compared to the 4.9% response rate obtained in a national survey conducted by the National Association of Home Builders Research Center. In our survey, 62% of the responding builders reported that they had built some or many homes in 1996 "using construction techniques to reduce the entry of radon into homes," but only 10% of the builders reported using these techniques for many homes. The National Association of Home Builders survey determined that, nationally, 30% of homes built in Zone 1 counties had 222Rn venting features. There is the potential for bias in the results of our survey (as well as in the results of the National Association of Home Builders survey) since the response rates were low.

Workers' compensation experience of North Carolina residential construction workers, 1986-1994.

A total of 31,113 workers' compensation claims among 7,400 North Carolina Homebuilders Association (NCHA) members and their subcontractors for the period 1986-1994 were analyzed to calculate workers' compensation claim incidence density rates. For the 7 years studied, the average rate (cases/200,000 work hours) for all claims was 16.40 and the rate for medical or lost time cases was 10.78. Highest rates for cases involving medical costs or paid lost time by mechanism of injury were observed for being struck by an object (3.1), lifting/movement (1.97), falls from a different level (1.13), striking against an object (0.87), and falls on the same level (0.46). Rates by mechanism of injury were highest for muscle strains (2.34), wounds/punctures (2.33), bruises/contusions (1.24), fractures/dislocations (0.98), and injuries to the eyes (0.81). Among medical cost or lost work time cases, body parts with highest injury rates were back/shoulders (1.99), fingers (1.31), leg/knee (1.00), hand/wrist (1.00), foot/ankle (0.86), and eyes (0.82). Injury rates were found to vary substantially among the residential construction trades. For more serious injuries involving medical costs greater than $2,000 or any lost work time, rates were highest for welders and cutters (28.1), insulators (24.3), roofers (19.4), and carpenters (15.3). The same general trends by trade were observed for cases involving paid lost time except that roofers were highest, with a rate of 9.1, followed by insulators (8.5), welders and cutters (5.8), and carpenters (5.8). Rates of falls from a different level resulting in medical costs or lost work time were highest for roofers (5.54), insulators (3.53), carpenters (2.05), and drywall installers (1.99). Descriptive information for falls from a different level resulting in paid lost time during 1993-1994 (n = 219) were reviewed to better determine the causes and circumstances of injuries. Falls from a roof accounted for 25.4 percent of the cases followed by falls involving scaffolds (23.9%) and ladders (20.6%), and falls from ceiling joists, floor joists, or framing (14.8%). Twenty-six work-related deaths occurred with vehicle accidents (n = 6) being the major known cause of death, followed by falls (n = 3), being struck by an object (n = 3), electric shock (n = 2), and contact with energy or chemicals (n = 2). Consistent with other analyses of workers' compensation data, chronic occupational diseases are not well captured in the workers' compensation claims among home builders; therefore, a companion study has examined mortality patterns among North Carolina construction workers.

