HBWeekly

WCI’s Luxurious LaMorada Community Breaks Ground in Naples

Posted on June 19, 2015 by Wendi Wilkerson

Homes in the luxurious LaMorada community such as the Martinique model pictured below range from $300k to $1 million. Photo courtesy of WCI Communities.

HBW subscribers in the Naples area have already been investigating the opportunities at this stunning new WCI property. LaMorada features 343 home sites arranged in four unique neighborhoods, with an array of customizable floorplans for homebuyers to choose from.

Multi-family Carriage Homes with second floor elevator access and maintenance-free living are available in two- and three-bedroom layouts ranging from 1,710 to 2,376 square feet.

The Grand Villas neighborhood is home to single-family two- and three-bedroom homes that have two- or three-and-a-half bathrooms, plan-specific dens, and living area of 2,201-3,010 square feet.

The Donatello model. Photo courtesy of WCI Communities.

The Classic Homes neighborhood showcases homes with open access between the den and the kitchen, with an additional breakfast nook and a lanai. These three-bedroom, two- to four-bath homes have conventional dens and foyers as well as guest rooms positioned on the opposite side of the house for maximum privacy. Classic Homes range from 2,556 to over 3,000 square feet of living space.

The most spacious homes in LaMorada, appropriately called the Grand Estates, offer oversized master suites, three or four guest rooms with private baths, and a den. Each Grand Estate has separate casual and formal dining areas and generous lanais, and a three-car garage is standard for each homes. Grand Estates have a living area ranging from 2,904-4,000 square feet.

The show-stopping kitchens of LaMorada luxury residences come complete with granite countertops, fully articulated cooking islands, Whirlpool appliances, and designer cabinets. The spa-like bathrooms showcase Moen faucets, dual sinks, and solid-surface vanities. The sliding doors and windows of each home in LaMorada are made from low-E insulated glass.

LaMorada’s community spirit will be well-maintained in the clubhouse’s great room and adjacent verandah. The 13,700-square foot clubhouse will house a fitness center, theater, outdoor bar, aerobics studio, and resort-style pool and spa as well as tennis courts and a culinary arts center.

LaMorada has entered the homebuilding phase of development. Photo of initial Phase 2 construction provided by WCI Communities.

To learn more about the building permit and construction activity at LaMorada, contact HBW. HBW serves building trades professionals in Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Texas, and Oklahoma. Building professionals who are proactive and informed can count on HBW’s newsletter to deliver the latest in building trends, construction technology innovation, and regulatory activity. To show you how we can help your business succeed, HBW is glad to provide you with complementary building data report or one of our specialized White Paper Reports. Contact us today and start making your business more profitable! HBW live chat is available to answer any questions you might have, asap!

Merger of Mega-Builders May Reshape the Industry

Posted on June 18, 2015 by Wendi Wilkerson

Standard Pacific has merged with Ryland, a move that will position them to build homes in 17 markets.

Pictured; a Standard Pacific home on offer in Winding Creek, Southlake, TX. Photo courtesy of Standard Pacific.

Whether the reason is competing executive egos or conflicting corporate visions, it is incredibly rare for two publicly-held building companies to go through with a merger. The impending consolidation of volume homebuilding giants Standard Pacific and Ryland Group could spur a rush of mergers within the volume homebuilding industry.

In a recent interview with Kris Hudson of the Wall Street Journal, Standard Pacific Chief Executive Scott Stowell explains that “industry insiders have often speculated about why there isn’t more consolidation… among homebuilders … For our companies, the time is now for this to happen.”

Two major motives exist for volume builders seeking to consolidate. The first is the scarcity of available land. With the economic bust of 2008 came a drying up of the development pipeline. Builders were liquidating any but the most promising land holdings, which meant a sharp dropoff in the amount of land going through the entitlement pipeline.

Seven years later, there is a serious shortage of undeveloped land that has cleared the entitlement process. Consolidation gives companies access to entitled land reserves and a greater cash pool to bid on highly desirable but undeveloped properties.

