The building industry has a new mantra that floats my way constantly: Consumers are better-educated and more demanding than they were a generation or even a decade ago. If you buy into that, then you have to presume that some of it is due to the influence of the Internet.
The builders themselves have plenty of home pages, though many of the sites function as little more than digital brochures. These generally don’t go into such detailed matters as, say, the advantages of choosing one countertop surface over another, or type of insulation or carpet grade. Nonethelesss, these are the kinds of decisions that home buyers face.
One way to arm yourself is to spend time with some Internet sites geared specifically toward the building industry and/or its various suppliers. If you have some patience, this is a motherlode. Check out what builders’ trade journals have to say about, say, the latest in floor coverings. Read about their concerns about whether a “revolutionary” building material is as durable as it’s billed to be.
Might I repeat: Count on devoting some time, because these pages, with their infinite, tempting links, can be as time-consuming as any other in the World Wide Web.
Some bountiful sites:
– Building online (http://www.buildingonline.com): Spend too much time here, and you might find yourself suffering from sensory overload; this site is positively bursting with multicolored, flashing advertisements for every form of building product, appliance or service. It claims to have links to 72,500 building-related sites, a huge percentage of them the home pages of manufacturers. Its breadth is startling. There is much useful information here. There is also the potential for a headache.
The site’s search engine opens the door to such potentially useful connections as architects, house-plan services and an enormous number of building-related trade and consumer magazines. A “building forum” permits surfers to post questions.
– The Building and Home Improvement Products Network (http://www.build.com): This spot is more restrained, but with some of the same offerings. Lots of manufacturers and services can be found here, along with many links to publications, catalogs and trade groups.
– Kitchen-net (http://www.kitchen-bath.co)): Even simpler still, if you’re just trying to catch up with, say, a refrigerator manufacturer, this is a straightforward presentation. It has a fairly large consumer-directed content, but it also has a trade section that requires a password. It has straightforward suggestions on kitchen planning.
– Pro Builder Plus (http://www.probuilder.com): This is a product of Professional Builder magazine, which doesn’t have a general circulation; that is, it’s available within the industry on a subscription basis, but is not on newsstands. Nonetheless, it often contains information that could be useful to consumers; much of it has made the transition to the Web.
Included here are stories from the magazine (example: a look at the winners of its annual Best in American Living Awards, though the digitized pictures of the stunning houses can’t compare to the print versions).
Also located here are floor plans that the magazine sells, plus access to a daily real estate industry news report by Inman News Service. Among the latter’s news items are coverage of such topics as tactics for buying and selling houses, changes in tax laws, the impact of interest rate changes and more. (The Inman report also is carried on several other sites, including the Tribune’s real estate site, http://www.chicago.tribune.com/homes/).
– Builder Online (http://www.builderonline.com): This is the electronic version of Builder magazine, published by Hanley-Wood Inc. as the voice of the National Association of Home Builders. In addition to its well-written articles (the magazine’s lead story for March, for example, dealt with kitchen and bath planning), the publication is known for its catalog of house plans, of which about 1,000 can be perused here.
– Environmental Building News (http://www.ebuild.com): This is not strictly a trade publication, but contains much more detailed data than you’d encounter in a magazine that you might find on your dentist’s waiting-room table. It overflows with information on sustainable development, “green” building practices and indoor air-quality issues, among many other subjects.