Elderdesign: Home Modifications for Enhanced Safety and Self-Care

Many people blame the aging process for problems they encounter with daily activities, when instead quite often it is the design of the home itself that creates unnecessary disabilities. Even though there are more people over the age of 65 than there are under 25 years of age, the design of today's homes, including the products contained in them, is still based on the anthropometry of young healthy adults (Pirkl, 1994). Builders and manufacturers do not take into account age-related conditions such as limited range of reach or reduced mobility when creating a home or a household product. Consequently, most dwellings are hostile to the physical and sensory changes that older adults encounter as they live well into their 8th, or 9th or 10th decade. For instance, 51% of adults 85 years of age and older receiving home care need help with bathing (King, 1994). This is easy to understand as many seniors undergoing the normal process of aging find it difficult to enter and exit safely from the bathtub. Even seemingly insignificant home features can have powerful and disabling effects: for a person recovering from surgery, taking multiple medications and in a weakened state, negotiating a walker over a doorsill can be tantamount to climbing Mt. Everest (Bakker, 1997). Due to cost containment, miniaturization of hospital equipment, and personal preference, the home is now the preferred place both to recover from illness and receive long-term-care services (King, 1994). But until we have new housing stock and products that take into account the needs of a person throughout a lifetime, retrofitting a home for safe aging should be a routine part of an older person's life, like tuning a car or visiting a doctor. As health care professionals, we need a basic understanding of how the design of the environment can both prevent injuries and maximize a patient's functioning. In addition, we need to keep abreast of the rapidly changing technological developments in home care equipment. UNDERSTANDING AESTHETICS Many people resist home modifications and assistive technology products that are designed for easier use by people with disabilities because these products have an industrial appearance: people do not want their homes are dangerous stand-ins for grab bars, umbrellas, not made to support a person's weight, are used as canes; and household shopping carts without brakes replace walkers. Fortunately, due to consumer demand and computer technology, institutional products are slowly being redesigned to blend in with the home environment: grab bars and hand rails in decorator colors, low air-loss bed overlays with chintz coverlets, hospital beds with wooden headboards and footboards, walkers in bright hues with quilted carry-alls, and slip-retardant flooring in an array of colors. Increased attention is being paid to elder ergonomics: products that are easier for arthritic hands to twist, hold and grasp, color contrasts for on/off buttons, larger print for aging eyes; chairs designed for elder anatomy that are easy to get into and out of; and doorbells and telephones with enhanced high- and lowfrequency tones for older ears. Many of these products are not readily available in neighborhood stores, and tracking down distributors can be a timely chore for both consumers and health care professionals. In addition, because limited production means high costs, many attractive and innovative products may be beyond the financial reach of the majority of older adults. Research suggests, however, that offering consumers a choice and including them in the decision- making process helps them more readily accept change (Miller, 1997). SAFETY AND SELF-CARE The National Center for Injury Prevention and Control states that falls are the number one cause of home injury, and studies suggest that a significant proportion of all falls are due to environmental factors (Connell, 1996). The second most common home injury is burns, primarily from fires, and older adults are killed in home fires at twice the rate of society as a whole (National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), 1990). …

The Commerce Clause Meets the Delhi Sands Flower-Loving Fly

Is the Endangered Species Act constitutional? The D.C. Circuit considered that question in National Association of Home Builders v. Babbitt in 1997. More specifically, the case considered whether the congressional power to regulate interstate commerce authorized the ESA's prohibition upon building a large regional hospital in the habitat of an endangered fly that lives only in a small area of southern California. The three judges on the D.C. Circuit approached the question from three different perspectives: the relationship between biodiversity as a whole and interstate commerce, the relationship between the fly and interstate commerce, and the relationship between the hospital and interstate commerce. In this article, I argue that the constitutionality of such an application of the ESA depends upon three unanswered questions. First, I consider which effects can be aggregated for purposes of determining their effect upon interstate commerce, concluding that there must be some limit upon such aggregations. Second, I examine the potential effects that an activity may have upon interstate commerce, suggesting that Congress must provide a reasonable basis for believing that a particular resource will contribute to interstate commerce one day. And third, I consider which activities must be related to interstate commerce, arguing that the requisite effect can be judged based upon the activity that impacts an endangered species.

Uncertainty and Home Builders' Adoption of Technological Innovations

An empirical investigation pertaining to the adoption of technological innovations by small- and medium-sized home building firms was conducted by multiple regression analysis of data collected from interviewing over 100 home builders across the country. The research shows that home builders who are more apt to adopt nondiffused technological innovations tap into more sources of information about new products from portions of their organizational environments than do nonadopters. The data also indicate that relatively early adopters of high uncertainty innovations differ from those more apt to be relatively early adopters of low uncertainty innovations in the characteristics of the individuals involved in innovation-related activities. The empirical findings support the general hypothesis that uncertainty reduction plays a key role in the adoption of technological innovations in residential construction.

