Our Resolution is a Revolution
Todd Hawkins
Dec 29
|09:34
As unlikely as it seems, housing is beginning a renaissance because of the Great Recession and blow up of the housing market. Companies are innovating all aspects of design, construction and product manufacture, trying to stand out, thrive or simply survive.
BuilderFish’s mission is teaching and helping people improve their houses into Lifetime Homes, that your house should seamlessly adapt to you as life progresses and changes.
What we do can be applied to any style of house in any area of the country whether building new or retrofitting, and includes proactive attention to every detail from the door knobs to home automation. There’s a new dawn for all of it, and your home should include if you want to live comfortably and conveniently no matter what happens to you and your family (even pets!).
Our residential housing stock is old, nearly obsolete with a median year built of 1974, and there’s a glut of beat up foreclosures (shadow inventory of well over a million units) not yet on the market. While some perceive housing is newer following our recent construction boom, the demographic fact is most of our nation’s houses were built
in the decades immediately following WWII. So the picture below is typical of the vast majority of our homes. Imagine inside the lay-out, user friendliness and efficiency of that house.
The good news, a bulldozer isn’t the cure. What’s required is modernization, improved air sealing/quality, water proofing, energy efficient systems and interior redesign accentuating ease. We describe as “custom new within old walls” emphasizing BOTH energy and personal effort efficiency. “Green” building gets all the attention but accessibility and easiness are just as important and apply to every area of the property including the yard.
As we head into 2012, think about your home and what you could do to make it livable for a lifetime, or where you plan to go if you don’t.
TAGS: Accessible, Aging in place, barrier-free living, CAPS, Certified Aging in Place Specialist, convenience, convenient living, easy living, efficiency, flip, flipping, green building, Green Building Science, investors, Livability, livable for a lifetime, modernize, real estate investing, recycle, recycle your house, recycling, REO, UD, Universal Design, universally designed, Visitability, Visitable
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