Each year on Veterans Day, we give thoughts and words of appreciation to the brave men and women who sacrifice so much to defend our freedom and safety. In the home building industry, rather simply thanking them, many builders also are hiring veterans.

The industry has long focused on training veterans through the Home Builders Institute, the nonprofit partner of NAHB. The HBI Military and Veterans Program operates on a number of U.S. military bases with training, certification and placement services focused on landing home building jobs for transitioning military members and veterans.

Skills learned in the military can easily transfer to the home building industry.

Marci O’Brien, a new home sales specialist in California, served in the Marine Corps from 1989 to 1994. After her duty was done, she got a real estate license and began participating in the housing boom in Southern California during the mid-90s.

“The Marines gave me so much confidence that I just went around knocking on doors looking for a job,” she said. O’Brien found one pretty quickly and has been in the industry ever since.

Read More

The 2018 midterm elections delivered a split decision: Republicans expanded their Senate majority and Democrats flipped the House.

So what does this mean for housing?

NAHB Chief Lobbyist Jim Tobin provides the following analysis:

As the smoke settles on Election Day, party intensity, electoral history and the map combined to deliver majority control of the House of Representatives to the Democrats for the first time since 2010, while expanding the Republican Senate majority.

On the morning after the 2018 election, two seats in the Senate and a number of seats in the House remained too close to call.

The storyline for the 2018 midterm elections started the day after Donald Trump’s general election victory in 2016. Democrats awoke to the realization that the polls showing a Hillary Clinton victory were very wrong and that an election victory they took largely for granted had vanished. Their disappointment on election night 2016, alleged meddling by Russia, and President Trump’s brash, take-no-prisoners style fueled a steep rise in energy in the Democratic base.

Electoral history was on the side of the Democrats in 2018. In all but two midterm elections since World War II, the party in the White House has lost congressional seats. A large number of retiring GOP incumbents, many in swing districts and in heavily Democratic states, forced House Republicans to defend close to 100 seats against a building Democratic wave. House Democrats had only 13 “toss-up” seats to defend.

Read More