About Us

The NationalsSM

National Sales and Marketing Awards


Now in its 28th year, The NationalsSM pays tribute to superior new-home sales and marketing achievements by individual sales and marketing professionals, homebuilders and associates, and sales and marketing councils.

The nation’s largest competition for new-home sales and marketing professionals and communities, The NationalsSM showcases winners in distinguished national, regional, and local publications.

The competition is presented by the National Sales and Marketing Council (NSMC), a council of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), along with co-sponsors Whirlpool Appliances, Gladiator Garage Works, and KitchenAid. Preferred sponsors include major building product manufacturers, financial institutions, homebuilders and developers, architects, and associates in real estate.

The NationalsSM Awards ceremony is one of the highlights for the NAHB’s annual International Builders’ Show (IBS), an exposition and conference that routinely attracts more than 90,000 building industry professionals. The NationalsSM gala celebration draws more than 1,000 attendees who gather for a black-tie, multimedia gala at IBS. With its striking, Academy Award-style statuettes for Gold winners, handsome plaques for both Silver and Regional winners, and feature displays of all finalists are among the highlights.

Selected winners are also spotlighted by over 26 publishers of Housing Guides of America as part of ongoing features on industry pacesetters, as well as quality coverage in a broad range of local, regional, and national publications covering the housing industry.

Legacy of Distinction
Today’s competition reflects years of improvements and refinements affected by the NSMC and The NationalsSM advisory group to ensure categories are up to date and relevant to all regions in the United States. Originating in 1982 as the MIRM Awards, the program now known as The NationalsSM sustains the commitment to innovation, imagination, and marketing flair that has always characterized the competition’s winners since the inception of the competition. Inaugurated by NAHB’s Institute of Residential Marketing (IRM), the MIRM Awards established superlative standards of performance that The NationalsSM proudly upholds today.

Earned Stature
The largest competition in the nation for new-home sales and marketing professionals and communities, The NationalsSM is also the most prestigious, in part because it is national in scope, and categories are effectively linked to real-world marketing strategies and challenges. Award categories are regularly refined with new opportunities made available in response to feedback from the Sales and Marketing Councils (SMCs) across the country. After careful consideration, new and refined categories join those with proven relevance.

Category types include:
• Architectural achievement
• Project graphics
• Advertising
• Websites (introduced in 1998)
• Special promotions
• Sales office
• Signage
• Interior merchandising
• Model complex landscape design.

The NationalsSM also recognizes Community of the Year achievements, with winners selected from affordable, attached, and detached project categories. Individual sales and marketing pros are eligible in five special achievement categories, as are Sales and Marketing Councils throughout the country.

In conjunction with The NationalsSM, Legends of Residential Marketing are honored for significant contributions to the industry over time. The select group honored as Legends demonstrate exceptional creativity and innovation in new-home marketing, and are rightly celebrated at The NationalsSM awards ceremony.

Renowned for Integrity
Winners of The NationalsSM emerge from a painstaking three-day judging process that includes evaluation by some of the industry’s finest marketing professionals, representing a wide range of disciplines and a geographic cross section. Architects and builders join marketing colleagues in the judging panels along with market-research consultants, trade publishers, and senior editors. All are committed to fair and full attention to each entrant.

For more information on The NationalsSM, please call (800) 658-2751, (909) 987-2758, or fax (909) 987-1335. You may also address inquiries to The NationalsSM, 7958 Rosebud, Alta Loma, CA 91701 or send e-mail to lparrish@thenationals.com.