BUILDER NEWS OSHA Releases Safety Recommendation Guide For Construction By Emily Peiffer Dive Brief: House Votes to Reinstate Health Reimbursement Arrangements Labor, Safety and Health The House of Representatives today passed the 21st Century Cures Act, a comprehensive health care package that includes NAHB-supported legislation that would allow home building firms and other small businesses to provide Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs) to help their employees pay for health insurance. HRAs allow small businesses to offer pre-tax dollars to insured employees to help pay premiums and/or other out-of-pocket costs associated with medical care and services. Most small companies do not have human resource departments or benefits specialists. HRAs offer these businesses a simpler, easier way to help their employees to obtain health coverage. “As a key driver of efforts to include HRAs in some type of yearend legislation, NAHB was thrilled to see it added to the 21st Century Cures Act,” said NAHB Chairman Ed Brady. Read More • The Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued a new guide, “Recommended Practices for Safety and Health Programs in Construction,” Thursday to offer employers additional resources that can help create a safe workplace. • OSHA said the new guidelines — which don’t change current legal requirements or add rules — will likely be most helpful to small and mid-sized contractors, who don’t always have access to training specialists and safety information. Read More Propane and Natural Gas Products! Connecticut’s largest family owned Propane company with over 350,000 gallons of storage, HOCON GAS has a reputation for delivering propane energy and industry expertise for more than 60 years! Pete “Propane Pete” Battaglio with over 33 years of experience Sr. Regional Sales Manager Hocon Gas, Inc. • 6 Armstrong Road Shelton, CT 06484 Office: 203.402.7800 • Fax: 203.944.0300 Cell: 203.343.2199 Email: pbattaglio@hocongas.com www.hocongas.com The Next Big Thing: Healthy Homes By Robyn Griggs Lawrence NORWALK 33 Rockland Rd. (203) 853-1500 WATERBURY 20 Railroad Hill St. (203) 754-7601 20 | HBRA of Fairfield County | DECEMBER 2016 GUILFORD 736 Boston Post Rd. (203) 458-2790 DANBURY 86 Payne Rd. (203) 744-4000 TORRINGTON 2407 Winsted Rd. (860) 626-0900 Copyright © Hocon • HOD#726-30 When Meritage Homes began to ask its average buyer, a 36-year-old mother of three, how it could create better value in 2009, the subject of health kept coming up. Moms were worried about kids with allergies and concerned about soaring child asthma rates. They’d read that environmental toxins could disrupt children’s hormone development and watched HGTV shows about people building houses that promote wellness. They said they had enough to think about without having to worry about mold, offgassing, and radon. Read More Builders: Access To Lending Eases By John McManus Lending once stood right up there with lots and labor as one of a workaday home builder’s triumvirate of pain and anguish points. Access to bank finance, particularly to buy or develop home sites, was tight as a drum the first couple of years of housing’s recovery. Now, though, according to builders’ responses to a quarterly National Association of Home Builders survey, that type of finance for acquisition, development, and construction got a tad easier to obtain in the past three months than in the prior three. NAHB economist Michael Neal writes: Easing on net over the third quarter took place on all forms of credit with standards on single-family construction recording the greatest net percentage of easing. As illustrated by Figure 1 below, a net of 17 percent of respondents reported that standards on loans for single-family construction had eased. Meanwhile, 10 percent of respondents on net said that land development loans had eased and 5 percent of builders on net reported eased credit standards on land acquisition loans. Read More Builders And Uncertainty By John McManus Certainty is a firm conviction something is the case. To speak to certainty’s qualities, we use terms like sureness, confidence, and the absence of doubt. For housing and its disproportionately important subsystem of home builders—especially since the Great Recession—not much is, or has been, or ever will be a sure thing, nor do its more experienced denizens put a heck of a lot of stock in expectations that things will go reliably one way or another. In other words, home builders— and the ecosystem of land sellers and developers, investors, lenders, trade partners, manufacturing and materials suppliers, real estate agents, and others connected to home builders—live with the opposite of certainty very nearly always. Read More DECEMBER 2016 | HBRA of Fairfield County | 21
12 Publizr Home