Not a lot of real estate agents post links to articles talking about price declines, but the corollary link is that mortgage applications continuing rising. So we continue the same stories we've been tracking--prices remain under pressure, BUT we still have people taking advantage of buying opportunities and very low mortgage rates. I would say the lesson is to keep it all in perspective, not dwell on the solely negative news stories, nor to get too excited about the positive items. Remember the mantra--if the house works for you, and your mortgage payment is affordable, and you wouldn't need to sell it next year, you don't need to be afraid of buying.
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Home Values See Biggest Drop Since 2008
Published: Monday, 9 May 2011 | 8:36 AM ET
By: Reuters
U.S. home values fell in the first quarter at the fastest rate since late 2008, real estate data firm Zillow said on Monday, suggesting that a bottom will not be seen until 2012 at the earliest.
Zillow said its home value index fell 3 percent in the first three months of the year from the previous quarter, and was down 8.2 percent year-over-year.
The number of homeowners under water—or, those who owe more on the mortgage than their house is currently worth—amounted to 28.4 percent of single-family homeowners, representing a peak since Zillow began calculating the data in 2009.
That was up from 27 percent in the fourth quarter of last year.
Foreclosures also rose, following the moratoriums that had been in place in late 2010. In March, one out of every 1,000 homes was in foreclosure.
Given all those factors, it is unlikely home values will reach a bottom this year, Zillow said, and the firm pushed its forecast out to 2012.
"Home value declines are currently equal to those we experienced during the darkest days of the housing recession. With accelerating declines during the first quarter, it is unreasonable to expect home values to return to stability by the end of 2011," Zillow chief economist Stan Humphries said in a statement.
Almost all of the 132 markets covered by Zillow saw home value declines. Only Fort Myers in Florida, Champaign-Urbana in Illinois, and Honolulu, Hawaii, managed quarterly increases.
Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters
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Mortgage Applications Rose Last Week
Published: Wednesday, 4 May 2011 | 8:48 AM ET
By: Reuters
Applications for U.S. home mortgages rose last week, helped by refinancing demand as interest rates fell for the third week in a row, an industry group said on Wednesday.
The Mortgage Bankers Association said its seasonally adjusted index of mortgage application activity, which includes both refinancing and home purchase demand, rose 4 percent in the week ended April 29.
The MBA's seasonally adjusted index of refinancing applications climbed 6 percent, while the gauge of loan requests for home purchases added 0.3 percent.
The refinance share of mortgage activity rose to 62.7 percent of total applications from 61.6 percent the week before, the highest level of the month, MBA said.
Fixed 30-year mortgage rates averaged 4.76 percent in the week, down from 4.80 percent the week before.
Showing posts with label Trends. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Trends. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Housing Bubbles Are Few and Far Between
Robert Shiller is the co-creator of the Case-Shiller Index which tracks all sorts of real estate data. They predicted sharp declines in the housing market a few years before the actual declines came, which I guess gives them points for being right and demerits for being two years too soon. This is a look at the history of real estate bubbles to see if there is any precedent for how this one will play out.
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By ROBERT J. SHILLER
Published: February 5, 2011
WHAT’S the outlook for home prices over the next decade? It’s not easy to tell. We need to confront the basic fact that near the beginning of the 21st century, the market for homes in much of the world suddenly became more speculative than ever.
This enormous housing bubble and burst isn’t comparable to any national or international housing cycle in history. Previous bubbles have been smaller and more regional.
We have to look further afield for parallels. The most useful may be the long trail of booms and crashes in the price of land, particularly of farms, forests and village lots. Those upheavals may give some insights into the present situation, and some guidance for the next decade.
In the 19th century and most of the 20th, speculation in land was a powerful phenomenon. There was little speculative activity around homes, however, which were usually viewed as rapidly depreciating assets whose value was to be found almost entirely in physical buildings, not the land beneath them. Eventually, the buildings were expected to be torn down and replaced, so there was little bubble psychology for housing on any large scale. People generally didn’t think about housing as an investment.
But they knew that land was fixed in quantity and would last forever, and many believed that as the economy grew and more people were born, there would be ever-increasing demand. The speculative imagination could be easily fired by reflecting on the huge population that would consume the food from this land or settle on it in future years.
There have been many highly localized land price bubbles in the United States over the last couple of centuries, although bubbles over large areas have been rather rare. Those with the biggest national impact were in the 19th century, when speculators found opportunities that had been created by government land sales and by shifts in land prices set off by construction of canals and railroads. Stories of fortunes in land speculation captured the imagination, and led to bubbles. (That is typically how bubbles form, by titillating the public imagination.)
Two such land bubbles stand out. The first, in the 1830s, was associated with federal distributions to state banks and the loss of fiscal restraint that had been imposed by the short-lived Second Bank of the United States. People began to think farm prices could never fall. As an article in a publication called The Cultivator said in 1836: “Who ever heard of a man buying and selling a farm at the same or a lessened price? It is so well understood that the seller is to have more than he gave, that it has almost become a settled principle in the purchase of real estate.”
The bubble burst with the Panic of 1837, and was followed by the first great depression in United States history, from 1837 to 1843.
A second bubble, in the 1850s, was encouraged by an 1852 act of Congress making land warrants tradable. It burst with the Panic of 1857. Some historians — notably James L. Huston of Oklahoma State University — say they think that the resulting tensions escalated sectional animosities and helped precipitate the Civil War, which ended the depression.
The entire 20th century appears to have had only one farmland bubble of national significance — it occurred in the 1970s. Its causes were complex, but it seems to have been accompanied by a newly common belief that the human population would soon become excessive. A widely cited Club of Rome report in 1972 predicted famines induced by overpopulation. In any case, that bubble burst after the Federal Reserve clamped down on credit in the United States, effectively producing the recessions of the early 1980s.
So land manias have been rather infrequent, many decades apart. They suggest that the recent housing bubble is a similarly rare event, not to be repeated for many decades.
But, of course, the relevance of this long history isn’t entirely clear. In contrast to the 19th century, when the business cycle proceeded without much constraint, we now have the Fed and an active government housing stabilization policy, both of which mitigate the cycle’s more extreme effects. And now, the Dodd-Frank law has created a Financial Stability Oversight Council, which is supposed to go even further to prevent instability.
