Six ways to make hay: options are plenty when rates are low and sun is shining. (Outfront).

Make hay when the sun is shining. That's how builders are responding to strong demand and low mortgage rates. The question is how best to do it.

1. Raise prices (carefully). Many builders who sell entry-level and midlevel product have slowly bumped up prices in response to demand. But perhaps recalling how price increases of the late 1980s came back to haunt the industry in the early '90s by exacerbating a recession, no one is going wild.

Steve Wilcox, president of Parkwood Homes in Gaithersburg, Md., says he has increased some price points but only as means