iPhone home automation control

Would you like to control your home automation system from the convenience of your cell phone?

Far beyond just the music opportunities, the iPhone application represents a major development in digital platforms across the residential platform, controlling music is just one element. If people can mute a room from their iPhone, why not dim the lights and turn up the temperature a few degrees too?

Lutron agrees. The lighting-control company recently launched an iPhone/iPod Touch application that’s available for free from the Apple Web site, although consumers likely will have to pay a nominal programming fee to have the application integrated with their HomeWorks lighting-control system.

Read the full article from Builder Magazine

Vanilla home loans?

Are government regulated “vanilla” home loan packages the new standard?  Builder Online explains.

WASHINGTON – If President Barack Obama gets his way, consumers who take out mortgages would automatically get a “plain vanilla” loan – such as a traditional 30-year fixed-rate mortgage – unless they opted for a riskier variety.

Obama’s plan to revamp financial regulation aims to protect borrowers from the confusing and high-risk mortgages that fed a pandemic of delinquencies and foreclosures, led to the worst financial crisis in decades and thrust the nation into a deep recession.

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What home buyers want

As the dust settles from the housing bust, what are buyers now looking for?

The homes that sold like gangbusters during the good times – to the tune of nearly 1.4 million in 2005 alone – are not what the buyers of tomorrow say they are looking for.

Read more from Builder Online

Bids fall to the bottom

Is there a benefit to the Owner as bids fall below cost?  Will the contractor be able to complete the project for the contracted price?

What a difference a year makes.  In the second quarter of 2008, construction starts had moved slightly off the record-run rate of the previous three years.  The economic bloodletting set off by the sub-prime meltdown did not really spill over into construction until the second half of the year.

Read the full artile from ENR