The early American style: A history of marketing and consumer values

Since the 1876 Centennial, furniture companies, decorators, and home builders have incorporated early American designs into their products. This article recounts the marketing history of this style and some clusters of consumer values—the search for authenticity, status presentation and ethnic identification, nostalgia and tradition making, domesticity and femininity, and aesthetic conservatism—with which early American objects and architecture have been associated. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

The HomeSafe Pilot Program: a novel approach to injury prevention in residential construction

Workers in the residential construction industry face unacceptably high risk of injury, disability and death. Attempts to implement comprehensive health and safety programs in this industry have met with little success. The HomeSafe Pilot Program is a novel residential construction safety program developed and sponsored by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Region VIII and the Home Builders Association of Metropolitan Denver (HBA). Test subjects represent over 7475 persons employed in residential construction in the six county Denver Metro area of Colorado. The HomeSafe Pilot Program includes primary behavioral, engineering and administrative interventions to improve safe work practices in residential construction. It has some unique features of brevity, specificity and incentives not seen elsewhere in the construction industry. Its overall goal is to guide residential construction companies along a path of progressive development of comprehensive safety and health programs. The HomeSafe Pilot Program is introduced and compared to other safety and health program models developed by OSHA and the HBA. This study began in January 1997 and will continue through the millennium.

Building and loan associations in the U.S., 1880–1893: the origins of localization in the residential mortgage market

The paper offers an explanation for the localization of intermediated residential mortgage finance in the United States between 1880 and 1893. The focus is on building and loan associations that spread rapidly throughout the U.S. in the 1880s, and then held one-third of the nation's intermediated home mortgage debt until the 1930s. The modern descendants of these institutions, Savings and Loan Associations (S&Ls), emerged from the Great Depression as the most important institutional source of residential mortgage credit and continued to lend almost exclusively in local markets throughout the post-war period. The modern pattern of localization is often attributed to New Deal regulation, but I show that building and loans had adopted the principle of localization by the 1890s—long before they were required to do so by either state or federal regulatory authorities. I argue here that localization became best practice for building and loans because home builders and real estate professionals organized and managed these small, mutually-owned institutions to provide home mortgage credit for customers in their principal lines of business. These ancillary markets, especially home construction, were highly localized; so the organizers had incentives to safely manage an association only so long as it operated within these same boundaries. To support these conclusions I first examine and reject an alternative explanation of localization—that it allowed building and loan members to monitor each other. Secondly I show that home builders and real estate professionals continued to dominate the management of S&Ls well into the post-World War II era; and suggest that deregulation played a role in the S&L debacle of the 1980s when it accommodated the disruption of the close connection between thrifts and local building networks.

Mother Nature More Powerful Than Congres

The Johnson County Water District (JCWD), Kansas, submitted one contract per year for public bid on water main extensions. The JCWD then awarded the annual contract to one contractor. The Home Builders Association (HBA) of Greater Kansas City contended that each line extension should be separately bid and that state law does not permit aggregation of line extension projects in one contract. The trial court ruled for the HBA but the decision was overturned by the court of appeals.

Home Builders' Attitudes and Knowledge of Aging:

This study examined the relationship between home builders' attitudes/knowledge of aging and their awareness/use of accessible products and features in residential design. Eighty-nine Oklahoma home builders completed a comprehensive survey that included demographics, building practices, and Palmore's FAQII. The mean score for knowledge of aging was 12.5 out of 25. The net-bias mean score for attitude showed a tendency for the sample to thing negatively about the elderly. A conceptual model to predict use and knowledge was developed and tested using multiple regressions analysis. Results indicated that home builders were aware of a higher percentage of accessible features than they actually used. The majority of builders reported that accessible features in a residence was a viable idea but their use dependent on client awareness and request.

Water Resource Development Fee Upheld

In 1987, the Scottsdale, Arizona, City Council passed an ordinance imposing a water resource development fee on new developments to raise funds for potential new water sources needed to meet projected population growth. The ordinance assessed a fee of $1,000 per single family unit, $600 per dwelling unit in a multifamily dwelling, and, for other uses, $2,000 per acre/ft of estimated annual use required in addition to the current annual use. Home Builders Association (HBA) of Central Arizona, representing developers who had paid the fee under protest, filed this suit claiming the ordinance was void. The trial court ruled for HBA and ordered that the fees be refunded.

