In July of 2009, Bill Lurz joined AVID Ratings as the senior editor of AVIDBuilder.com, an industry-leading knowledge base serving homebuilders throughout North America. Bringing extensive industry experience after many years with Professional Builder magazine, Lurz will write articles for AVIDBuilder.com, identify leading builders in the industry, share best practices, and uncover trends that impact the U.S. and Canadian home building industries.

AVIDBuilder.com is still being developed, but upon its release it will include articles written by Lurz, AVID Ratings CEO Paul Cardis, Executive Sales Advisor Rick Heaston, Senior Client Service Manager Brian Nelson, as well as other contributions from the AVID team. 

Recognized as one of the leading authorities on the American home building industry, Lurz recently completed his 25th year as a senior editor of Professional Builder magazine. In 2004, he added his reporting skills to Housing Giants, an electronic magazine that covered the activities of the largest production home builders in America.

During his Professional Builder career, Lurz covered home builder business management topics ranging from strategic planning and business start-up to market research, sales management, quality control, training and education and customer satisfaction. He wrote more PB cover features than anyone in the 70+ year history of that publication. Lurz was a major contributor to PB’s development of the National Housing Quality Award, in partnership with the National Research Center of National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). He also developed PB’s renowned fall management seminar, BENCHMARK.

Before PB, Lurz spent eight years with Canadian Building magazine in Toronto, the last three as editor-in-chief from 1980 to 1983.

Over the course of his 33 year career as a professional journalist covering the residential development industry across North America, Lurz garnered 25 awards for editorial excellence, including the 2000 Gold Award from the American Society of Business Press Editors, the 1992 Janus Award from the Mortgage Bankers Association of America, and the 1985 Golden Hammer Award from NAHB.

Lurz is a 1970 graduate of Saint Cloud State University in Minnesota, with a B.A. in economics and political science.

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