U.S. home construction surged in August to the fastest pace since mid-2007 on more apartment projects and single-family houses, a welcome sign for the housing sector that has struggled to gain momentum.

Residential starts climbed 12.3% to a 1.36 million annualized rate after an upwardly revised 1.22 million pace in the prior month, according to government figures released Wednesday that topped all estimates in Bloomberg’s survey. Permits, a proxy for future construction, also increased to a 12-year high.

South-East Asia’s largest 3D-printer for construction is declared operational in Singapore by the Housing and Development Board (HDB) in Singapore at the PEAK Forum on 11 September 2019.

This 3D concrete printer is capable of printing concrete components up to 9 m long, 3.5 m wide and 3.8 m tall. The 3D-printer is developed and operated for HDB by Witteveen+Bos South-East Asia Pte. Ltd. and the overall project is a joint effort of Robin Village Development Pte. Ltd., Nanyang Technological University and Witteveen+Bos.

The Woolworth Building, an iconic tower that was the world’s tallest in 1913, has been transformed into a mixed-use skyscraper—though it still has its Cass Gilbert-designed neo-Gothic facade, soaring arches and gargoyles.

Thanks to solid strength in the regional market, the 70 firms participating in this year’s ENR MidAtlantic Top Contractor survey posted a combined $27.7 billion in revenue from work performed and billed in 2018. That represents a 6% gain over the amount reported by a slightly different lineup of 70 firms in last year’s ranking from projects in Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia.

Heating in EU households accounts for 79% of the total energy consumption. In cold climate areas, like Finland, the percentage is even higher. Enermix set out to test how room-level control in district-heated apartment houses would affect the comfort of living and energy consumption.

“Our mission is to digitalize Finnish buildings, especially the existing ones,” says Janne Heinonen, the CEO of Enermix, a Finnish tech company. “We focus on existing buildings because the owners are still reluctant to invest in smart building solutions during construction because of the additional costs they entail. Another reason is that there’s not fierce competition in making old buildings smart.”

Sentiment among U.S. homebuilders crept higher in July after falling the previous month, indicating lower mortgage rates are helping shore up demand.

The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index rose one point to 65 this month, according to a report Tuesday. Economists in a Bloomberg survey projected the gauge would hold at 64.

The U.S. housing shortage has the attention of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.

Homebuilders are being held back by a “series of factors,” including higher materials costs, a skilled-labor shortage and President Donald Trump’s immigration and tariffs policies, Powell said during a Senate Banking Committee hearing Thursday.

Lennar Corp., the first big U.S. homebuilder out of the gate this earnings cycle, reported quarterly orders that beat expectations. a sign that low mortgage rates are fueling demand. The shares rose.

In the three months through May, home-purchase contracts rose 1% from a year earlier to 14,518 homes, the Miami-based company said in a statement Tuesday.

U.S. new-home construction fell in May after an April reading that was stronger than initially reported, signaling stabilization in the market amid lower borrowing costs.

Residential starts dropped 0.9% to a 1.27 million annualized rate after a revised 1.28 million pace in the prior month, according to government figures released Tuesday that compared with a 1.24 million estimate in Bloomberg’s survey. Permits, a proxy for future construction, increased 0.3% to a 1.29 million rate that was about in line with estimates.

For years, Samsung has pitched customers internet-connected TVs, refrigerators, and other cornerstones of the home re-imagined for the data-overload era. Now the South Korean engineering-to-gadgets conglomerate is trying to go a step further: making the home itself.

Inside an airy, lavish model house in Seoul, Samsung’s virtual assistant, Bixby, can show visitors what’s inside the kitchen fridge while Amazon’s Alexa assistant controls the living-room lighting and A/C, and a speaker developed by Naver Corp. recommends music and TV shows. Samsung software overlays the in-house and competing products to create a unified control system, and so the company might someday be able to analyze the data created to refine its so-called internet of things.

It took less than a month to sell half the units in a Sao Paulo luxury apartment building earlier this year, even though construction won’t be complete until 2022. And one brokerage that specializes in high-end real estate saw its revenue double in the first four months of this year.

The luxury residential-property market in Brazil’s biggest city is booming with demand from rich Brazilians, fed up with the toll record low interest rates are taking on their portfolios. Gone are the days of double-digit returns on simple treasury securities, so many of the rich are trying to capitalize on soaring prices in the high-end real estate market.