One-year Measurement of Indoor Climate and Energy Consumption of Super-insulated Houses in a Mild Climate Region of Japan

Two super-insulated houses were constructed near Sendai City in accordance with the Canadian R-2000 manual (Canadian Home Builders' Assoc., 1987). Shelter performance, thermal environment, air quality and energy consumption of these two houses were investigated for one year. The two super-insulated houses were very airtight compared with other houses. The one-year measurement of room temperature and humidity for one super-insulated house showed that the daily mean temperature for the dining-living room and the master bedroom was 15°C-20°C during the winter and 22°C-28°C during the summer. Absolute humidity for these rooms was less than 5 g/kg (DA) during the winter. The indoor environment of the two super-insulated houses during the heating season was more thermally comfortable, compared with that of ordinary houses in Japan. During the summer, the indoor temperature in these two houses was stable during the day and did not decrease at night even if the outdoor air temperature dropped. The CO2 concentration in these two houses was lower than that of other airtight houses due to continuous mechanical ventilation. The space heating energy consumption for one super-insulated house was less than that of ordinary houses in Tohoku District in which only the living-dining room was heated.

Housing for Disabled Persons: To What Extent Will Today's Homes Accommodate Persons with Physical Limitations?

This article reviews the incidence of disability within the non‐institutionalized U.S. resident population, with estimates of gender differences and severe limitations. Estimates of the desire for functional independence among the elderly are presented, and theoretical frameworks related to choice, consumer efficiency, consumer decisions, and housing norms are reviewed. Accommodation of a wheelchair was chosen as the measure to be studied because it is the means of mobility for those with the most severe mobility limitations. Three states, Oregon, Nevada, and Utah collected data on wheelchair accommodation of existing housing, resulting in a sample of 1,549 homeowners. Only 1% of the respondents indicated that their homes would accommodate a wheelchair at the present. However, 77% indicated that their homes could be modified to accommodate a wheelchair, and 22% responded that costs for modifications to their present homes would be prohibitive. Home economics educators have an obligation to educate the public to the needs for accessible and/or adaptable housing and unite architects, designers, home builders, and realtors in an effort to increase the proportion of wheelchair‐accessible housing, to accommodate all types of mobility impairment regardless of age.

Home Builders Association vs. St. Louis County Water Company: A cost allocation case

This case examines cost allocation issues in a regulatory environment. The St. Louis County Water Company (SLCWC) is an investor-owned, for-profit utility regulated by the Public Service Commission of Missouri (PSC). At the time of this case, SLCWC had filed a request for a rate increase with the PSC. The Home Builders Association of St. Louis (HBA) intervened in the rate process to request a change in the way SLCWC allocated indirect payroll costs to its Construction operations. At least three constituencies have a stake in this allocation problem: the HBA, the PSC, and the SLCWC shareholders and managers. In addition, the Public Counsel’s office of the State of Missouri has the role of seeing that the residential consumers are represented in rate proceedings. However, in this case the Public Counsel’s role is passive. Part A of the case first provides a background on the PSC and the process of rate regulation at the PSC. Next, background information is presented on the SLCWC and the allocation method currently in use. Finally, a description of the HBA and its concern over the allocation method is presented. The case asks you to consider this allocation process from the point of view of (1) accounting theory, and (2) each of the three major stakeholders. Part B of the case reviews three alternative allocation schemes: one proposed by SLCWC and two proposed by a consultant to the HBA. This part of the case asks you to consider these proposals and discuss whether they offer improvements over the PSC method. Part C describes the resolution of the case and summarizes the experience of SLCWC in the first year following the case. It also can stand by itself since it illustrates generic cost allocation issues that came to light after the rate case.