Dwelling Ideas

Builders’ Spring Tour a good place to explore new homes

Now is a good time to build a new home, and the Metropolitan Builders Association’s Spring Tour of homes is a good place to start thinking about it.

That is the advice of Kristine Hillmer, executive director of the MBA, who says that low interest rates make for advantageous costs to get into a building project. The Spring Tour presents a great opportunity to “get in front of a builder” and ask questions about the building process.

The tour of new homes, condos and land happens during the three weekends from April 22 to May 7, featuring 40 or more homes to visit. “Consumers like to see what’s available and get ideas from what they see on the tour,” Hillmer said.

The new homes are open all three weekends. The third weekend includes landscaping and remodeling projects.

The tour comes as home-building is in the midst of a gradual climb in the Milwaukee area. Other places in the United States have seen a rapid growth in housing starts since the Great Recession, but in the Milwaukee market, it’s been more gradual.

Home building is at about 60 percent of the peak it hit in 2007 and 2008, Hillmer says, and she thinks it will take until 2020 or 2021 to reach those heights again.

That’s good, because several factors limit the capacity of the market here:

A shortage of skilled workers needed not only for the current demand for new homes, but for the increase in homes as building starts rise.

A small supply of buildable lots, which continues to improve as new subdivisions are planned and completed.

The capacity of construction businesses is growing as building starts rise at a slow but steady pace.

As the new-house market continues to improve, Hillmer says, the Spring Tour continues to be an opportunity to explore current trends in new homes.

Among those is the concept of the kitchen as the center of the home. “As entertaining has become more casual, guests like to congregate in the kitchen where their hosts are preparing food,” she says.

Also common in new construction are open plan designs, which encourage family togetherness and shared experiences.

A third trend is the idea of a master bedroom suite set off by itself, with other bedrooms separate.

On the third weekend, when landscaping and remodeling are featured along with the new homes, other trends are likely to be revealed, such as building cooking facilities outside to extend the living spaces into the outdoors.

As for those wishing to remodel rather than build new, a major trend is enlarging and updating kitchens, says Hillmer – again, part of the trend to make the kitchen the center of the home. “A lot of people are knocking down walls to make their kitchens bigger,” she says. “That’s why you want to have a professional builder or remodeler, with the needed expertise to recognize how the structure is built.”

In fact, that sort of concern is a major reason to choose a builder or remodeler who’s a member of the MBA, says Hillmer. The organization has 180 Milwaukee area builders as its core members, with more than 500 associate members made up of building trade members, contractors, landscapers and others connected with the home construction industry. The organization carefully vets all its new builder members, checking their references and past projects, so consumers can have confidence in their work.

The association also has a strict code of ethics by which all members must abide, as well as mediation and arbitration procedures for disagreements that arise between homeowners and builders. There is also a strict list of standards for numerous construction processes that members must follow.