The Wall Street Journal-20080215-WEEKEND JOURNAL- The Home Front- The Can-Do Home Show- Amid Grim Housing News- Show for Builders Highlights The Practical Over the Glitzy
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WEEKEND JOURNAL; The Home Front: The Can-Do Home Show; Amid Grim Housing News, Show for Builders Highlights The Practical Over the Glitzy
Full Text (1103 words)As the housing downturn enters its 30th month, glamour is giving way to pragmatism and innovation -- though not always to bargain-basement prices -- at the annual International Builders Show in Orlando, Fla. Some 1,900 exhibitors at the five-day show ending tomorrow are displaying products that will soon appear in model homes and stores.
With the recession odds getting surer, glossy granite countertops, six-burner trophy stoves and giant hot tubs are getting less notice. Detergent-dispensing washing machines, leak-resistant faucets and unpickable locks are generating buzz. Attendance at the show this year is expected to be off from 5% to 15% compared with 2006, when a record 105,263 builders, remodelers and others showed up, according to the National Association of Home Builders, the event's sponsor.
Exhibitors who didn't make it this year include Fortune Brands, which chose not to attend to save money. "Our home-products business has taken a very hard look at costs," says a spokesman for the Deerfield., Ill., parent of Moen faucets, Therma-Tru doors, Simonton windows and Aristokraft cabinets. New-home sales fell 26.4% last year to 774,000, a record one-year decline, according to the U.S. Commerce Department. New-home prices were essentially flat. New-home sales in 2008 are expected to decline 17.7% to 637,000, according to a National Association of Realtors report out last week, which also predicts a 4.3% decline in the median price of a new home, to $236,300.
One of the showiest new products is Lennox's X-Fires, a vent-free gas fireplace that can be mounted to an interior or an exterior wall. It features a catalytic converter that superheats the air to 600 degrees centigrade, burning off most emissions including all carbon monoxide. Don't hang a flat-screen TV over this baby, though. The fireplace emits heat from the top. With either black-granite or limestone facing on an aluminum frame, it costs from $3,699 to $4,999 -- slightly less than a masonry fireplace -- and is expected in stores this spring.
Splashy, too -- at least for the laundry room -- are General Electric's Profile SmartDispense front-loading washer and dryer, available in vermillion, champagne or white and headed to stores this summer. A pedestal stores detergent and fabric softener, dispensing them according to fabric type, soil level, water hardness and load size; the dryer automatically sets the tumble time. Prices are $1,299 for the washer and $1,099 for the dryer, near the top of the market.
But showy new products won't lead the way out of the downturn, says R.L. Brown, a housing-market analyst in Phoenix. "The way to go is the other way," he says -- reducing home sizes, building efficiently and getting rid of "gadgets and gimmicks." John Hutchison, a Fairhope, Ala., builder, agrees. "My customers want better prices, not higher- end products. People are looking for value."
Some products aim to save money. Southwire introduced a new generation of Flatwire, its paper-thin, flexible wiring that sticks to a wall with adhesive and can be spackled over and painted. In stores by year end and costing from $2.49 to $6 a foot, it's a do-it-yourself way to wire indoor wall sconces, smart-home devices and other applications. Delta put patent-pending diamond-embedded ceramic discs into some faucets to eliminate contamination from brass, copper and lead plumbing and to reduce leaks. A. O. Smith introduced the Vertex 100, a superefficient gas water-heater priced at $1,000 to $1,200, which can double as a furnace in either forced-air or radiant-heat systems.
In the High Tech Show Home, one of several demonstration homes at the show, Microposite showed siding made of tiny beads of perlite, a volcanic mineral used in potting-soil mixes. The company says the siding is half the weight of popular fiber-cement siding but rated three times more energy-efficient in independent tests. Microposite says the price will be "very competitive" with fiber-cement and other premium siding.
In the kitchen, German appliance maker Gaggenau is pursuing the youth market with a "First Professionals" package of five stainless- steel appliances priced at $15,000 -- 23% below a higher-end Gaggenau set; special options are extra. The "affordable luxury" outfit includes a 30-inch-wide convection oven, a 36-inch-wide refrigerator with bottom freezer, a 24-inch-wide dishwasher and a 36-inch-wide glass-ceramic or gas cooktop with matching vent hood. KitchenAid, meanwhile, added steam to some of its Architect Series II appliances. The 30-inch double wall-oven with steam -- for baking cheescakes and roasts -- has a plumbed-in water line, similar to a refrigerator's icemaker, and retails at $4,199. Some steam may come out when you open the door. "It poufs a little," says senior brand manager Deborah O'Connor. The Architect Series II dishwasher with steam retails at $1,249 for stainless steel and $1,149 for black or white. Steam is an increasingly popular appliance feature, despite a recent Consumer Reports study that threw cold water on its usefulness, finding that dishes washed without steam were "perfectly clean." Ms. O'Connor says in company tests the steam function got glasses cleaner, and it saves 2,400 gallons of water over the life of the appliance.
Consumers are nervous, and manufacturers are responding. Kwikset launched a patented Smartkey lock system, which homeowners can use to change their door locks without calling a locksmith. The $30 kit includes a new key and lock, using bars instead of the usual pins and tumblers -- a feature the company says will foil burglars' deep-cut "bump" keys. The kit's "learning tool" resets a lock when inserted, allowing homeowners to reset several locks to one key. (The original key also is needed for the reset.) Certain Home Depot and Lowes stores are test-marketing the system, which is set for wider distribution later this month. A $99 version for touchpad locks is coming in July.
John Boyle & Co. introduced a hurricane-protection curtain called Storm-A-Rest, with polyethylene fibers used in bullet-resistant body armor that meet Florida's building codes for winds up to 155 miles per hour. The curtains snap onto the outside of windows and, when not in use, roll up into an awning. The cost, $20 to $25 a square foot installed, is less than that of standard roll-down hurricane shutters.
U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman was at the show introducing the Energy-Smart Home Scale, or E-Scale, a tool for comparing homes' energy performance. He challenged his audience to build 220,000 high- performance homes by 2012. In that spirit, Hydromatic Technologies introduced the Dryer Miser, a $300 device that it says boosts the energy-efficiency of clothes dryers by 50%, via a nontoxic fluid heated in a sealed system. The patent-pending device, which requires professional installation, is compatible with all dryer makes and is headed for stores in the fall.