Ultimately, bubbles are impossible without extreme public enthusiasm. Opinions about housing seem to change in rather trendy ways, but investor enthusiasm for housing has now been down for more than five years — a decline that started well before the collapse of the housing bubble in 2007.
With Karl Case of Wellesley College, who developed the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices with me, I have been surveying opinions of home buyers in the United States on and off since 1988. We have found a fairly steady downtrend since the early-to-mid-2000s in a number of speculative attitudes. On questionnaires, people are less likely to report that they think of housing as an investment, or to express the view that real estate is the “best investment.”
As an investment, in fact, they are more likely to see housing as risky. Although they still have solid expectations of home price increases over the next 10 years — a median of 5 percent annually, in nominal terms — those expectations have been declining and are not nearly as extravagant as they were before the market peak.
IT will take a while for the housing market to recover fully. Still, many people continue to think of housing as an investment, and so it does seem that we are in danger of encountering another whopper bubble someday. Even so, both the history of land bubbles and the slowness of shifts in public opinion suggest that such bubbles will be fairly rare.
Add the new policy restraints, and a new national housing bubble looks even less likely anytime soon.
Robert J. Shiller is professor of economics and finance at Yale and co-founder and chief economist of MacroMarkets LLC.
View original article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/business/06view.html?_r=1
----
By ROBERT J. SHILLER
Published: February 5, 2011
WHAT’S the outlook for home prices over the next decade? It’s not easy to tell. We need to confront the basic fact that near the beginning of the 21st century, the market for homes in much of the world suddenly became more speculative than ever.
This enormous housing bubble and burst isn’t comparable to any national or international housing cycle in history. Previous bubbles have been smaller and more regional.
We have to look further afield for parallels. The most useful may be the long trail of booms and crashes in the price of land, particularly of farms, forests and village lots. Those upheavals may give some insights into the present situation, and some guidance for the next decade.
In the 19th century and most of the 20th, speculation in land was a powerful phenomenon. There was little speculative activity around homes, however, which were usually viewed as rapidly depreciating assets whose value was to be found almost entirely in physical buildings, not the land beneath them. Eventually, the buildings were expected to be torn down and replaced, so there was little bubble psychology for housing on any large scale. People generally didn’t think about housing as an investment.
But they knew that land was fixed in quantity and would last forever, and many believed that as the economy grew and more people were born, there would be ever-increasing demand. The speculative imagination could be easily fired by reflecting on the huge population that would consume the food from this land or settle on it in future years.
There have been many highly localized land price bubbles in the United States over the last couple of centuries, although bubbles over large areas have been rather rare. Those with the biggest national impact were in the 19th century, when speculators found opportunities that had been created by government land sales and by shifts in land prices set off by construction of canals and railroads. Stories of fortunes in land speculation captured the imagination, and led to bubbles. (That is typically how bubbles form, by titillating the public imagination.)
Two such land bubbles stand out. The first, in the 1830s, was associated with federal distributions to state banks and the loss of fiscal restraint that had been imposed by the short-lived Second Bank of the United States. People began to think farm prices could never fall. As an article in a publication called The Cultivator said in 1836: “Who ever heard of a man buying and selling a farm at the same or a lessened price? It is so well understood that the seller is to have more than he gave, that it has almost become a settled principle in the purchase of real estate.”
The bubble burst with the Panic of 1837, and was followed by the first great depression in United States history, from 1837 to 1843.
A second bubble, in the 1850s, was encouraged by an 1852 act of Congress making land warrants tradable. It burst with the Panic of 1857. Some historians — notably James L. Huston of Oklahoma State University — say they think that the resulting tensions escalated sectional animosities and helped precipitate the Civil War, which ended the depression.
The entire 20th century appears to have had only one farmland bubble of national significance — it occurred in the 1970s. Its causes were complex, but it seems to have been accompanied by a newly common belief that the human population would soon become excessive. A widely cited Club of Rome report in 1972 predicted famines induced by overpopulation. In any case, that bubble burst after the Federal Reserve clamped down on credit in the United States, effectively producing the recessions of the early 1980s.
So land manias have been rather infrequent, many decades apart. They suggest that the recent housing bubble is a similarly rare event, not to be repeated for many decades.
But, of course, the relevance of this long history isn’t entirely clear. In contrast to the 19th century, when the business cycle proceeded without much constraint, we now have the Fed and an active government housing stabilization policy, both of which mitigate the cycle’s more extreme effects. And now, the Dodd-Frank law has created a Financial Stability Oversight Council, which is supposed to go even further to prevent instability.
Ultimately, bubbles are impossible without extreme public enthusiasm. Opinions about housing seem to change in rather trendy ways, but investor enthusiasm for housing has now been down for more than five years — a decline that started well before the collapse of the housing bubble in 2007.
With Karl Case of Wellesley College, who developed the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices with me, I have been surveying opinions of home buyers in the United States on and off since 1988. We have found a fairly steady downtrend since the early-to-mid-2000s in a number of speculative attitudes. On questionnaires, people are less likely to report that they think of housing as an investment, or to express the view that real estate is the “best investment.”
As an investment, in fact, they are more likely to see housing as risky. Although they still have solid expectations of home price increases over the next 10 years — a median of 5 percent annually, in nominal terms — those expectations have been declining and are not nearly as extravagant as they were before the market peak.
IT will take a while for the housing market to recover fully. Still, many people continue to think of housing as an investment, and so it does seem that we are in danger of encountering another whopper bubble someday. Even so, both the history of land bubbles and the slowness of shifts in public opinion suggest that such bubbles will be fairly rare.
Add the new policy restraints, and a new national housing bubble looks even less likely anytime soon.
Robert J. Shiller is professor of economics and finance at Yale and co-founder and chief economist of MacroMarkets LLC.
View original article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/business/06view.html?_r=1
Friday, February 4, 2011
10 Bedside Tables That Aren't: Repurposed Bedside Storage
Keeping in mind that the following comes from the Apartment Therapy website which is geared toward small space design, while some of these are very cool looking you kind of wonder about their functionality. And my mother would die at the sight of the first one which pretty much looks like a trash can next to the bed. Thoughts?