The second motive for consolidation is the relatively high number of homebuilding corporations for institutional investors to choose from. Before 2013, there were already 14 publicly traded volume homebuilders. Eight additional companies went public that year. According to Hudson, that number is too many for any but “the largest and best-run to get the attention of institutional investors.”

Map for the Standard Pacific-Ryland merger markets, courtesy of Yahoo Finance.

The competition for investors was a major factor in the Standard Pacific-Ryland merger. The new company will be worth $5.2 billion, which will catapult it into a high-capacity builder status. This will almost certainly get the attention of institutional investors.

Builder magazine’s John McManus has followed this merger closely enough to make predictions about which companies may seek consolidation within the coming 24-48 months. D.R. Horton, Lennar, and Pulte are the top 3 builders in the nation, and as such are likely to initiate a merger. Toll Brothers and TRI Pointe would be especially desirable partners, as both companies have been aggressive in their acquisitions and expansion.

UPC, LGI, Taylor Morrison and Century are up-and-coming builders who may be pushed out of the market unless they make some serious acquisitions within the next four quarters. Of the four, Taylor Morrison seems the keenest to grow and the most flush with capital to make a move.

The acquisition strategies of Brookfield Residential, NVR, and Meritage have failed thus far, which may make them cautious about consolidation. Smaller and boutique builders KB Home, WCI Communities, M/I Homes, and William Lyon Homes might be the objects of acquisition bids from the Top 3.

Multifamily Development Will Stay Strong Through 2017

Posted on June 17, 2015 by Wendi Wilkerson

Nationwide, developers are focused on building more mixed-use luxury multifamily developments such as this one, currently under construction in downtown Miami. Photo courtesy of Constec Developers.

Urban developers are counting on the demand for multifamily residences to stay strong over the next two to three years, and economists agree that developers have reason to be cautiously optimistic. Senior economist Ryan Severino of data firm Reis, Inc. says, “The problem is going to be on the supply side of the ledger, not the demand side.”

Excluding the nearly 100,000 government-sponsored affordable housing units built each year, the average number of new apartments over the last few years has leveled near the 120,000 mark. 230,000 will be completed by the end of 2015, with 197,000 more apartments coming available in 2016 and an additional 161,000 to be completed in 2017.

Of the development activity, Severino comments that “it seems like the floodgates have opened,” but “the new supply under construction completely outstrips the demand from [current] demographics.” By 2017, the apartments from 2015 and 2016 will have slackened the market a bit. The projected vacancy rate of about 5.5 percent will be a slight increase from the current vacancy rate of 4 percent.

However, Severino also says that the strong demand for apartments will persist over the next few cycles, helping to fill the new units coming available and ensure a renter pool for future units. The positive demographics that spurred the current multifamily boom will keep it rolling.

Lord, Aeck and Sargent are developing the luxury Circle Terminus residences in downtown Atlanta.

The timing for multifamily is also right, as 2017 will bring buyers back to the market with greater optimism and more cash to spend. It takes an average of ten years, according to Severino, for the market to recover from a major financial meltdown. During the decade afterwards, banks and individuals spend years paying off debts racked up by the boom before a recovery settles in. After six years of recovery, wages are slowly raising and inflation is stagnant, both of which indicate a greater likelihood of renters, rather than buyers, hitting the market in the coming years.

Nonetheless, for developers who are planning to enter the multifamily market in 2016, “it’s kind of late in the party, when all the punch is gone,” says Severino, “We always end up overdeveloping.” Although the demographic data and glacially paced economic recovery indicate that demand for apartments will remain high, the addition of hundreds of thousands of new mixed-use developments has already softened the multifamily market.

Mooreland Development’s Prosper West will soon be under construction in North Dallas. Photo courtesy of Mooreland Development.

Those who have recently joined the multifamily boom plan to avoid competition by building in markets and sub-markets that have lower rates of new construction. The majority of new development planned for 2017 will be high-end class-A condominiums and apartments located in central business districts. These communities will be competing with single-family homes rather than other apartment complexes. The remainder of development will be urban-adjacent along the city outskirts. The lower costs and less prime locations will cater to renters with lower incomes.

