Building Even Better Homes : Strategies for Promoting Innovation in Home Building

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has a long history of investing in a more innovative and productive homebuilding industry. This report provides an update to the 2003 RAND report, Building Better Homes: Government Strategies for Promoting Innovation in Housing, to better reflect the current understanding and practice of innovation in housing and identify the most useful Federal role for promoting such innovation. Consistent with the original report, the research team examined the structure, characteristics, and motivations within the homebuilding industry that either advance or hinder research and development (R&D), and the diffusion and adoption of housing innovations. The authors propose a new non-linear model of the innovation process that is realistic and appropriate to housing. The report outlines information-gathering and analytic activities needed to inform federal innovation policy and principles that should guide selection of policies for supporting housing technology innovation in public-private context, and strategies to increase the impact of federal R&D investments