Elected officials and business leaders joined members of the Long Island Builders Institute (LIBI) on Wednesday to announce findings of a report that touts the economic impacts of the area’s home building industry.
The report, commissioned by LIBI and completed in conjunction with Camion Associates and the Real Estate Institute at Stony Brook University, found that Long Island’s home building and remodeling sector is responsible for $41.7 billion in revenue, accounting for over 9 percent of the Island’s total sales.
Among the other key findings in the report: The home building and remodeling sector employs 194,022 people on Long Island, representing 14 percent of the Island’s jobs; the sector brings in $15.4 billion in total employee earnings, accounting for 12 percent of employee earnings across Long Island; $30.6 million is generated in property taxes from new home and apartment construction; $53.2 million is collected by Long Island’s municipalities in total for building permits and zoning fees; and the housing industry contributes $122.6 million in sales taxes and $153.3 million in total fiscal impact (sales taxes + income taxes + property taxes) on Long Island.
“The homebuilding industry is an essential part of Long Island’s economy,” Mike Florio, LIBI CEO, said at the press conference held at The Enclave, a new housing development in Farmingdale from Blue and Gold Homes. “We are ready and willing to work with other stakeholders, government officials, and community organizations to address our housing crisis and build a diversity of housing stock for people of all needs and incomes.”
Peter Elkowitz, president and CEO of Long Island Housing Partnership, said LIBI and its members have been valuable partners to the nonprofit in its mission to provide affordable housing.
“LIBI members have constructed our homes and have supported our developments for over 30 years,” Elkowitz said. “Not only does LIBI contribute to the provision of affordable housing, but it is also a significant driver of the Long Island economy.”
Patchogue Mayor Paul Pontieri said people only need to look at the Village of Patchogue to measure the effect of how the construction of housing changes a community.
“In the last 18 years the village has built over 700 homes with a mix of for-sale townhouses and rentals,” Pontieri said. “Twenty-five percent of which are affordable and all of them are within walking distance to the LIRR. The other major benefit is that new, modern, well-built homes attract young families, the average age in Suffolk County is 42 years old, while the average age in the Village of Patchogue is 37.”
Jericho-based Beechwood Organization has been ranked as the top residential builder in New York State for the second straight year.
The company, also known as Beechwood Homes, earned the honor in the 2024 Housing Giants report of the country’s top home builders by Pro Builder magazine.
The annual industry report shows Beechwood as the 2024 leader in the state with 160 homes delivered during 2023 in Nassau, Suffolk and Saratoga counties. The homes were at Country Pointe communities in East Meadow, Plainview and Yaphank; Marina Pointe in East Rockaway; Oneck Landing in Westhampton Beach; and Oak Ridge in Saratoga Springs.
The report also ranks Beechwood number three by revenue in New York and number 11 of 22 builders across the Mid-Atlantic region which includes New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
“It is gratifying to see our standing alongside the nation’s top builders but most of all to see the enjoyment of our buyers and renters as they move into their dream homes,” Michael Dubb, Beechwood founder and CEO, said in a company statement.
So far this year, Beechwood is delivering the final homes in its sold-out 660-home Country Pointe in Plainview community. The company is also delivering homes in Yaphank at its 400-home Country Pointe Meadows; in Westhampton Beach at its 22-single-family home community Country Pointe Estates; and in Saratoga Springs at its new 79 condo Residences at the Adelphi Hotel, and at its 50 single-family home community Oak Ridge.
Besides its for-sale homes, Beechwood continues to lease its apartment properties in Westbury including 237 units at The Selby and 195 units at The Vanderbilt. In Rockaway, the company continues to lease at The Tides apartment buildings that are part of the 2,300-home Beechwood-Benjamin Companies joint venture development Arverne by the Sea.
Beechwood is also partnering with Settlement Housing Fund in New York City where it is constructing two affordable housing developments including 45 units at Weeksville Place in Brooklyn and 71 units at Melrose Concourse in the Bronx.
Outside of New York, Beechwood is delivering homes at three of its exclusive Charlotte, N.C. developments, including the sold-out 35-home Weddington Glen, the 62-home Broadmoor at Marvin, and the 217-home Lakeside Pointe at Lake Norman. The company will also break ground this year at its 815-home mixed-use development called South Creek in Chapel Hill, which will be one of Beechwood’s largest communities.
A newly completed 2,000-square-foot 3-D printed home in Islandia is now on the market.
West Babylon-based developer Charles Weinraub teamed up with 3-D concrete printing pioneer SQ4D to build the four-bedroom, two-bath ranch on .21 acres at 42 Dean St., which Weinraub says is the largest 3-D printed home to be built on Long Island.
The new home replaces an older house that was damaged by fire and demolished.
Advocates of 3-D printed construction say the process has many benefits, not the least of which is cost. Using 3-D printed concrete can save as much as 40 percent on forms, footings, foundation, walls and roofing compared to traditional construction.
The concrete used in 3-D printed construction is fire, flood and insect resistant and the process is conducive to custom designs.
