BAM NEWS

Fire Sprinklers: The Straight Story You have probably heard something about fire sprinklers and the building code at this point. We’re here to set the record straight. Currently, the Minnesota State Building Code uses the 2006 International Residential Code (IRC) as the base for its residential code. Fire sprinklers are not required in the 2006 IRC for single family construction.
In September of this year, the International Code Council (ICC) voted to add a fire sprinkler provision to its 2009 IRC. The provision requires fire sprinklers in all new single and multi-family homes built after January 1, 2011. This is important: the 2009 IRC will not go into effect in Minnesota until after the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry (DLI) goes through a rule adoption process. DLI goes through the rule adoption process in order to get input from the building community to help decide what amendments to make and which parts of the ICC code to adopt. The new version of Minnesota State Building Code will come out after DLI reviews the 2009 IRC.
We think late in 2010 could be the earliest the 209 IRC would be adopted. To sum up, at the ICC hearing in September fire sprinklers were voted to be included in the 2009 IRC, which will not go into effect until January 1, 2011. Furthermore, Minnesota has not yet gone through its rule adoption process so it’s undetermined whether or not fire sprinklers will be mandated in the next Minnesota State Building Code. BAM will keep you updated on any new information. From the Desk of Pam Perri Weaver... Week of December 1 – December 5, 2008 Things are busy around here.
Since the media has finally woken up to the fact that stabilizing the housing market must be a priority, the media calls have been endless. If you are not paying attention to some of your e-mails (and I don’t blame you!) there is some good news on the horizon that national groups such as the National Association of Home Builders and the National Association of Realtors are talking about.
The proposals are beginning to fly and there is some good information out there for you to keep on top of. (Please let there be a 4.5% 30 year fixed rate mortgage to include refinancing, please!) Hey Congress… DO SOMETHING! NAHB Fix Housing First Campaign/NAR Four Point Housing Stimulus Plan Our trade association at the national level is just beginning to get the word out about the need for Congress, the Treasury and others to think about how to get the housing market up and running again. I think the Fix Housing First website is slick because the information is simple and easy to understand (I need things explained to me in easy language and pictures really help…).
Check out their website http://www.fixhousingfirst.com/ and sign up to get almost daily one-liner e-mails about what Congress is doing, thinking and feeling with respect to housing. The National Realtors Association has also a plan called the “Four Point Housing Stimulus Plan” that you can check out as well. Either way we need to get members of congress going on these issues. Can Banks Sell Foreclosed Homes As Is? We are getting many phone calls about what happens to the home warranty after foreclosure. We wondered about that during our meeting this week with MN Commissioner of Commerce Glenn Wilson to discuss builders’ relationships with bankers in this economy.
Thanks to the legal team at NAHB, we asked them to help us try to answer the question; can banks that take over construction projects from a builder when there is a foreclosure waive the warranty? The answer is, perhaps not. The question of whether a lender is a vendor appears to be untested in Minnesota… Without getting overly political, or overly worked up, to say the least, I am not happy about the big three auto bailout.
To that extent, BAM President Kathe Ostrom caught me one morning writing a very sassy letter to one of Minnesota’s US Sentaor’s urging them to resist the temptation to send billions to the automakers. What are you thinking? Log onto to the BAM action center, find your member of Congress and tell them what’s happening to you.
The link is here: http://www.votervoice.net/groups/bamn BAM’s Not Sitting Around On Our Tushies Either BAM is really working on getting state legislators to understand the plight and the importance of housing in Minnesota.