View the article: http://www.re-nest.com/re-nest/bedroom/10-bedside-tables-that-arent-repurposed-bedside-storage-138033
Thursday, February 3, 2011
13 Relaxing Spa Bath Retreats
By: Tabitha Sukhai, This Old House online
The key to the feng shui of this clutter-free space? Smart storage. Clever places to stow towels and toiletries—including the two large hidden drawers on either side of the sink—means the sleek vanity can remain free and clear. This masculine design, complete with bold walls and angular details, shows that relaxing spa baths aren't just for the ladies.
Continue reading at: http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/photos/0,,20435093,00.html?xid=kbnewsletter-110203-spa-baths
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
The Love Affair With the Fireplace Cools
By CHRISTINA S. N. LEWISPublished: January 19, 2011
WINSOME BROWN, an actress and writer, and her husband, Claude Arpels, own an enviable apartment in TriBeCa worthy of a spread in an interior design magazine. The apartment — which is, in fact, being considered for an issue of Elle Décor — has maple floors, casement windows and all the character one would expect to find in a building that was once a factory.
But one of the features that many people in the city would pay a premium for is something the owners don’t like: the fireplace.
“A wood-burning fire in the city is a ridiculous luxury — we would never have put it in ourselves,” said Mr. Arpels, grandson of one of the founders of Van Cleef & Arpels and the former managing partner of Netto Collection, a baby furniture company bought by Maclaren. “In the city, it doesn’t make sense to burn fires, because it’s inefficient and it’s polluting.”
Hard as it may be to believe, the fireplace — long considered a trophy, particularly in a city like New York — is acquiring a social stigma. Among those who aspire to be environmentally responsible, it is joining the ranks of bottled water and big houses.
“The smoke from a fire smells very nice,” said Diane Bailey, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco. “But it can cause a lot of harm.” The tiny particles, she said, “can cause inflammation and illness, and can cross into the bloodstream, triggering heart attacks” as well as worsening other conditions.
Or as Starre Vartan, a 33-year-old blogger who goes by the name Eco-Chick, put it: “Any time you are burning wood or cow dung, you’ll be creating pollution. It’s like junk food: if you do it once a month, then who cares? But if it’s something you do every day, it’s important that you mitigate it somehow. It’s a hazard.”
Not surprisingly, the green community has been sounding the alarm for some time. For the last several years, TheDailyGreen.com, an online magazine, has advocated replacing all wood-burning fireplaces with electric ones; an article published in September by Shireen Qudosi, entitled “Breathe Easier With a Cleaner Fireplace,” argued that there is no such thing as an environmentally responsible fire: “Switching out one type of wood for another is still use of a natural resource that otherwise could have been spared,” Ms. Qudosi wrote. And last fall, an article on the Web site GreenBlizzard.com, “Cozy Winter Fires — Carbon Impact,” called wood-burning fires “a direct pollutant to you, your family and your community.”
Organizations like the American Lung Association are issuing warnings as well: the group recommends that consumers avoid wood fires altogether, citing research that names wood stoves and fireplaces as major contributors to particulate-matter air pollution in much of the United States.
Wood smoke contains some of the same particulates as cigarette smoke, said Dr. Norman H. Edelman, the chief medical officer for the American Lung Association, as well as known carcinogens like aldehydes; it has also been linked to respiratory problems in young children.
“We now know from lots of studies that wood smoke is very, very irritating,” Dr. Edelman said. “It contains a lot of irritating gases and it also contains damaging particulate matter. It’s probably not good for anybody, and it’s especially bad for anybody who has a chronic respiratory problem.” So the association strongly advises people not to use the traditional fireplace, he said.
Certainly, there are many who consider this eco-overkill. In Greek mythology, fire is a gift from the divine, stolen from Zeus by Prometheus and handed over to shivering humanity. What could be more natural than sitting around a crackling fire on a winter night, at a campsite in the Berkshires or in a Brooklyn brownstone?
But growing concerns about the air pollution and health problems caused by smoke from wood fires are prompting a number of areas across the country to pass laws regulating them.
“A lot of municipalities are taking action,” said Ms. Bailey, adding that the weather-based measures called burn bans are perhaps the most widespread restriction. When the weather is cold and the air is still, or pollution is high, the Bay Area in California, Puget Sound, Wash., Denver and Albuquerque are among the places with restrictions on residential wood-burning. These measures can be mandatory or voluntary, and can become more restrictive as air quality declines. So far, most of the wood-burning regulations tend to be out West. A few examples: Idaho offers tax incentives to people who replace uncertified wood stoves with “greener” ones; San Joaquin County in California forbids selling a home unless its wood stove is replaced with an E.P.A.-certified one; and Palo Alto and other municipalities in California prohibit wood-burning fireplaces or stoves in new construction.
Perhaps not coincidentally, sales of wood-burning appliances dropped to 235,000 in 2009 from 800,000 in 1999, according to the Hearth, Patio and Barbecue Association. And the Brick Industry Association, which promotes brick construction, reports that roughly 35,000 masonry fireplaces were installed in the United States in 2009, compared to 80,000 in 2005. Certainly those numbers reflect the economic slowdown, but they may also be affected by growing ambivalence to wood fires.
n any case, most fireplaces are used far too infrequently to cause any real damage to the environment, said Stephen Sears, the vice president of marketing and member services for the Brick Industry Association, voicing an opinion shared by some. In the East, he wrote in an e-mail, air pollution is at its worst in the summer, and in the West the regulations are an overreaction: “Because it is not realistic to test each unique masonry fireplace in a laboratory” to evaluate its emissions, he noted, “it is easier for some municipalities to arbitrarily limit” the use of all wood-burning fireplaces.
Karen Soucy, an associate publisher at a nonprofit environmental magazine, isn’t swayed by that argument. She refuses to enter a home where wood has been burned, even infrequently.