“3-D printed construction is the biggest disruptor in the construction industry in more than a century,” Weinraub told LIBN. “In my opinion, automated construction is the solution to the area’s housing shortage.”
After completing the Islandia project, Weinraub will soon break ground on a 2,300-square-foot 3-D printed house in Nesconset. He is also planning on developing a 25-lot subdivision in Riverhead where all of the homes will be constructed using 3-D printing.
The Islandia house, offered at $499,999, is listed with Dan Oneil of Signature Premier Properties. Oneil will be holding an open house at the property from noon to 4 p.m. on Saturday, March 18 and Sunday, March 19.
Plantd’s proprietary low carbon-emissions production technology transforms fast-growing perennial grass into durable home construction products.
Press Release –
Jan 26, 2023
DURHAM, N.C., January 26, 2023 (Newswire.com)
– Revolutionary sustainable building materials company Plantd is making waves in the construction industry with the announcement of its $10 million Series A funding round. Led by American Family Ventures, the funding solidifies Plantd’s position as a pioneer in carbon-negative building materials.
“We are thrilled to back this exceptional and visionary team,” said Kyle Beatty, Managing Director at American Family Ventures. “Plantd is creating fundamentally better construction materials that are cost-effective and truly carbon negative. We have been impressed by how they have reinvented every step of the production process from first principles, all the way from input material to logistics.”
Plantd’s production team is led by co-founders and engineers Huade Tan and Nathan Silvernail, who worked together for years at SpaceX designing and building key systems and components of the Dragon cargo and crew spacecraft. Together with co-founder and CEO Josh Dorfman, a serial entrepreneur and longtime sustainability leader, Plantd is redefining the value chain for engineered building materials.
Plantd’s proprietary low carbon-emissions production technology transforms fast-growing perennial grass into durable, carbon-negative building materials that outperform competitive products on key attributes, including strength and moisture resistance.
Starting with structural panel products for walls and roofs, Plantd will fabricate building materials that are a direct substitute for traditional home construction products and require no alternative installation techniques. By cultivating fast-growing perennial grass instead of cutting down trees and pioneering novel production technology to minimize carbon emissions, Plantd Structural Panels™ retain 80% of the atmospheric carbon dioxide captured in the field, which is then locked away inside the walls and roofs of new homes.
“We can’t move quickly enough to solve climate change unless we develop profitable methods to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere,” said Dorfman. “We’re going to change an industry by offering builders a better product at the same price and, in the process, scale a business that can help save the planet.”
Building with Plantd materials enables home builders to offer their customers homes that are affordable, durable, and sustainable. And by sequestering atmospheric carbon dioxide within structural frames, homes built with Plantd materials will play a key role in solving climate change.
Plantd will use this round of funding to establish their agriculture supply chain and build the first-of-its-kind, modular automated continuous press for engineered building materials. The company is currently working with the nation’s largest builders and architects to integrate these materials into their projects and quickly make them a standard in the industry.
Plantd’s ultimate vision is to build the factory of the future, ensuring that new homes and buildings contribute to reversing the effects of climate change.
Learn more about Plantd by visiting https://www.plantdmaterials.com/ and discover how they are shaping the future of the construction industry and the planet.
“When I say reset, I’m not looking at a particular specific set of data. What I’m really saying is that we’ve had a time of a red-hot housing market all over the country, where famously houses were selling to the first buyer at 10% above the ask even before seeing the house… For the longer term what we need is supply and demand to get better aligned so that housing prices go up at a reasonable level and at a reasonable pace and that people can afford houses again. We probably in the housing market have to go through a correction to get back to that place,” Powell said. “But from a business cycle standpoint, this difficult [housing] correction should put the housing market back into better balance.”
On Wednesday, KB Home announced that its buyer cancellation rate in the fourth quarter of 2022 spiked to 68%. That’s up from 35% in the third quarter of 2022, and up from 13% in the fourth quarter of 2021.
“Current conditions remain challenging. High mortgage rates and persistent inflation, together with an uncertain economy, have made homebuyers more cautious since the middle of last year. As such, in the fourth quarter, we prioritized delivering our large backlog and protecting our high margins over taking steps to stimulate additional sales during this seasonally slower time frame,” KB Home told investors on Wednesday.
Spiking cancellation rates puts homebuilders in a pickle. The problem: builders still have a tremendous amount of inventory—both single-family and multi-family—in the pipeline. The pandemic housing demand boom coupled with supply chain issues pushed the number of U.S. housing units under construction to a record high in 2022.
Heading forward, builders will continue to turn to their housing downturn playbook to unwind that unsold inventory. They’ll start by offering incentives like mortgage rate buydowns, and if that doesn’t work, then begin to mark down home prices until their unsold inventory has been moved.
“Depending on market dynamics and backlog levels in each community, we are getting more aggressive with our pricing ahead of the spring selling season, in order to generate new orders. At the same time, with the industry-wide deceleration in housing starts compared to a year ago, we are also pursuing reductions in direct construction costs and build times, which should help to offset the impact of pricing adjustments we may take,” KB Home told investors on Wednesday.