Innovative Retrofits Prevent Concrete Catastrophe During Quakes

Posted on June 16, 2015 by Wendi Wilkerson

Concrete low-rise construction is very popular in the U.S., but older structures pose serious threats during an earthquake.

An “alarming number” of low-rise concrete structures located in major earthquake zones have not been retrofitted for earthquake safety. Concrete buildings located in areas that were not historically prone to seismic activity but which are now experiencing high amounts of it, such as Oklahoma and Texas, are in especial danger.

Engineer Reginald DesRoches, chair of Georgia Tech’s school of Civil and Environmental Engineering explains that “There are hundreds of thousands of buildings that have not been retrofitted that … [and] are very dangerous.”

These 2- to 5-story structures were built to the code standards of their day, but those outdated standards are nowhere near as safe as today’s building codes. These older buildings were not designed to bend, stretch, and endure seismic shifts like contemporary buildings are. In states like Oklahoma and Missouri that are experiencing an uptick in seismic activity, this lack of seismic retrofitting may prove to be even more dangerous.

These older cement structures are referred to as “non-ductile reinforced concrete.” This means that they are brittle, rigid, and vulnerable to seismic shock. In earthquakes of 7.8 magnitude of higher, these buildings fail catastrophically. For example, much of the damage in Nepal was due to an abundance of non-ductile reinforced concrete buildings. “We know from past earthquakes,” says DesRoches, that “non-ductile reinforced concrete buildings don’t perform well in earthquakes, all around the world … They collapse.”

70% of Nepal’s concrete buildings were built from non-ductile reinforced concrete, which contributed greatly to the death toll of the quake. Photo Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Until 1980, non-ductile concrete construction was prevalent throughout most of the U.S.. The exception was California, which had phased our non-ductile concrete construction in the 1950s in favor of the ductile engineering. While many brittle buildings have been retrofitted to combat seismic shocks, there are hundreds more that have not been and are likely to collapse in the event of high-impact earthquakes.

According to the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), these non-retrofitted buildings are “the single biggest contributor” to earthquake damages in the nation. Aging brick structures built with the unreinforced masonry (URM) technique are also extremely vulnerable to seismic shock. In fact, current building codes in many places prohibit new URM in areas of high seismic activity. However, areas that had not experienced historically volatile seismic activity until recently have several URM structures that are perilously close to newly sparked seismic centers.

To combat the fragility of these URMs and non-ductile concrete buildings, there are a number of retrofitting options. Installing concrete sheer walls with closely spaced reinforcements and spiral reinforcement is one method of retrofitting. Adding diagonal steel reinforcements to existing walls is the most popular option. Both options are expensive and time-consuming, which is why many property owners forego seismic retrofitting, despite the incredible dangers.

DesRoches’s team at Georgia Tech is currently studying the best way to effectively retrofit these vulnerable buildings. Last year, they built a non-ductile concrete low-rise parking structure such as those ubiquitous garages built prior to the 1950’s throughout the U.S. DesRoches’ team then subjected the building to a simulated earthquake, courtesy of a mobile shaker borrowed from the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation.

Repeated testing confirmed the fragility of unreinforced structures, but also pointed the way to new reinforcement techniques. Carbon-fiber jacket wrapping along each column seems promising, but sealing a layer of grout between the carbon-fiber wrapping and the columns is more promising still. The most promising new technology is the bendable nickel titanium alloy that DesRoches developed. This smart material, which DesRoches calls a “shape memory alloy,” can withstand “a significant amount of displacement and then just springs right back,” DesRoches says.”

DesRoches’ team is now analyzing the testing data to determine retrofit options and research-based results which can then be presented to the International Code Council. It is hoped that the ICC and other organizations will confirm the results through duplicate testing, and then use the overall research findings to update the building code.

