Value of Membership: $1,350 per home

We continue our series about how your HBA and its affiliate, NAHB, have logged significant victories advocating for members in the legal, legislative and regulatory arenas during 2012. 

Our advocacy efforts have saved the typical home builder about $7,250 per housing start in 2012, including both single-family and multifamily.

Elimination of accessibility porch requirement will save $1,350 per home. Some advocates have lobbied heavily in recent years to include provisions in the IRC to make all new homes “visitable” to disabled persons, regardless of whether or not disabled persons were likely to live in or visit the home. NAHB opposed these efforts and kept visitability provisions out of both the 2009 and 2012 IRC. One of the provisions that NAHB kept out of the code called for a zero clearance entrance, which in turn would require a 4x4 front porch to prevent water from entering the house. Using a front porch estimator available from A.D. Construction, Inc., NAHB staff estimated that the cost of the 4x4 porch needed for a zero-clearance entrance would average $1,350, and that a builder would save that amount on a home normally built without a front porch in areas that have adopted the 2009 or 2012 versions of the code.