A sad story about how a builder goes to the trouble to find a great piece of land, build a good house, do all of the hard stuff well, then blows it over four or five details

The lesson of the two Elizabeths is that as an industry we must begin to see salespeople in a holistic manner, as complete members of the team. It's no longer enough to simply bring in the bucks

The race to become the first 100,000-unit Housing Giant is fueling merger and acquisition activity among home builders

Is home building a transaction environment or a relationship business? Talk to a lot of new-home buyers and they make clear it's a totally transaction business

Think through your termination process; set mutual expectations with new employees about what you want from them - and what they want from you

Analysts and investors are turning up the heat on the big public home builders to maintain their double-digit growth rates, even in the face of expected spikes in interest rates and drops in housing starts.

While the land buy sets the stage for profit potential, direct construction costs are the major variable that actually determines what the profit will be