Better, less expensive seismic retrofitting options will enable property owners and developers to make their aging concrete structures safer and more durable. DesRoches thinks that “many people think there’s nothing you can do about an earthquake other than hope it doesn’t happen” while they are lin the building or the area. Testing is beginning to show that, “in fact, there are fairly straightforward ways that you can retrofit a structure to significantly improve this behavior, so that either it doesn’t collapse or even is fully operational after an earthquake.”

DesRoches believes that these new retrofitting options will “save lives, but also … keep hospitals, schools and businesses as functional as possible.”

Remodeling Project? Eat My Dust … Please!

Posted on June 12, 2015 by Wendi Wilkerson

Second only to project cost overruns, the largest complaint homeowners have about remodeling projects is the amount of dust generated during the work.

Photo courtesy of Melissa at Bless This Mess Please

Many homeowners breathe a sigh of relief when a remodeling job finally gets underway. But if you’re not careful, all the dust kicked up during the job will turn that sigh to a choking cough.

Many contractors many not realize that besides being annoying, remodeling dust is actually a health hazard. Larger particles aren’t a problem, because they can be coughed out. Particles that are less than 1/30th the size of a human hair are likely to lodge in the lungs, where they can cause issues. Fine drywall dust lingers in the air for several weeks after the job is completed. The particles can severely irritate the lungs, especially those of children and people with compromised respiratory systems.

Older homes undergoing renovation often have lead paint, asbestos, and black mold lodged alongside the drywall that is being ripped out. Those substances create dust that poses specific and dangerous health hazards to homeowners and workers alike.

The U.S. EPA requires contractors to plan for minimizing remodeling dust in homes built prior to 1978, most of which feature lead paint. OSHA has similar rules regarding the silica dust generated from cutting mortar, stone, concrete, and tile.

Although it’s impossible to eliminate dust from the remodeling process entirely, there are steps that can be taken to control the dust, especially during demolition, cutting/sanding drywall, cutting concrete, and sanding wood floors.

Bryce Jacob, VP of Dave Fox Design Build, involves homeowners in the dust control process from the outset. “We always tell folks a couple of things: If you have a lot of knickknacks or display items, just box them up until…maybe wait three or four weeks after the project is done to put them back out” he says, “because there’s still some fine dust through the air that will settle.” He also advises homeowners to cover fabric furniture it if can’t be moved out of an area.”

The ZipWall in action. Photo courtesy of ZipWall.

Contractors should make sure to seal off the work area. Plastic sheets secured with duct tape will do in a pinch, but many contractors use the ZipWall, a system of poles and heavy plastic sheets with zippered doors, to wall off a room. They should also remember to seal off vents and floor registers in the work area to keep dust out of the HVAC system. Placing a plastic sheet path on all carpeted walkways will keep workers from stamping dust into the carpet fibers to be stirred up later.

If it is feasible to do so, all cutting, sanding, and finishing of wood should happen outdoors. Many saws, routers, sanders, and cutting tables feature vacuum systems to help capture some of the dust. It’s also a good idea to dampen any concrete, stone, brick, and tile prior to cutting.

Maintaining good air quality during a remodel is important for homeowners and builders alike. Pictured: a BuildClean machine, photo courtesy of BuildClean Co.

Lately, contractors have started sing air scrubbers on the job. Air scrubbers vacuum the dust-clogged air from the area into a filter, which is vented directly outdoors. While these machines have been around for a while, contractors have taken advantage of improved scrubber technology. Illinois Tool Works’ BuildClean air scrubber is one of the more popular models, because it removes 90% of the dust particles from a given working area.

KB Home’s Forest Grove Begins Building Near Austin

Posted on June 11, 2015 by Wendi Wilkerson

A Model Residence from KB Home’s new Forest Grove Community in Round Rock, TX.