Ms. Soucy, 46, blames fumes from a wood fire for sending her to the emergency room 25 years ago with a severe asthma attack. She had been staying at a friend’s house in Stowe, Vt., for about a day, she said, when her lungs seized up. She was taken to a hospital in an ambulance, and got two shots of adrenalin; the doctors blamed her friend’s cat.
“It was only later, working with a team of allergy doctors and pulmonologists, did we determine the culprit to be the wood-burning fumes from the various fireplaces,” Ms. Soucy said.
Now her husband scouts out any place they go in advance, to be sure it’s free of fireplaces, and she passes up countless dinners and parties. “I’m the one who feels guilty for always being the one to decline invitations or for making people go out of their way to clean their home,” she said. Even then, she added, “the smell lingers on everything.”
FOR those who still want to build a fire, there are several ways to make it more environmentally friendly, experts say, including using an energy-efficient wood or pellet stove certified by the Environmental Protection Agency or retrofitting a fireplace with an insert (a device, usually made of iron or steel, that fits into the mouth of a fireplace and enables it to heat more efficiently).
Ms. Brown’s and Mr. Arpels’s solution was to install an energy-efficient wood stove in one of the three fireplaces at their farm in Chatham, N.Y. The surrounding countryside is filled with downed trees that would decompose anyway, said Ms. Brown, 38. And Mr. Arpels, 41, gets some exercise from splitting the logs.
“Basically we’re not transporting things using oil from across the world to our house,” she added. “We think this is pretty good, environmentally.”
Wickham Boyle, 60, a writer and consultant for nonprofit arts organizations, installed a soapstone stove in her Hudson Valley house after a saleswoman explained that it had a catalytic combustor that converts smoke into water and carbon dioxide. Guests sometimes ask her if she feels guilty about burning wood, she said, but she recites a laundry list of the stove’s high-efficiency features, explaining to them that the environmental impact is negligible due to the combustor, and that she mainly uses fallen wood cleared from her land or other properties nearby.
Not everyone can afford such a stove, which can cost upward of $2,000, including installation (Ms. Boyle paid $3,000 for hers).
Converting a wood-burning fireplace to gas can be just as expensive, and while electric fireboxes are cheaper — just a few hundred dollars — most consider them a poor substitute for a real fire, since there is no flame. So some people are simply using their fireplaces less often, or not at all.
Sally Treadwell, a 51-year-old public relations executive in Boone, N.C., said nothing makes her happier than building a fire on a cold winter night. But most of the time she doesn’t, she said, because she feels too guilty about the damage it may do to the environment.
“We’re in the Appalachian Mountains, and I know what pollution does to us all,” Ms. Treadwell said. “I very definitely limit fires. I’d have one every single winter night if I didn’t have some guilt.”
When she does build a fire, she should use only seasoned dry wood, according to the E.P.A. Web site, because it burns hotter and releases less smoke. And the firewood for sale at the corner deli — or even the wood supplied by a delivery service — might not be seasoned, even if it is advertised as such, said David R. Brown, a public health toxicologist in Connecticut. To ensure that the wood is dry, he added, it should be stored for at least six months before being burned.
There is also the fire-building technique to consider. Most people don’t realize that the fire should be kept hot (with high, visible flames) for the first 20 minutes, Mr. Brown said, so that the chimney will heat up and the smoke will disperse; otherwise, the smoke tends to drift into the house, causing an increased health hazard.
Even the greenest of the green, though, sometimes throw caution to the winds when it comes to wood fires. Sue Duncan, a 52-year-old landscaper in Austin, Tex., uses native drought-tolerant plants in her landscaping work and hasn’t thrown away an aluminum can since 1974, she said. She has installed a programmable thermostat and fluorescent lighting in her 1,600-square-foot house and has a rainwater collection system out back.
But somehow, she still hasn’t gotten around to retrofitting her fireplace. Every time she builds a fire, it causes “inner conflict,” she said. “It’s a guilty pleasure.”
View original article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/20/garden/20fire.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1
Sunday, January 16, 2011
America's most overvalued - and undervalued - cities
There are quite a few value indexes when it comes to ranking real estate in various cities. One constant always seems to be that Las Vegas is still overvalued.----
By Les Christie, staff writer
January 16, 2011: 7:24 AM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Can a housing market simultaneously be the most undervalued in the nation and one of the worst housing buys? It can if it's Las Vegas.
Sin City recently drew a rating of "Frankly Dangerous" -- the worst possible -- from Local Market Monitor, a North Carolina-based firm that provides investors with analysis on local conditions. The only other city to get that kind of thrashing was Orlando, Fla.
Nationally, the great majority of housing markets are now fairly valued, according to Local Market Monitor. Eight markets are overpriced, and 15 are underpriced. That contrasts with the boom years: In mid-2006, 37 of the biggest markets were overpriced, six under and 57 fairly valued.
Las Vegas received a paltry rating even though median home prices there are less $145,000, which is more than half of what they cost at the peak of the bubble and nearly 30% less than what Local Market Monitor calculates would be an "equilibrium price," or fair market value.
The equilibrium price is based on economic and population growth, construction costs, vacancies, household income and interest rates with an "X Factor" thrown in. That's a value company founder Ingo Winzer comes up with based on 20 years of market data.
Vegas home prices on the skids until 2032
The X Factor is a mathematical constant, unique for each metro area, that represents the premium or discount that buyers have paid for local homes in the past. It captures the tendency for buyers to pay more for homes in what they consider more desirable locations.
A city like San Diego, for example, with its enviable weather and ocean-side location, commands more of a buyer's premium than does, say, Buffalo, N.Y.
The factors that make Las Vegas's rating so negative mostly revolve around issues of employment, according to Carolyn Beggs, COO of Local Market Monitor. "Las Vegas has a high concentration of jobs in sectors such as manufacturing and construction, which are considered volatile," she said.
She contrasts that with the Stockton, Calif., housing market, where home prices are nearly 20% under the equilibrium price, but which the company rates as an average risk. "Stockton has a higher concentration of jobs in healthcare, education and government," Beggs said.
Both Las Vegas and Orlando have a glut of homes for sale, thanks to years of overbuilding during the housing bubble. They're also two of the hardest hit foreclosure cities and have suffered outsized price declines, with Vegas values down 52% from their peak and Orlando 39%.
