Oklahoma Home Builder News

The National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association (NSSGA) has awarded multiple Dolese Bros. Co. locations with Safety Excellence Awards, including Coleman Quarry, Hartshorne Quarry, Ponca City’s 7 Mile Mine, Mustang Sand and OKC East Sand. NSSGA will present the awards at its virtual 2020 Legislative & Policy Forum in September.

“These Safety Excellence awards are a direct result of Dolese employees making safety a personal value on the job each day,” Dolese President and CEO Mark Helm said. "The fact that numerous locations were recognized is something to be celebrated. It is also a challenge for us to continue delivering on our commitment to safety.”  

The NSSGA Safety Excellence Awards originated in 1987 and are presented to aggregates operations that maintain a safe workplace, evidenced by their safety performance over a consecutive period of time without a Mine Safety Health Administration (MSHA) reportable injury.

MSHA uses the metric of Total Reportable Injury Rate (TRIR) to monitor reportable injuries. Dolese has seen a consistent decrease in its TRIR as its safety practices have continued to improve during the previous several years.

The NSSGA Safety Excellence Awards recognize operations based upon TRIR performance compared to the rest of the aggregates industry. NSSGA’s safety awards recognize individual operations as well as companies.

“Dolese is focused on improving our safety culture even more by making safety a personal value of all our team members,” Dolese Health, Safety and Environmental Department Director David Finley said. “It’s an honor to receive these awards from the NSSGA because it is an indication of our success compared to our peers in the country.”

Dolese, headquartered in Oklahoma City, has more than 60 facilities across the state. Learn more about Dolese at www.dolese.com

Housing affordability has long been at the forefront of housing policy and attention. It’s been even further ignited by the COVID-19 pandemic’s effect on employment and people’s ability to afford somewhere to live.

Recent land use trends — such as form-based codes (FBCs), planned unit development (PUD) and traditional neighborhood development (TND) overlay zones — provide additional development methods to make the residential development and regulation process more efficient. However, some localities are moving in the opposite direction by enacting burdensome residential design standards that go well past good design principles, and into regulation that increases costs, limits consumer options, prices out certain populations and raises a number of legal concerns.

NAHB’s Residential Design Standards: How Stringent Regulations Restrict Affordability and Choice report addresses this issue. Included in the primer are examples of communities across the country that have attempted to implement these types of standards. Traditionally, design standards have allowed communities to control the physical characteristics of their housing stock, preserve community character, protect property values, and attract certain populations of home buyers and renters.

Common examples of highly prescriptive design standards include:

• Prohibiting or limiting the use of exterior materials such as vinyl siding and metal;
• Requiring specific and often expensive materials for siding and fences; and
• Dictating the amount of relief and surface area dedicated to windows and the number of architectural details on the roof.

In a 2019 survey, NAHB found that 47% of builders has encountered such standards; in communities where design requirements exist, 85% of respondents stated that they increased construction prices. Not only is this additional price passed on to home buyers and renters, but home buyers and communities also suffer from reduced production and choice.

The primer details the legal implications of these standards and efforts by local home builders associations (HBAs) and home builders to fight back. In several states, including Arkansas, Texas, North Carolina, Georgia and Oklahoma, these groups have successfully challenged these standards to limit or prohibit their adoption. Better tools exist for design that can influence residential design without limiting choice, affecting housing affordability or being exclusionary.

The fundamental issue is not the physical characteristics of homes, but what they can mean for affordability. Regulations that artificially raise housing prices without direct ties to public health and safety should not be prioritized over meeting the shortage of affordable homes for families. Housing affordability and attainability should be prioritized through effective planning tools, but unfortunately, barriers to the development process remain.

The primer is available through NAHB’s Land Use 101 toolkit. For more information, and to be connected to other resources, contact Nicholas Julian, Program Manager of Land Use.

Hanley Wood/Meyers Research and NAHB today announced that BUILDER will cease to be the official magazine of NAHB at the end of 2020, as the two organizations prepare to launch a new home building data platform for NAHB members.

Hanley Wood/Meyers Research will continue to publish BUILDER magazine, BUILDER Online and BUILDER newsletters as well as produce leading events, like BUILDER 100.

For more than 40 years, Hanley Wood/Meyers Research and NAHB have worked together to provide timely resources and insights to builders nationwide, and Hanley Wood/Meyers Research has always maintained an annual presence at the NAHB International Builders’ Show.

“We are proud of the 40-year relationship with the NAHB centered around our media proposition and BUILDER magazine,” said Jeff Meyers, CEO of Hanley Wood/Meyers Research. “Given the evolving media landscape the time was right to pivot our relationship towards a new approach driven by the wide breadth of localized data we provide to best serve the NAHB’s community builder membership and the broader information needs of the industry as a whole.”