As HBW subscribers in the Austin area already know, KB Home is currently building a new planned community in Round Rock, TX. Forest Grove, KB Home’s latest planned community in central Texas, is located alongside Bushy Creek. This heavily wooded, 100-acre neighborhood is conveniently located near major employers in Round Rock and Austin. Several groves of native Texas Live Oaks mingle amidst the beautiful homes, walking trails, and neighborhood amenities. The sheer number of massive, sprawling trees distinguish Forest Grove from other neighborhoods, as the Live Oak has otherwise been in decline in the region.

Forest Grove is adjacent to IH-35, SH 130, and Hwy 79, with Dell and Emerson Process Management only a short drive away. Residents will also enjoy high-quality shopping at Ikea, Dell Diamond, and the Round Rock Premium Outlets as well as entertainment and recreation at the acclaimed local and regional venues nearby. Forest Grove also has exclusive, direct, on-site access to the Bushy Creek Regional Hiking Trail system. The acclaimed Forest Creek Golf Club is short distance from Forest Grove, and students living in Forest Grove have the opportunity to attend the highly-ranked Round Rock public school system.

KB Home is offering a number of customizable floor plans in Forest Grove. Living areas range from 2,325 to 4,036 square feet. Natural wood garage doors, covered patios and exteriors featuring stucco, stone and brick are standard for all homes. As with all KB Homes, the residences of Forest Grove are Energy Star certified, having been designed to more water- and energy-efficient than comparable homes in the area. Pricing for Forest Grove begins in the $320,000’s.

To learn more about the building stats and permitting activity in Forest Grove, contact HBW today!HBW serves builders in Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Florida, and Oklahoma In addition to our Building Trend Activity for Residential Construction Reports, HBW can create a number of custom reports for any need you might have. We also offer exclusive White Paper Reports to help you market your business. White papers start by giving an overview of the trends in your area and then advice on how to turn your weekly building permit information subscription into successful business leads. To show you how we can help your business succeed, HBW is glad to provide you with complementary building data report or one of our specialized White Paper Reports. Contact us today and start making your business more profitable!

DR Horton Project Suspended Over Destruction of Public Wetlands

Posted on June 9, 2015 by Wendi Wilkerson

Twin Oaks park closed indefinitely after at least 100 acres of wetlands, native flowers and trees were destroyed last we by a DR Horton subcontractor. Photo Courtesy of the Osceola Sheriff’s Office.

os-pictures-twin-oaks-conversation-area-damage-014

Twin Oaks Conservation Area in Osceola opened in 2013, but will remain closed indefinitely following a major developer’s destruction of 100 acres of wetlands along the shore of Lake Tohopekaliga last week. The 399-acre park is the result of a five-year conservation effort to restore the native natural habitat and remove invasive species. Since its opening two years ago, this park has attracted kayakers, bird watchers, and horseback riders.

“We want the public to know it will be closed until it’s safe,” says Pino. “We don’t want somebody walking there … or somebody riding a horse off a trail and getting seriously hurt.”

Last Friday, the head of the county Natural Lands program discovered the damage amidst an attempt to stop a tractor from dragging a massive disc harrow through the wetlands. $300,000 worth of plants and trees had already been destroyed. County spokesman Mark Pino states that, “I think it’s safe to say more than 100 acres were impacted but I don’t have the numbers yet.” Sheriff’s photographs like the one above document the acres of mauled wetlands where thousands of native species flourished until last week.

The park was once part of the historic Heart Bar Ranch, which is where Brahmin bulls were first introduced into American livestock breeding. D.R. Horton purchased the remaining 1600-acres of the former ranch for development into housing and retail space. The development’s 2,796 homes and 639 multifamily units will house an estimated 10,000 residents, who will enjoy over 450,000 square feet of retail and office space. 600 acres of the Horton development are slated to for restoration to become wetlands once more.

D.R. Horton subcontractor Bio-Tech Consulting admitted to straying across park boundaries, but doesn’t really understand what the fuss is about. Company president John Miklos, who earned his bachelors in Limnology 21 years ago, disagrees with the estimate of destroyed acreage. “There’s some trail area that got disced up that we’re going to fix,” he says. Miklos estimates that only 17 acres of Twin Oaks was destroyed.