Most crucially, the economies of both cities have a heavy reliance on development, which has taken a huge hit in both places.
The most overvalued area right now is the Long Island, N.Y., counties of Nassau and Suffolk, which are suburbs of New York City. The current average home value there of about $418,000 is 26% higher than the equilibrium value of $318,000.
Even so, Local Market Monitor still gives it a "Typical Risks/Rewards," rating, an average score. One particular positive factor there is a bright economic picture with unemployment at only 6.9% and some job growth expected this year.
Other overpriced markets include Los Angeles and Portland, Ore., both overvalued by 24%, and Santa Ana, Calif., 23%.
Akron, Ohio, is the second most undervalued market at -22% followed by Cleveland and Warren, Mich., at -21%. To top of page
View original article: http://money.cnn.com/2011/01/10/real_estate/overvalued_housing_markets/index.htm
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Savannah home sales jump in December
Some good news on the local front. Savannah has shown decreasing inventory for 9 straight months, which will help prices rebound. We’re also seeing out-of-state buyers, which has been an important part of our market in Historic Downtown Savannah.
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Realtors cautiously optimistic heading into New Year
Posted: January 12, 2011 - 3:18am | Updated: January 12, 2011 - 5:34pm
By Adam Van Brimmer
Finally, a glimmer of what a local housing recovery looks like.
December saw an unexpected uptick in home-buying activity, Savannah Multi-List Corporation statistics show. The 305 sales in the Savannah area, which includes Chatham, Bryan and Effingham counties, marked a six-month high.
Another 466 homes were under contract as of Tuesday, promising a rarity: A strong January.
The December sales numbers paralleled those of December 2009 when the extension and expansion of the federal homebuyer tax credit drove sales. That credit expired in April 2010.
"There are going to continue to be some problems, but you are starting to see the turn now," said Monica Spillane, president of the Savannah Area Board of Realtors. "I'm encouraged by that."
Even more encouraging than the sales and pending sales of single-family homes, townhouses and condos locally was the continued contraction of supply.
The inventory of homes for sale fell to pre-recession levels and is down 14 percent from mid-2010 levels. Pushing the inventory down was a drop in new listings, which fell for the ninth consecutive month.
Realtor optimism is tempered by concerns over what those in the industry call "shadow inventory." Shadow inventory includes homes owners who would like to sell but haven't listed, because of market conditions as well as those in foreclosure or that have been repossessed but not yet listed.
Market improvement could prompt would-be sellers to put a "for sale" sign in the yard. Foreclosures, meanwhile, have yet to abate in the Savannah area.
"Unfortunately, foreclosures are not over," Spillane said. "But in terms of shadow inventory, I don't think there are many of those out there, here, as in other parts of the country."
Active buyers
Credit the U.S. Army and real estate investors for driving December's sales volume.
More than 20 percent of the homes bought in the month were financed by Veteran's Administration loans. Another 23 percent were bought with cash, traditionally the purview of house-flippers and landlords.
The jump in military sales is not surprising considering the Army's Third Infantry Division, based out of Fort Stewart, returned from a year-long deployment to Afghanistan in late 2010.
Plus, those soldiers remain eligible for the federal homebuyer tax credit, worth $8,000 to first-time buyers and $6,500 to those who have owned another home within the last three years.
Given the military influence, December sales were predictably strong in West Chatham and Southside Savannah - areas in close proximity to Interstate 95 and the base. The Pooler/Berwick/U.S. 17 South neighborhoods saw their second best sales month of 2010.
Close to half - 42 percent - of the VA purchases were on new construction homes, good news for home builders.
As for investor activity, the end of the year typically sees an uptick in purchases because of tax reasons. Interestingly, investor activity in December was not as focused on distressed properties as in previous months.
Optimism on the islands
The coastal regions appeared to be building momentum going into the New Year.
The Islands/Beach area of multi-list statistics - Tybee, Wilmington, Whitemarsh, Talahi, Oatland and Dutch islands as well as Isle of Hope and Isle of Armstrong - saw the most sales since April at the highest average price since June.
Prices climbed despite close to 40 percent of those sales being on foreclosure and repossessed homes.
The activity on distressed properties bodes well for the spring, Realtors said, because it takes those homes out of the inventory and will firm up prices.
"The islands held their own, relatively, for most of (2010)," said Re/Max Savannah's Cheryl Klein. "Where sellers have been taking a beating is on price, and it's encouraging to them and for the market to see that pop up."
Skidaway Island real estate agents share that optimism. The island had 12 sales in December, the most since August.
But it's the renewed interest from out-of-town buyers, particularly retirees from the Northeast and New England, that has Realtors encouraged.
Bill Houghton, president of The Landings Company, credited a number of factors, such as impending bad weather in the Northeast, pent-up demand, the November election results, continued low interest rates and depressed values, for the uptick in activity.
"New England, New York, Washington, D.C., their prices and sales have increased," said Bob Diamond of Skidaway Island Properties. "Once they sell their house up there or even just get it under contract, they start to look down here. As activity increases up north, so will ours."
View original article: http://savannahnow.com/news/2011-01-12/local-home-sales-jump-december
--------
Realtors cautiously optimistic heading into New Year
Posted: January 12, 2011 - 3:18am | Updated: January 12, 2011 - 5:34pm
By Adam Van Brimmer
Finally, a glimmer of what a local housing recovery looks like.
December saw an unexpected uptick in home-buying activity, Savannah Multi-List Corporation statistics show. The 305 sales in the Savannah area, which includes Chatham, Bryan and Effingham counties, marked a six-month high.
Another 466 homes were under contract as of Tuesday, promising a rarity: A strong January.
The December sales numbers paralleled those of December 2009 when the extension and expansion of the federal homebuyer tax credit drove sales. That credit expired in April 2010.
"There are going to continue to be some problems, but you are starting to see the turn now," said Monica Spillane, president of the Savannah Area Board of Realtors. "I'm encouraged by that."
Even more encouraging than the sales and pending sales of single-family homes, townhouses and condos locally was the continued contraction of supply.
