Plus: shopping malls become neighborhoods, sheep graze massive solar farms, small builders emerge as a critical resource for disaster recovery, and rumblings of a national code for manufactured housing raise big questions.
This is an extreme example, but it raises a new marketing question for builders: What does AI know about your homes, products, prices, features, and services, and is it getting the story right?
That comes as the housing market itself continues to struggle. Single-family starts fell nearly 10% in July and are down almost 16% year over year. But Oregon is bucking the trend, with housing starts climbing 11.3% during the first half of 2026. State officials point to efforts to remove unnecessary fees, delays, and redundant processes. The distinction is worth watching: Can we make housing easier and less expensive to build without sacrificing energy efficiency, resilience, and performance?
Factory-built housing could also get a boost. A new federal housing law eliminates the permanent steel-frame requirement for manufactured homes, potentially cutting thousands of dollars from the cost of a home.More intriguing is a directive for HUD to study a standardized federal building code for modular construction.With modular homes still accounting for only a sliver of U.S. completions, regulatory consistency could be one of the keys to finally unlocking scale.
Resilience is getting a rethink, too. New research from Drexel University argues that traditional life-cycle assessments miss an important part of a building’s environmental footprint: what happens when the building fails. The resources and carbon associated with repairing or rebuilding after fires, floods, extreme heat, and other disasters typically aren't fully reflected in the equation. Perhaps the greenest building isn't just the one that uses fewer resources. It's the one still standing after disaster strikes.
At the same time, America’s homebuilding industry continues to consolidate. Dream Finders Homes is acquiring Beazer Homes in a $2.2 billion deal that will create the nation’s sixth-largest homebuilder. Scale matters when the country desperately needs more housing, but Green Builder Media President Ron Jones makes the case for another essential part of the industry: small, local builders. When disaster wipes out homes and neighborhoods, these are often the companies that know the local trades, suppliers, codes, permitting officials, lenders, insurers, and communities needed to put them back together.
Meanwhile, new COGNITION Smart Data finds that more than 70% of home buyers would relocate to find a more affordable home. For builders, the takeaway is significant: Your future buyer may not be local anymore.
And where will all those homes go? Maybe to the mall.
Across the country, aging shopping centers and former department stores are being redeveloped into apartments and mixed-use communities. An analysis of 153 mall redevelopment projects found housing was the most common new use. With housing in short supply and malls sitting on enormous amounts of land already connected to roads and infrastructure, yesterday’s shopping destination could become tomorrow’s neighborhood.
Want the latest sustainability, housing, resilience, and building industry news from Green Builder Media delivered to your inbox every Thursday? Sign up for our Vantage newsletter.
Cati O’Keefe is the editorial director of Green Builder Media. She has 25 years of experience reporting and writing on all aspects of residential housing, building and energy codes, green building, and sustainability.
AI Is Talking About You to Home Buyers
Plus: shopping malls become neighborhoods, sheep graze massive solar farms, small builders emerge as a critical resource for disaster recovery, and rumblings of a national code for manufactured housing raise big questions.
Artificial intelligence has officially entered the home-buying process, and builders might want to pay attention to what it’s saying. In one recent case, a home buyer fed an inspection report into an AI tool and received a repair estimate of about $250,000. The buyer backed out of the deal. Two licensed contractors later put the actual repairs at a fraction of that amount.
This is an extreme example, but it raises a new marketing question for builders: What does AI know about your homes, products, prices, features, and services, and is it getting the story right?
That comes as the housing market itself continues to struggle. Single-family starts fell nearly 10% in July and are down almost 16% year over year. But Oregon is bucking the trend, with housing starts climbing 11.3% during the first half of 2026. State officials point to efforts to remove unnecessary fees, delays, and redundant processes. The distinction is worth watching: Can we make housing easier and less expensive to build without sacrificing energy efficiency, resilience, and performance?
Factory-built housing could also get a boost. A new federal housing law eliminates the permanent steel-frame requirement for manufactured homes, potentially cutting thousands of dollars from the cost of a home.More intriguing is a directive for HUD to study a standardized federal building code for modular construction. With modular homes still accounting for only a sliver of U.S. completions, regulatory consistency could be one of the keys to finally unlocking scale.