Miklos acknowledges the damage, but claims that the 100 acres of wetlands that his company destroyed were fallow ranch land that lie outside the park’s boundaries and are part of D.R. Horton’s parcel of the former Heart Bar properties. According to Miklos, “you’re going to see most of that area completely submerged in the long term. The bottom line is the work that’s occurring out in the pasture is what I think is the first step in a historic wetlands restoration project.”

The question of whether the gouging the land with a massive disc harrow is the best way to begin wetlands restoration on wetlands that had already been restored by through public monies has as yet gone unanswered by Miklos.

Robert Mindick, head of the Natural Lands program, filed criminal suit last week against D.R. Horton, charging the developer with intentionally destroying five years of publicly funded restoration. According to the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office report filed by Mindick, “the developer or its sub-contractors continued the destruction of the lands even after they had been warned to stop.” They continued gouging into areas that the Natural Lands program has deemed “off limits to any development.”

D.R. Horton has yet to weigh in on the issue.

Need a Remodel? There’s an Apple Watch App for That.

Posted on June 8, 2015 by Wendi Wilkerson

HomeAdvisor’s new Apple Watch app will save homeowners who need repairs and improvements a lot of headaches.

HomeAdvisor Apple Watch App (PRNewsFoto/HomeAdvisor)

HomeAdvisor, a virtual residential repair and renovation services marketplace, has announced the development of an app for Apple Watch that easily connects home owners and home services professionals. The app uses HomeAdvisor’s Instant Connect technology to bring together repair, improvement, and renovation clients with prescreened, local, rated, home professionals. Homeowners can make appointments and receive estimates directly through their watch.

The app allows homeowners to use Apple Watch’s voice dictation function to make the call, which connects them to a vetted home service professional. Users can study the service provider’s ratings, rankings, and reviews while they discuss the project with the provider. The app supports over 500 different kinds of home repair, renovation and improvement projects.

HomeAdvisor CEO Chris Terrill says that “the app builds on the convenience of Apple Watch to instantly connect to the pros in the HomeAdvisor network.” The company’s Instant Connect technology “uses an algorithm based on the user’s request and the professional’s availability as well as historical activity to create the highest possible connection rate.”

Among the many features of HomeAdvisor’s Apple Watch App, three are absolute standouts:

Ease of Use- the connection rate between users and home services providers averages 82 percent because the app’s easy connection of homeowners to service providers saves time and lessens stress for both parties.
Fast Connection-the app takes less than a minute to connect homeowners with home professionals. In this simple two-step process, homeowners describe the type of help they need and the Instant Connect technology connects them with the best provider for the job.
Best Fit-The homeowner’s profile and project parameters are the basis upon which the app’s recommendations are made. This is a vast improvement over Apple Watch’s current Yelp directory default, which does not account for the professional’s availability or the project’s specific needs.

The HomeAdvior app for Apple Watch is the latest in HomeAdvisor’s suite of free tools and resources. Homeowners dealing with an emergency can use Instant Booking to schedule an appointment online before they review pricing information. Homeowners needing repair, maintenance, and improvement work rely on HomeAdvisor’s ProFinder technology to link into a network of screened professionals. The True Cost Guide uses the average price of home projects and actual homeowner data to generate comprehensive estimates.

HomeAdvisor expects to begin selling the app through the Apple store in the late fall of this year.

Pine Hall Brick and TOTO Forge Sustainable Materials Partnership

Posted on June 5, 2015 by Wendi Wilkerson

Long recognized as a world leader in sustainable manufacturing and green building innovation, TOTO looks forward to expanding its best-in-class sustainability initiatives through this partnership. TOTO recently announced its partnership with Pine Hall Brick Company to “upcycle” its high-grade clay sediment waste by sending it to the brick company, which will make premium white brick for commercial and special construction projects. Because they are recycled materials produced in an Eco-conscious way, these Pine Hall Brick products will score much higher than average brick material for LEED-based projects.