The inventory of homes for sale fell to pre-recession levels and is down 14 percent from mid-2010 levels. Pushing the inventory down was a drop in new listings, which fell for the ninth consecutive month.
Realtor optimism is tempered by concerns over what those in the industry call "shadow inventory." Shadow inventory includes homes owners who would like to sell but haven't listed, because of market conditions as well as those in foreclosure or that have been repossessed but not yet listed.
Market improvement could prompt would-be sellers to put a "for sale" sign in the yard. Foreclosures, meanwhile, have yet to abate in the Savannah area.
"Unfortunately, foreclosures are not over," Spillane said. "But in terms of shadow inventory, I don't think there are many of those out there, here, as in other parts of the country."
Active buyers
Credit the U.S. Army and real estate investors for driving December's sales volume.
More than 20 percent of the homes bought in the month were financed by Veteran's Administration loans. Another 23 percent were bought with cash, traditionally the purview of house-flippers and landlords.
The jump in military sales is not surprising considering the Army's Third Infantry Division, based out of Fort Stewart, returned from a year-long deployment to Afghanistan in late 2010.
Plus, those soldiers remain eligible for the federal homebuyer tax credit, worth $8,000 to first-time buyers and $6,500 to those who have owned another home within the last three years.
Given the military influence, December sales were predictably strong in West Chatham and Southside Savannah - areas in close proximity to Interstate 95 and the base. The Pooler/Berwick/U.S. 17 South neighborhoods saw their second best sales month of 2010.
Close to half - 42 percent - of the VA purchases were on new construction homes, good news for home builders.
As for investor activity, the end of the year typically sees an uptick in purchases because of tax reasons. Interestingly, investor activity in December was not as focused on distressed properties as in previous months.
Optimism on the islands
The coastal regions appeared to be building momentum going into the New Year.
The Islands/Beach area of multi-list statistics - Tybee, Wilmington, Whitemarsh, Talahi, Oatland and Dutch islands as well as Isle of Hope and Isle of Armstrong - saw the most sales since April at the highest average price since June.
Prices climbed despite close to 40 percent of those sales being on foreclosure and repossessed homes.
The activity on distressed properties bodes well for the spring, Realtors said, because it takes those homes out of the inventory and will firm up prices.
"The islands held their own, relatively, for most of (2010)," said Re/Max Savannah's Cheryl Klein. "Where sellers have been taking a beating is on price, and it's encouraging to them and for the market to see that pop up."
Skidaway Island real estate agents share that optimism. The island had 12 sales in December, the most since August.
But it's the renewed interest from out-of-town buyers, particularly retirees from the Northeast and New England, that has Realtors encouraged.
Bill Houghton, president of The Landings Company, credited a number of factors, such as impending bad weather in the Northeast, pent-up demand, the November election results, continued low interest rates and depressed values, for the uptick in activity.
"New England, New York, Washington, D.C., their prices and sales have increased," said Bob Diamond of Skidaway Island Properties. "Once they sell their house up there or even just get it under contract, they start to look down here. As activity increases up north, so will ours."
View original article: http://savannahnow.com/news/2011-01-12/local-home-sales-jump-december
Friday, December 31, 2010
Bathrooms: Pretty in Pink, Again
By KATE MURPHY
Published: December 29, 2010
WHEN Nancy Burns and her husband, Thomas, moved into a 1959 split-level house in Fairfax, Va., three years ago, they tore up the cheesy shag carpeting and renovated the dark-paneled rumpus room but spared the pink-tiled bathroom with a matching pink tub and toilet that their real estate agent had thought would be a deal-breaker.
“We had the opposite reaction,” said Ms. Burns, who is 37 and a computer technician. “When we saw the expanse of pink, we knew this house was it.”
Pink bathrooms were common in homes built in midcentury America. But by the 1970s they were considered as saccharine as a package of Sweet’N Low. The color scheme in bathrooms then shifted from carnation and Pepto-Bismol pink — not to mention robin’s egg blue and avocado green, also midcentury favorites — to more muted tones like almond and ecru until, more recently, plain old white predominated.
But within the last five years, pink has come back into vogue, with more people like Ms. Burns embracing their vintage pink bathrooms rather than taking a sledgehammer to them. Moreover, interior designers now advocate flattering rosy hues for new or renovated bathrooms. And manufacturers of bathroom tiles and fixtures have been introducing more pink options. Noticing the trend, the color authority Pantone this month decreed that hot pink will be the “it” color of 2011.
“Pink makes you happy,” said Ms. Burns, who plays up her pink bathroom with a pink-poodle shower curtain, ceramic pink poodle figurines, pink towels and even a vintage pink bathroom scale.
While pink bathrooms started appearing as early as the 1930s, many credit Mamie Eisenhower with popularizing them in the 1950s. She decorated the White House with so much pink when her husband took office in 1953 that the staff began referring to it as the “Pink Palace.”
Pastel pink or “Mamie pink” soon became the era’s iconic bathroom color. While it is difficult to find colorful plumbing fixtures today, back then manufacturers like American Standard, Crane and Kohler all carried pink toilets, tubs and sinks (albeit in slightly different hues).
“That color palette languished for years, and now I can’t keep pink toilets in stock,” said John Vienop, operations manager for DEA Bathroom Machineries, a seller of salvaged plumbing fixtures based in Murphys, Calif. “We’re shipping them all over the United States.”
It’s unclear what is driving the recent rethinking of pink, but one factor could be the high visibility of midcentury design due in part to the popularity of “Mad Men” (the Drapers’ downstairs powder room was pink) and Atomic Ranch, the retro architecture magazine.
And since pink bathrooms are associated with a time of prosperity, perhaps there is also an element of nostalgia for rosier times, said Pam Kueber, who started a blog, savethepinkbathrooms.com, in 2007. Of the more than 500 people who have left comments on her blog, many fondly remember a grandmother, great-grandmother or favorite aunt who had a pink bathroom.
“There’s a lot of sentiment tied up in pink bathrooms,” said Ms. Kueber, 51. She lives in a 1951 brick ranch-style house in Lenox, Mass., that would have a pink bathroom if only she had known where to get pink ceramic tiles when she renovated it in 2003. She went with the next closest color she could find — pale peach. “One of the reasons I started the blog was to help people share information on sources” for pink tiles and fixtures, she said.