The new home building data platform powered by Zonda will help the two organizations meet the growing demand for local market data and analysis in the home building industry.

“NAHB is excited to join with Hanley Wood/Meyers Research to bring the Zonda platform to our community of builder members and complement NAHB’s own economic research,” said NAHB CEO Jerry Howard. “Zonda has long been an important and valuable resource for the builder community.”

With Zonda’s comprehensive data and market intelligence, BUILDER will more accurately identify its audience and allow marketers to reach home builders who drive more than 90% of U.S. annual closings. More information can be found at builderonline.com.

To learn more about Hanley Wood/Meyers Research, visit hanleywood.com and meyersresearchllc.com. 

By: Chip Minty The Journal Record

NORMAN – Builders and contractors have maligned the city of Norman’s permitting process for years, calling it slow, inefficient, and costly to their businesses. They consider Norman among the hardest communities in the metro to work in and some have stopped doing business there.

But now, City Manager Darrel Pyle is hoping to change all that. He says Norman’s bad rap has been at the top of his priority list since he moved here from his former post in Hanford, California, last July.

With support from the Norman City Council, Pyle is overhauling Norman’s permitting process, hoping to restore the city’s tarnished reputation among builders in the Oklahoma City metro area.

At the center of his effort is a $7.8 million facility renovation project that will bring the city’s entire permitting process under one roof, creating a one-stop shop for builders and contractors hoping to move projects through City Hall as fast as possible.

Pyle is turning a 40,000-square-foot building adjacent to Norman’s city administration complex into a permitting headquarters with office space for more than 100 city staff members. The building, which used to serve as Norman’s central library, will open next year and will house the city’s fire inspectors, engineering department, planning department and finance department.

Any function associated with obtaining a building permit will be handled in that building, Pyle says. Issues or questions will be resolved efficiently with a quick phone call or a trip down the hall.

That will be a big improvement from years past, Pyle says. Until recently, the system and the staff were not cohesive. Some staff members had never met other colleagues involved in the permitting process, and many weren’t even sure how the entire system worked.

Several months ago, Pyle began to change that by bringing everyone together for a week of discussions facilitated by Management Partners, a California-based consulting group.

Since then, Pyle and his permitting team have been on a roll, looking for opportunities to improve efficiency and finding ways to push permits out the door faster.

The city now can self-certify certain types of sewer-line construction, which speeds the permitting process by sidestepping the need for a state Department of Environmental Quality inspection, which can take 45 days to complete.

The city has also hired third-party plan checkers to help when full-time staff members are bogged down by surging workloads, and inspectors can now inspect some types of construction virtually, rather than drive to job sites for every inspection, Pyle said.

Rigid work schedules are a thing of the past, he says. Now, building inspectors are available to visit worksites at sunrise if necessary, to allow construction projects to proceed without costly delays, waiting for inspectors to start their normal workdays.

The city also has developed a new website that builders can use to submit plans and communicate with city staff. The site is more technologically advanced, and, for the first time, it is Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant.

“I couldn’t be more pleased with our staff,” Pyle said. “The biggest change has been in attitude, realizing that just because we’ve always done it that way doesn’t mean we always have to do it that way. There is a realization that developers are the priority.”

“We have only one goal here at the city of Norman. We want to be the best there is,” he said.

Norman Chamber of Commerce President Scott Martin said he’s thrilled with the changes.

He’s heard story after story from people who have faced challenges going through Norman’s permitting process, including from a couple of Norman’s City Council members.

“This has been a priority of the chambers for many years now,” Martin said. “Permitting is critical to the development community, but it needs to be fair and responsive. I have yet to talk to anyone who is not supportive of high standards, but when the process is extra challenging and particularly hard, that’s where the frustration is.”

“Around the metro, Norman has had the reputation of being a hard place to do business, and this is going to improve that reputation,” he said.

Tim Grissom, owner of TC Grissom Building Co., says he’s been building in Norman for 25 years, and he’s glad to hear changes are on the horizon.

“That’s a good thing, because the process can be frustrating,” Grissom said. “It has been for years.”

He said the city staff members he works with are nice people, but the system they work in has been a typical government bureaucracy, and they’ve never shown much interest in changing it.

“I just think they could do a better job.”

Curtis McCarty, a former member of the Norman Planning Commission, says he’s been building homes in Norman for nearly 30 years, and over time, he’s learned how to adapt to the city’s way of doing things.

McCarty, owner of McCarty Construction, said the city has asked him and other builders for suggestions, and he can see they’re trying to improve.

The residential side has been better the last few years, and if the city can improve service on the commercial side, it will improve Norman’s reputation among builders in the metro area.