Unlike many of its competitors, TOTO recycles all water used during the production of vitreous china products at its Morrow and Lakewood, GA facilities. The fully filtered, treated, and purified water is eventually returned to the Clayton County Water Authority, but an enormous amount of high-quality white clay particulate is left behind in the filters. This “filtercake” sediment is sent to Pine Hall Brick Company, which will then use the material to make specialty pavers, face brick, and custom-shaped bricks. This upcycling process will prevent 3.8 million pounds of white clay from being disposed of in landfills each year.

Bill Strang, President of TOTO Operations for the Americas, says that”upcycling our high-grade filtercake to create premium commercial/specialty brick building material is another of our incremental projects and processes that…reduce our manufacturing facilities’ environmental impact.”

While the move is not a total solution for reducing the company’s carbon footprint, it does help TOTO “upcycle, recycle, reduce, reuse, repurpose, and re-buy the environmental resources that we use in the production of our water- and energy-saving premium plumbing products.” TOTO has achieved a nearly carbon-and water-neutral status at all five of its North American plants.

TOTO is the only plumbing fixture manufacturer to be awarded the coveted EPA’s Water Efficiency Leader award, which it received alongside numerous awards and recognitions for its leadership in water-efficient product development, environmental sustainability, and water conservation advocacy. Former Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue awarded TOTO the Conserve Georgia: Water Conservation Award for achieving exemplary levels of efficiency in its Morrow plant and education employees and community members alike about water conservation strategies.

Florida Building Code Updates Kick In June 30th

Posted on June 4, 2015 by Wendi Wilkerson

After slipping to second place in the 2015 Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety’s ratings of hurricane building codes, Florida has passed measures to strengthen the code, which will likely return Florida to a #1 rating. These updates to the building code, which take effect on June 30^th, are meant to make Florida homes and commercial buildings safer, stronger, and more resilient.

Life safety provisions are not the only things impacted by the changes. Some of the code amendments may decrease building efficiency due to increases in project cost and reduction of saleable square footage. Builders who have projects currently under development but for which no building permit has been obtained should consult with the architect as soon as possible to identify how the new building codes impact the project.

The City of Miami has been proactive in responding to the amendments. They will allow projects in process to move forward under the soon-to-expire Florida Building Code by making use of the phased permit process. Any project with a plans process number for either a Class I or Class II Phased permit that has been pulled by July 29, 2015, and for which the applicable up-front fees have been paid may make use of the City’s allowance. Anyone wishing to pursue Class I and Class II Phased Permits. Should keep a few ideas in order:

The Class I Phased Permit is for works for which the design has been finished but the project are not yet under construction. Any plans process number for a Class I Phased Permit vests the project under the current Florida Building Code. The plans process number for the Class I Phased Permit is valid for 180 days, during which time the Class I Permit must be pulled. Building Officials may approve an extension of an additional 180 days if the builder has been diligent in obtaining a Master Permit.

In order to acquire a plans process number, applications for both the Master Permit and the Class I Phased Permit must be filed simultaneously. Builders should submit the application forms, four (4) sets of plans including architectural plans and complete construction drawings, the $1,500 Class I Permit fee, and the upfront fee for all work subject to the Class I Phased Permit in order to obtain a plans process number.

The Class II (Foundation) Phased Permit is granted to projects for which the design is still in development. Any work below grade (the foundation of the building) may commence under the Class II Phased Permit, although no vertical construction is permitted. The Class II Phased Permit plans process number is valid for 180 days, during which time the Class II Permit must be pulled. An extension of an additional 180 days may be granted at the Building Official’s discretion, so long as the builder is working toward obtaining the Master Permit or the Class I Phased Permit.

Builders must submit the Master Permit and the Class II Phased Permit applications simultaneously in order to acquire a plans process number. To acquire the number, builders must submit application forms, four (4) sets of plans including architectural plans and foundation construction drawings, the $1,500 Class II ermit fee, and the upfront fee for all foundation work.