How do you help foreign-born employees and subcontractors work legally in this country? More
Home Equity Builders (HEB) maintains a constant and upbeat presence in the minds of homeowners in affluent Great Falls and McLean, Va. Thanks to the postcards in their mailboxes, residents know HEB is local, wins awards, and does high-end remodeling as well as handyman work. More
Chicago awes first-time visitors. They've come expecting a grimy rust-belt metropolis, Carl Sandburg's “Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.” Instead, they're met with broad boulevards, pristine parks, and wide-as-an-ocean Lake Michigan sparkling at the east edge of downtown. More
Hip, chic, and trendy are great for clothes and cars. But when your product is designed to last for generations, you tend to be a little skeptical about what's hot and what's not. To find out what design elements are resonating with today's buyers, Builder interviewed production, semi-custom, and custom builders, architects, real estate agents, and interior designers nationally, as well as Gopal Ahluwalia, staff vice president of research for the NAHB, to create our own top 10 list. More
If you want to study a company that took a fresh look at an old industry, or that knows how to find and train employees who take customer service to heart, consider Sunrise Assisted Living. Paul and Terry Klaassen learned about the senior care options available in this country when Terry's mother was terminally ill in the early 1980s. They built a system modeled after assisted care houses in Holland, where Klaassen had visited his grandparents, called verzorginstehuizen. More
Are you thinking about hiring a handyman or starting a handyman division for your company? But before assigning a staff member to be your company's handyman division or running out and hiring someone, it's important to be clear about what a handyman is, what he does, and what kind of client expectations exist. More
A suburban Kansas City remodeler has found that a radio and television campaign featuring a jingle has increased the number and quality of leads he gets.After learning Home Depot was coming to Lawrence, Kan., Marc Ridenour of Natural Breeze Remodeling decided to do something so his firm's name stuck in homeowners' minds when they thought "remodel." A survey was cited in which 1,000 Lawrence residents were asked, among other things, which companies came to mind when they thought about remodeling services. After the seminar, Ridenour paid $2,200 to an Indiana company to write and produce a jingle. More
