13 to Watch in ’13: Rick Judson, president of the National Association of Home Builders

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(Part seven in a 13-part series)

Editor’s note: For many, 13 is a dreaded number, a cursed pair of digits to be avoided at all costs. But ’13 might be a year of luck and plenty for some Charlotte-area developers and real estate and construction companies.

The Mecklenburg Times, in a 13-part series, will focus on the people, companies and things worth paying attention to in 2013. There’s no science behind our list; simply, our reporting and research have us thinking that these 13 will be among the busiest and biggest newsmakers of the year. Who knows? We could be wrong.

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The homebuilding industry will be watching Rick Judson this year because Judson will spend the year watching over the homebuilding industry.

Judson, 63, is the 2013 president of the National Home Builders Association, a nonprofit lobbying and advocacy organization with a $70 million annual budget and 150,000 members from throughout the residential construction and related industries.

He’s the first NAHB president to come from the Charlotte area – and the significance of that fact cannot be overstated. The membership of the national organization is made up of the state homebuilders associations. And the state organizations represent the local ones, such as the Home Builders Association of Charlotte.

So there’s a pecking order – and a trickle-down effect.

But now Charlotte has a man at the very top.

That’s more important than ever now that the housing market continues to show more signs of life after the 2006 bust — “it’s up off its back and up on its knees,” Judson said — and there are issues aplenty to advocate and lobby for.

One of his biggest challenges, Judson said, will be trying to loosen “draconian rules” created by the federal government designed to protect consumers that have had the side-effect of discouraging banks from loaning much needed cash to homebuilders.

Judson appears to be just the man for the job.

As the NAHB’s first vice chairman in 2012, Judson climbed Capitol Hill in July to testify before the House Financial Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Financial Institution and Consumer Credit at a hearing on “The Impact of Dodd-Frank’s Home Mortgage Reforms: Consumer and Market Perspective.”

As if that mouthful is not enough, all 12 pages of Judson’s testimony are available for consumption online.

Other issues on Judson’s agenda this year include hastening building inspections, reforming the appraisal process, modernizing the NAHB’s homebuilder-education programs and improving the public image of the homebuilding industry.

All of the above means that Judson is spending about half his time this year in Washington. As for the other half, he’s still got his own business in Charlotte to run, the Evergreen Group.

After having built just about every kind of structure in his 35-year construction career – high-end and affordable single-family homes, multifamily complexes and commercial projects – Judson now concentrates on the “horizontal” end of his business: land development.

But he’s got one last building project he’s passionate about that he hopes to complete in 2013: the $24 million Williamsburg on Commonwealth condominium project, a major renovation of 174 1960s-era apartments that has helped revitalize a good-size slice of the Commonwealth-Briar Creek area of Charlotte.

It has taken eight years, what with the economy being what it’s been, but the final phase should be completed in a few months, and the last of the affordable, 1,000-square-foot, $130,000 units sold or put under a lease-purchase agreement.

Finally, 2013 will be the year Judson finds a new golf partner. His old putting buddy pulled up stakes earlier this year and took a job in Raleigh. The guy’s name is Pat McCrory.

So not only do Charlotte-area homebuilders have a man in Washington, they have a man who’s a friend of the man in the North Carolina Executive Mansion.