Model Home for IBS Is Big, Near-Zero, and a Credit-Crunch Victim

Recessions tend to generate tales not only of misfortune, but of opportunity arising from misfortune. A case in point is the credit squeeze facing Las Vegas builder Domanico Custom Homes, whose project list happens to include the New American Home 2010 – a 6,000-sq.-ft. model home in Las Vegas that is scheduled to serve as a green-building showcase during the International Builders’ Show in January.

The show’s organizer, the National Association of Home Builders, has during the past several months spilled a fair amount of digital ink calling for a remedy to what it says are unreasonably restrictive lending practices, particularly for builders seeking the acquisition, development, and construction loans that they require to see projects through.

With about 60% of its New American Home project completed, Domanico Custom Homes has searched in vain for a lender that would finance the final draw needed to finish the house in time for its IBS debut. But while the situation is irksome for Domanico, NAHB says, it also dramatizes the financial predicaments faced by many builders – particularly those in recession-strafed housing markets like Las Vegas, Florida, and inland California – trying to serve market segments they believe are still viable.

“The banking regulators need to allow and encourage lenders to give leeway to residential AD&C borrowers who have loans in good standing by providing flexibility on re-appraisals, loan modifications and perhaps forbearance to give builders time to complete and sell their lots and homes,” NAHB’s chairman, Joe Robson, said in a press announcement released this week.

Challenging lending conditions have in fact compromised the plans of all types of builders, including prefab construction firm Michelle Kaufmann Designs, which shut down in May.

While the New American Home 2010 offers about three times the square footage many green-building advocates might consider optimal for, say, a family of four or five, it is “much smaller than other recent homes in the series,” NAHB says. When completed it will offer near-net-zero-energy performance, the association says, and will include energy efficient and green features such as APEX Block construction for exterior walls, a solar hot water system with gas backup, several types of insulation for different parts of the house, a PV system, tankless hot-water heaters, high-efficiency furnaces, and a green roof over part of the patio.