Want the latest news in the home improvement industry? Check out some of the articles below!
Makeover Men Rehab a House
First-time homeowners deal with debris and doubts as they rehab a 1912 Minneapolis fixer-upper.
As the host of HGTV's "Curb Appeal," Sasha Andreev's job was to tell viewers how to make plain-Jane homes look like the best on the block. When Andreev and his partner, Charlie Hansen, bought their first house -- a fixer-upper in south Minneapolis -- they had to make the transformation themselves. There wasn't going to be a TV crew around to do the heavy lifting. Instead, Andreev and Hansen would be general contractors, painters, carpenters and popcorn-ceiling scrapers. READ MORE...
A New Model for Homeownership...
A nonprofit group is taking a new approach to help buyers with bad credit buy homes in north Minneapolis. Doodling comes easy for Chad Schwitters. Transforming life in north Minneapolis is a much bigger challenge. Schwitters is the head of Urban Homeworks, a nonprofit group that's helping rebuild community in north Minneapolis, an area that has been overwhelmed by the foreclosure crisis, then ravaged by a tornado this summer. READ MORE...
BuildFax Partners with Equifax
BuildFax, the national database of building permit activity and creator of the BuildFax Remodeling Index, has joined forces with Equifax, one of the nation’s largest credit monitoring firms. The new partnership will give property and casualty insurance carriers immediate access to property history information, improving the accuracy of their underwriting to develop better pricing strategies and reduce the potential for fraud.Insurance carriers can incorporate building permit data into their business decisions and more accurately identify over-valuations, under-valuations and everything in-between, thus accurately pricing home insurance for both new business opportunities and renewals, according to the announcement. READ MORE...
State's Construction Industry to Surge in 2012, report says
The nation's struggling construction industry will continue to suffer spending declines in 2011 but will see a notable rebound next year, according to a forecast released Monday by IHS Global Insight.
The quarterly report predicts a fairly dramatic rebound for Minnesota's hard-hit construction industry. This year total construction spending -- commercial and residential combined -- in Iowa and Minnesota will drop a respective 6.3 percent and 8.6 percent. Those are the smallest declines in the North Central Region, which includes both states. READ MORE...
A Milestone for MEDA...with Much More to do...
As it recognizes Tarraf Construction as 2010 Entrepreneur of the Year, the Minneapolis nonprofit acknowledges the need to do far more for minority-owned businesses. Ten years ago, Salah Tarraf, CEO of Tarraf Construction, typified the kind of aspiring minority entrepreneur that the Metropolitan Economic Development Association (MEDA) aims to help. READ MORE...
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