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US Construction Spending: April 2015
NAHB analysis of Census construction spending data released Monday finds that the pace of residential construction spending improved on both a monthly and year-over-year basis for April. For the month, the seasonally adjusted annual rate of single-family construction spending was US$206 billion, up 1.6 per cent from March. The April rate of multifamily construction spending…
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US Home Price Index: March 2015
The Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Standard and Poor’s/Case-Shiller recently released Monday the Home Price Index for March. The price index reported by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) decelerated in March, slowing to an annualized growth rate of 4.2 per cent, from 7.8 per cent in February. Monthly growth rates have been volatile…
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US Architecture Firm Billings: April 2015
After a soft 1Q resulting largely from severe weather across parts of the Northeast and Midwest, expectations were that design billings at architecture firms would rebound in 2Q, said the American Institute of Architects May 20. At 48.8, the April ABI national score reflected a steeper retrenchment than any of the first three months of…
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Lumber Company Mergers, Acquisitions
Lumber company Stock Building Supply Holdings announced Wednesay it agreed to combine with privately held Building Materials Holding, in a deal that positions the combined company to take advantage of demand for building supplies in the recovering housing market. The two lumber companies, once bankrupt, had combined revenue of US$2.7 billion in 2014. Stock Building…
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Cross Laminated Timber
Some new announcements for funding around CLT (cross laminated timber) came out of a couple jurisdictions recently, also this week a Vancouver architecture firm has submitted a design proposal for a 35 storey wooden tower to be built in Paris. To promote the adoption of innovative wood building technologies, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA)…