But some people with vintage pink bathrooms have left them intact, not so much because they are nostalgic or are in love with the color but because it is too costly to redo them. “For a long time, I hated it and planned to gut it, but I was limited by my frugality,” said Michael Heaton, 34, a stockbroker, referring to the pink-tiled bathroom in his 1964 brick ranch-style house in Norman, Okla. “There wasn’t a thing wrong with it except the color.” After painting the walls a darker pink and painting the cabinetry black, however, his opinion changed. “Now it’s the best room in the house,” he said.
Ceramic tile work done before the 1970s was usually of very high quality, according to architects and architectural historians. The tiles themselves were often more substantial and less prone to crack and the so-called mud job, or the way tiles are set in place, was more careful and adhesive.
“The tiles back then were laid in real mortar, which is why so many of the pink and other wild-colored bathrooms survived,” said Jane Powell, a restoration consultant in Oakland, Calif., and the author of “Bungalow Bathrooms” (2001). “It’s extremely labor intensive and expensive to get rid of them.”
That’s not stopping Janice Friedman, 53, a legal administrator who lives in a 1954 brick ranch-style house in Wichita, Kan., from removing the tiles mortared into one of her bathrooms so she can replace them with pink ones. The original tiles were light green, she said, but were painted “a hideous off-white” by a previous owner. Although it will be arduous to remove them, she is determined: “I’ve ordered the pink tiles and told my husband we’re tearing out the old tile as soon as the Christmas tree comes down.”
While Ms. Friedman is aiming for a classic midcentury American look, high-end European designers of bathroom fixtures and tile have recently begun offering arty lines that are predominantly pink. Examples include a hot pink and white bathroom by the Swiss company Laufen and a stunning contemporary bathroom, by the Italian manufacturer Bisazza, that is lined from floor to ceiling with pink glass mosaic tiles.
“Bath design has been trending toward pink over the past two or so years,” said Scott Cook, manager of the Bisazza showroom in SoHo. “It’s very warm and makes your coloring look better in the reflected glow.”
The interior designer Brooke Giannetti, 45, and her architect husband, Steve, also 45, achieved that warmth with nothing more than a coat of paint. They painted the bathroom of their shingled beach cottage in Santa Monica, Calif., seashell pink a few months ago; for years it had been a spa-like all white. “You don’t want to be assaulted by that kind of starkness first thing in the morning or right before bed, which is when you spend the most time in the bathroom,” Ms. Giannetti said. “We’ve found the pink to be much more soothing and enveloping.”
And pink is complimentary, too. Tamelyn Feinstein, a 50-year-old photographer, painted the bathroom in her Nashville condominium bubble-gum pink in 2001. She was so happy with how she looked in there that she used the bathroom as the backdrop for a series of 365 self-portraits that she shot daily a few years ago.
“It’s very flattering,” she said. “It’s hard to be sad in a pink bathroom.”
Similarly, Sarah McColl, 28, a freelance writer, painted the nondescript bathroom of her Brooklyn walk-up a vibrant pink last year; she remembered reading in Vogue when she was a teenager that the color made you look better. She also decorated it with pinup-girl posters from the 1940s and 1950s, along with old album covers that have some pink.
“I think the article in Vogue said something like, ‘If you paint your bathroom pink, you’ll never regret it,’ ” she said. “And it’s true.”
View original article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/garden/30pink.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
Blogger Matthew Allan is a specialist in Savannah Real Estate, focusing on Savannah's downtown historic districts, including the Landmark Historic District, Victorian Historic District, Thomas Square Historic District, Starland Historic District, Baldwin Park, and Ardsley Park Historic District.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Best Bath Before and Afters 2010
The readers of This Old House have done it again. Follow the link below to check out the Best Bath Before and Afters of 2010.
http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/photos/0,,20393032,00.html?xid=kbnewsletter-101223-best-baths
Blogger Matthew Allan is a specialist in Savannah Real Estate, focusing on Savannah's downtown historic districts, including the Landmark Historic District, Victorian Historic District, Thomas Square Historic District, Starland Historic District, Baldwin Park, and Ardsley Park Historic District.
http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/photos/0,,20393032,00.html?xid=kbnewsletter-101223-best-baths
Blogger Matthew Allan is a specialist in Savannah Real Estate, focusing on Savannah's downtown historic districts, including the Landmark Historic District, Victorian Historic District, Thomas Square Historic District, Starland Historic District, Baldwin Park, and Ardsley Park Historic District.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Best New Home Products 2010: Kitchen & Bath
Click the link below to check out some of the best new home products for your kitchen and baths according to the Editors at This Old House Magazine.http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/photos/0,,20441317,00.html
Blogger Matthew Allan is a specialist in Savannah Real Estate, focusing on Savannah's downtown historic districts, including the Landmark Historic District, Victorian Historic District, Thomas Square Historic District, Starland Historic District, Baldwin Park, and Ardsley Park Historic District.
For Your Clients: 10 Ways to Make a Small Room Look Larger
RISMEDIA, Most people have one: that room in the house that they wish was
just a little larger. What many don't realize is that with a little work and
some TLC, they could have exactly what they're looking for.
Here, Lowe's offers 10 designer tricks to help you make any room look
larger:
1. For the illusion of a larger room, use a color scheme that is light
rather than bright or dark. Pastels, neutrals and white are all color
possibilities.
2. Use a monochromatic color scheme on the furniture, rugs and walls. Select
different shades and textures of your single color.
3. Lighting is a key element in opening up a space. Recessed spot lighting
is visually appealing and is perfect for a small space. A torchiere light is
great for bouncing light off of the ceiling and back down on the
room.Skylights and solar tubes are natural alternatives for adding light to
a room.
4. Limit the number of accessories to avoid the cluttered feeling.
5. The floor and the ceiling are the fifth and sixth walls of every room. A
light-colored flooring such as light oak or a light-colored carpet will make
the room appear brighter and more open. The same applies to the ceiling-use
a light color or white to "open up" the space above.