When it comes to cutting home prices, KB Home is treading lightly. If word gets out, buyers already under contract could get frustrated and cancel their contracts. That reason, coupled with wanting to protect their “comps”, is why builders prefer to offer incentives like mortgage rate buydowns rather than cut prices too much.
Real estate agents and builders alike are rooting for a loosening of financial conditions, and a subsequent drop in mortgage rates.
Researchers at firms like Goldman Sachs and Moody’s Analytics aren’t as optimistic when it comes to mortgage rates. Both firms expect mortgage rates to hover around 6% this year, and both firms expect U.S. home prices to continue to fall through 2024.
While the Fed’s housing “reset” certainly has builders reeling, it’s hardly a doomsday for them. Just look at the stock market.
While major homebuilders are all down from their 2022 highs, they’re still well above their January 2020 share price. That includes builders like D.R. Horton (+78% since January 1, 2020 ), Lennar (+73%), Toll Brothers (+34.5%), NVR (+29.3%), PulteGroup (+25.2%), and KB Home (+1%).
Bank of America researchers think the bottom in homebuilder stocks could be in the rearview mirror.
“Homebuilder stocks underperformed in 2022 as mortgage rates spiked to 7% from 3% and demand deteriorated in the second half of the year. In 2023, we are cautious on housing demand…but we see a more favorable setup for homebuilder stock performance for a few reasons: 1. Homebuilder valuations are already pricing in weak demand and home price depreciation. 2. Mortgage rates have declined from peak levels and are poised to move lower in 2023. 3. We do not see material risk to book value – most of the land on balance sheets was purchased prior to 2021 and we expect a home price correction (down 10%) rather than a crash (down 15-20%). 4. Builder margins will benefit from lower input costs (estimate 200-300 basis points tailwind from lumber),” Bank of America researchers wrote on Wednesday.
Bank of America reiterates a neutral rating for KB Home.
“We expect [KB Home] orders to remain under pressure with rising mortgage rates, but headwinds are likely already reflected in valuation with shares trading,” wrote Bank of America researchers. “In addition, we believe KBH has some cushion to its margins even as pricing declines given 40% [of] its owned lots were contracted in 2019 and another 40% were contracted in 2020, prior to the run-up in land prices. Still, we believe KBH has the highest risk of write-downs across our coverage given its high exposure to underperforming West Coast [and] Mountain [West] markets.”
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Immerse Yourself in Your New Kitchen Design Without Stepping Outside of Your Home
Press Release –
updated: Sep 24, 2019
GRASS VALLEY, Calif., September 24, 2019 (Newswire.com)
– Thanks to Walcraft Cabinetry’s new fully immersive virtual renovation experience, homeowners won’t have to leave their home to see or feel how a new kitchen will fit into their home. “We use the Oculus virtual reality headset to transport you into your future kitchen without ever leaving your house,” said Walcraft CEO Sean Walsh.
After sliding on the headset, the user will see exactly how the tile they picked works with the lighting fixtures. Thinking of adding an island? The virtual experience will let the user feel what it’s like walking around the altered space. “This incredible technology will save people so much time, money and energy,” smiled Walsh. “They’ll know for sure that their new kitchen design works for them before they start construction.”
The Most Realistic Experience with 8K Resolution CGI Technology During his many years in the construction business, Walsh noticed customers struggled to visualize their complete designs. Homeowners bogged down in the small details, like tile and wood samples, often struggled to envision the big picture of how everything would come together in their space. “Even with drawings and computer renderings, some people had a hard time,” he noted. “Some companies have attempted to incorporate virtual reality solutions, but you have to travel to their offices to try them and the resolution is so low that it’s not especially useful.”
Walcraft’s virtual kitchen experiences solve that problem by providing the highest caliber Hollywood-level CGI rendered in 8k resolution. Walsh noted, “This interactive approach gives you the highest possible level of realism. You will see exactly how every element you selected works together. There’s nothing else like this.”
No Showroom Visits Necessary | Experience the Entire Process in Your Own Home Walcraft provides this service for homeowners throughout the United States. The process starts with a consultation in which the Walcraft team helps you put together your dream kitchen design. They’ll send you free door samples and work with you to create personalized CGI renderings so you can get a general idea of the look you will end up with. Once you work out the details, Walcraft will load the design into a pair of Oculus goggles and send them to your home so you can experience your kitchen in virtual reality.
“This service helps homeowners save time and money because contractors appreciate working with people who are well prepared. In all reality they charge less when the client has everything ready to go,” said Walsh.
About Walcraft Cabinetry Walcraft Cabinetry is a “people before profits” business based in Grass Valley, California. The company provides jobs and opportunities for people coming out of crime, addiction and abuse. Walcraft offers nearly 200 cabinet options with styles, colors, shapes and sizes to suite every homeowner. Learn more at https://walcraftcabinetry.com.