“I think it’s working, and they’re going in the right direction,” McCarty said.

By Kathleen Howley

Purchase apps last week were 6.7% higher than a year ago, MBA says

Applications for mortgages to purchase homes gained for the sixth consecutive week to a level that was 6.7% higher than a year ago, back when a deadly pandemic wasn’t interrupting the spring home-buying season.

A seasonally adjusted index measuring purchase applications jumped 9% last week, according to a report from the Mortgage Bankers Association. Applications for refinancings fell 0.2% from the prior week, though the level was 176% higher than a year ago, MBA said.

Last week’s so-called purchase apps were up 54% from early April when most U.S. states were under lockdown orders to keep people at home in an effort to stem the spread of COVID-19, said Joel Kan, MBA’s associate vice president of economic and industry forecasting.

“The housing market is continuing its path to recovery as various states reopen, leading to more buyers resuming their home search,” said Joel Kan, an MBA associate vice president.

The surge in purchase demand drove the overall index, measuring both purchase and refi applications, higher by 2.7% on a seasonality adjusted basis from the prior week, the report said.

Demand is being driven by a shortage of homes on the market that preceded the epidemic, coupled with mortgage rates near the lowest level ever recorded.

The supply of properties on the market at the end of April was 1.47 million, the National Association of Realtors said last week. That’s the lowest level ever recorded for the month, said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist.

Last week, the average U.S. rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage dropped to 3.24%, within one basis point of the all-time low set two weeks earlier, according to Freddie Mac.

The share of applications for mortgages backed by the Federal Housing Administration decreased to 11.2% from 11.5% in the week prior, the report said. The share of applications backed by the Veterans Administration fell to 12.4% from 13.4%, the report said.

By: Janice Francis-Smith, The Journal Record

OKLAHOMA CITY – After a coordinated effort by a handful of statewide organizations concerned with residential real estate, legislation to keep municipalities from imposing purely aesthetic design standards has now become law.

Senate Bill 1713 became effective when Gov. Kevin Stitt signed the measure on Thursday.

SB 1713, by state Sen. Kim David, R-Porter, and state Rep. Ryan Martinez, R-Edmond, was written to prevent municipalities from imposing building design regulations for single-family residential zones based on aesthetics alone.

Such regulations drive up the cost of construction, making it harder for builders to provide the amount of affordable housing that Oklahoma is projected to need over the next few years. The Oklahoma Home Builders Association, Oklahoma Association of Realtors and Oklahoma Coalition for Affordable Housing came together to urge lawmakers to pass the legislation.

“The ability of persons from all economic segments to own a home is one of many reasons America is who we are,” said David in a statement provided by the OkHBA. “The commitment from home builders to defend property rights and continue to protect all Americans is why we were so pleased to work alongside OkHBA and pass legislation that will continue to uphold these ideas.”

The Oklahoma Senate held an interim study on the matter in October. Daniel McClure, deputy general counsel, Oklahoma Municipal League, had defended municipalities’ efforts to ensure that builders used high-quality materials in construction, asserting that design standards improve the quality of affordable housing in the towns that implement such rules.

A 2017 study by the Washington, D.C.-based Cato Institute found that municipalities across the country have a history of using such design standards – addressing no safety need but purely based on aesthetics – to deliberately keep prices high and keep lower-income individuals from buying homes in certain neighborhoods. However, the study ranked Oklahoma as having the least amount of unnecessary restrictions of all 50 states.

Still, some municipalities in Oklahoma, such as Tuttle and Bixby, had passed some regulations restricting some exterior finishes such as vinyl, wood and aluminum siding that would otherwise be permitted under the International Residential Code.

According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, families that pay more than 30% of their income for housing are considered cost-burdened. According to that standard, more than 40% of Oklahomans are cost-burdened and would have to make at least $15.54 per hour to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment. Oklahoma is projected to need 7,454 housing units and 11,630 rental housing units for families earning 60% or less of the area median income.

Some neighborhoods within Oklahoma municipalities have special designations – such as historic preservation – that prevent certain materials to be used on the exterior of homes. SB 1713 includes provisions for historic districts, planned unit developments and other neighborhoods where homeowners have agreed to maintain certain design standards to preserve those restrictions.

Curtis McCarty, a homebuilder and president of the OkHBA, said the legislation would help first-time homebuyers get into a home.

“If we don’t find ways to keep housing affordable, we will eliminate a group of people that would like to be homebuyers but end up renting,” said McCarty.

“Cities and states might not be able to prevent the high product costs and rising interest rates that affect the housing industry nationwide, but fortunately they can prevent more costs that come from adding unnecessary design regulations to homes,” said builder M.J. Farzaneh of Home Creations.