According to a recent news release from NAHB on October 28th the sales of newly built single-family homes fell 3.6 percent for the month of September.  The data was released by the U.S. Commerce Department which attributed the loss in sales to the $8,000 first-time buyer tax credit set to end in November.  Let’s hope that our Congress can quickly come together to extend and expand the homebuyer tax credit as is currently being discussed.  As of now, the Senate has voted unanimously voted to continue and expand the program to inlcude a $6,500 credit for move-up buyers.  Our industry needs every bit of assistance we can get to help survive this uncertain economy.  Through the first three quarters of the year, residential building permits in Belton were down 16 percent from the same period in 2008.  Temple's year over year decline during the period was about 9 percent.

I am happy to report that things are on track financially at TABA as we approach the end of 2009.  With careful oversight and planning by our staff and directors we are about where we thought we would be at this time of the year.   This is certainly good news.  With all of our fundraising events completed for the year, there remains only one area that could impact us negatively between now and the end of the year…and that is membership.

New member recruitment and current member retention is a challenge facing all builder associations across the nation. While we regret that we have experienced our fare share of local membership losses, we are in better shape than many of the other associations across the state.  Our leadership is working hard to retain current members who are continuing to experience downturns in their business making it difficult to find the funds for membership dues.  If you are considering letting your membership lapse, please contact Cheryl for information that may be helpful to you.  We sincerely appreciate and value each of you who have dug deep to find the funds to renew your membership.      

We are pleased to welcome Danny Coppin of Coppin Signs and Cody Fritz of Water Softner Services as new members of our association.  I encourage each of our builder and associate members to welcome these new members to our TABA family. We say THANK YOU to each one of our new 2009 members who saw the long term value of TABA membership and cared enough about our industry to join our association during tough economic times.  I have said this many times before and will say it one more time “Whenever possible, do business with a fellow TABA member.”

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