Home builders confront the foreclosure bogeyman

From the March issue: Home builders are switching tactics and confronting head-on one of their biggest nemeses: foreclosed houses that not only lure buyers away with deeply discounted prices, but simultaneously depress the appraisal values of newly built homes.

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At a packed session at the International Builders’ Show last month in Orlando, Fla., consultants and builders said that with gluts of foreclosures in major markets around the country — and more forecast to arrive in the next two years — the time has come to stop being passive and to begin aggressively educating buyers about the often hidden costs of buying foreclosures. [more]