Best in American Living Awards Celebrating 40 Years of Design
For the past four decades, NAHB’s Best in American Living Awards (BALA) have celebrated the value and importance of good home and community design.
Over the next several months, BALA will celebrate its significant 40-year milestone by showcasing memorable trends and award-winning projects, as well as celebrating its esteemed BALA Hall of Fame inductees who helped set the stage for today’s design creativity and innovation.
Although trends and best practices in home design have evolved through the years, NAHB’s commitment to driving innovation and improving the places where we live, work and play remains steadfast. NAHB is proud to once again recognize and honor the architects, builders and designers who have become part of the BALA community and made their mark in defining excellence in residential design.
Visit BALA’s Special Section at bestinamericanliving.com to see more award-winning projects, influential design leaders and more.
Latest from NAHBNow
Jan 20, 2026
Smart Sourcing, Smarter Basis: How AI Is Changing Land AcquisitionFor decades, the process of screening off-market sites has remained painfully slow. But a shift is happening as top-tier land teams are moving away from manual data aggregation and toward AI-driven workflows to eliminate non-viable sites in minutes.
Jan 16, 2026
Building Material Price Growth Remains Elevated Despite a Sluggish MarketResidential building material price growth continued to climb toward the end of 2025, even as the new home construction market showed signs of slowing.
Latest Economic News
Jan 20, 2026
New Single-Family Home Size Trends: Third Quarter 2025New single-family home size has been generally falling since 2015 as a response to declining affordability conditions. An exception occurred when new home size increased in 2021 as interest rates reached historic lows. However, as interest rates increased in 2022 and 2023, and housing affordability worsened, the demand for home size has trended lower.
Jan 20, 2026
Third Quarter 2025 Multifamily Construction DataAccording to NAHB analysis of quarterly Census data, the count of multifamily, for-rent housing starts increased during the third quarter of 2025. For the quarter, 119,000 multifamily residences started construction. Of this total, 114,000 were built-for-rent.
Jan 19, 2026
Soft Conditions for Single-Family Built-for-RentSingle-family built-for-rent construction fell back in the third quarter of 2025, as a higher cost of financing and increased multifamily supply crowded out development.