Virginia, meanwhile, is experimenting with a different kind of efficiency: using the same land for farming and clean energy. A new state law formally defines agrivoltaics, allowing agriculture and solar production to coexist. One Virginia operation is already grazing 1,500 sheep across 4,000 acres of solar farms. With data centers driving electricity demand higher while farmland disappears, the idea raises an obvious question: Why make land serve just one purpose when it can serve two?
Resilience is getting a rethink, too. New research from Drexel University argues that traditional life-cycle assessments miss an important part of a building’s environmental footprint: what happens when the building fails. The resources and carbon associated with repairing or rebuilding after fires, floods, extreme heat, and other disasters typically aren't fully reflected in the equation. Perhaps the greenest building isn't just the one that uses fewer resources. It's the one still standing after disaster strikes.
At the same time, America’s homebuilding industry continues to consolidate. Dream Finders Homes is acquiring Beazer Homes in a $2.2 billion deal that will create the nation’s sixth-largest homebuilder. Scale matters when the country desperately needs more housing, but Green Builder Media President Ron Jones makes the case for another essential part of the industry: small, local builders. When disaster wipes out homes and neighborhoods, these are often the companies that know the local trades, suppliers, codes, permitting officials, lenders, insurers, and communities needed to put them back together.
Affordability is also expanding well beyond the price of the house. Redfin is now showing childcare costs and availability alongside home listings, a notable development when the typical working family spends more than half its income on housing and childcare combined.
Meanwhile, new COGNITION Smart Data finds that more than 70% of home buyers would relocate to find a more affordable home. For builders, the takeaway is significant: Your future buyer may not be local anymore.
And where will all those homes go? Maybe to the mall.
Across the country, aging shopping centers and former department stores are being redeveloped into apartments and mixed-use communities. An analysis of 153 mall redevelopment projects found housing was the most common new use. With housing in short supply and malls sitting on enormous amounts of land already connected to roads and infrastructure, yesterday’s shopping destination could become tomorrow’s neighborhood.
We also look at why homeowners are still spending money at Home Depot even as the housing market remains stuck, what space travel can teach us about recycling water here on Earth, and Colorado's adoption of a modern Water Demand Calculator that could help builders reduce pipe sizes, construction costs, water waste, and energy use.
Plus, we take a look at ecobee SmartBuildings for multifamily HVAC management and revisit our popular webinar, Beyond the Code: Smart Ventilation Strategies for Healthier Homes.
Watch the full This Week’s Sustainable Building News episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Rather read the script? We’ve got that, too.
Want the latest sustainability, housing, resilience, and building industry news from Green Builder Media delivered to your inbox every Thursday? Sign up for our Vantage newsletter.
Upcoming Building and Sustainability Events
August 31: Fall In Love With Nature Sweepstakes Entries Due
September 9–10: Building Fire Safety Symposium, Chicago
September 15-16: U.S. Heat Pump Summit, Worcester, Mass.
September 16–18: EEBA Summit 2026, St. Paul, Minn.
October 18–21: International Code Council’s 2026 Annual Conference and Expo, Nashville, Tenn.
October 20–23: Greenbuild 2026, New York
October 23: NAHB’s 2027 Sustainability and Green Building Scholarship Application Due
November 4–5: The Building Products Customer Workshop, Nashville
November 18: 2026 Southwest Utility Energy Efficiency Workshop, Santa Fe
November 18–20: 1st International Online Conference on Sustainable Construction (GO BUILD 2026) (Virtual)
December 9: International Conference on Sustainable Architecture and Urban Design Engineering (ICSAUDE), New York
January 28-29: ICGBS 2027: 21. International Conference on Green Building and Sustainability, New York
February 2-4, Design & Construction Week 2027 (IBS & KBIS), Las Vegas
By Cati O'Keefe
Cati O’Keefe is the editorial director of Green Builder Media. She has 25 years of experience reporting and writing on all aspects of residential housing, building and energy codes, green building, and sustainability.Also Read