6. Increase the appearance of the size of the room by adding wall mirrors.
They not only reflect images, they reflect light and color. Be a little
daring! Use mirror tiles to mirror an entire wall. Your room will appear to
double in size.
7. Don't place too many pieces of furniture in a small space. A love seat
may work better than a full-size sofa depending on the size and shape of the
room. Add two medium-sized chairs or two small wood chairs. Place the chairs
closer to the wall and then pull them into the area when additional seating
is needed.
8. Add paintings or prints to the walls. One large painting works better
than a group of small paintings.
9. The visual balance of a room is also important. A large, brightly colored
element can overwhelm a room and decrease the appearance of space.
10. A glass table, whether it is a dining, coffee or end table, will keep
the appearance of an open and free space.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
A Living Roof: More Expensive but Worth the Cost
I don’t know if we have any green roofs in Savannah, but if there’s a roofing contractor in the area who is capable of installing one correctly, it’s certainly something I’d like to explore on a future project.----
By Kathleen Lynn
RISMEDIA, November 19, 2010—(MCT)—When Scott Harris and Sarah Jack did a major renovation of their 1925 Teaneck, N.J., colonial in the summer of 2009, they kept the environment in mind—for example, choosing kitchen counters made of cement and recycled glass.
They thought about solar roof panels, but rejected that idea when they were told that they'd have to chop down a towering tree that shades their back yard and house.
Instead, they installed a green, or living, roof. The greenery absorbs and filters rainwater, as well as adding insulation, which cuts heating and cooling costs.
For most homeowners, the biggest environmental impact of a roof is simply that it keeps the environment out. But there are innovations that aim to make the roof over your head an important tool in the effort to save energy and reverse global warming. And we're not just talking about solar panels.
There are cool roofs that reflect, instead of absorb, the sun's rays; roofs made with recycled material; and green or "living" roofs, like the one on the Harris-Jack house.
While the number of energy-saving options is growing fast, these roofs tend to be significantly more expensive than the traditional asphalt shingle roof. As a result, homeowners have been slow to adopt them.
But Harris, a graphic designer, and Jack, a publishing executive, made the leap—choosing a green roof, partly for energy savings, and partly for aesthetics.
"We wanted to do something to see if we could save on energy bills," said Harris. "But it's nice just to look out at it. Now when people come to visit, we have to bring them to the bathroom upstairs to look at the roof."
Their green installation, on a flat section of roof at the rear of their house, consists of shallow trays holding a light, rocky soil and a mix of sedums, a drought-resistant, low-maintenance plant.
The cost of green roofs ranges from $15 to $35 a square foot—significantly more than a simple asphalt roof. The roofs require a structure strong enough to hold the plants and soil, even when the soil is saturated after a rainstorm. And some homeowners worry that if such a roof develops a leak, it would be more difficult to fix—though using trays lessens that concern.
But green roofs tend to last much longer, because the vegetation protects the roof structure from drastic changes in temperature, according to Jennifer Souder, a research manager at the Center for Green Building at Rutgers University.
"They can be a hard sell, because this is money you have to pay now," she said. "But over the long period, they can be cost-effective."
Green roofs also can help the environment by reducing storm water runoff, which washes pollutants into the state's waterways. And they can dramatically reduce the so-called urban heat island effect—the tendency of built-up, paved areas to be hotter than rural, natural areas. Souder said a test on roofs in Queens found that on a hot day, the air above a black roof registered 170 degrees; above a white roof, 115 degrees; and above a green roof, 85 degrees.
Though green roofs are still unusual, the industry grew 16 percent in 2009, according to the organization Green Roofs for Healthy Cities. They've been used on a number of public buildings, including Chicago City Hall.
Environmental concerns also are giving a boost to metal roofs, which make up an estimated 11 percent of the residential re-roofing market, up from about 4 percent a decade ago, according to the Metal Roofing Alliance, a trade group.
Metal roofs cost two to three times what an asphalt shingle roof costs, according to the alliance. But the group points out that metal roofs are lighter than asphalt shingles, and last decades longer.
They typically include at least 28 percent recycled material, and can be recycled at the end of their useful lives. In addition, the roofs can be coated or painted to reflect sunlight, which reduces the home's air conditioning costs. Some are Energy Star-rated, which entitles homeowners to a federal tax credit of up to $1,500 (which expires at the end of the year).
Bob LeSauvage had a very simple reason for choosing a metal roof on his Mahwah, N.J., home: "I'll never have to think about doing a roof again—and the next guy (who owns the house) probably won't, either," he said.
The steel roof LeSauvage had installed on his 1930s-vintage home last summer has a 50-year warranty.
So far, he's very happy with it. There's a layer of insulation between the wood and the metal, which muffles the sound of rain — though he said the acorns falling from a nearby tree do seem to make more noise than they did on the old roof.
Metal is not the only material that is recycled for roofs; roofs can be made out of recycled rubber and plastic, including old tires, carpet and bottles, and made to look like slate or wood shakes.
Even asphalt shingles, the workhorse of the roofing world, are getting an energy-saving twist. Asphalt roofs are the lowest-cost option, typically running $80 to $100 per "square"—a roofing industry measure that's equal to 100 square feet. That comes to about $1,000 to $1,200 for a 1,200-square-foot roof on a Cape Cod (not including installation charges). Larger houses, of course, cost more.
Because the asphalt shingles are affordable, they cover eight of every 10 homes in the U.S., according to the Asphalt Roofing Manufacturers Association.
But there are some new developments here, too—notably energy-saving "cool" roofs, which incorporate reflective granules to reduce the heat that comes into the attic.
GAF Materials Corp. of Wayne, N.J., the nation's largest manufacturer of roofing materials, estimates that such roofs can cut homeowners' cooling costs by 7 to 15 percent.
By Kathleen Lynn
RISMEDIA, November 19, 2010—(MCT)—When Scott Harris and Sarah Jack did a major renovation of their 1925 Teaneck, N.J., colonial in the summer of 2009, they kept the environment in mind—for example, choosing kitchen counters made of cement and recycled glass.
They thought about solar roof panels, but rejected that idea when they were told that they'd have to chop down a towering tree that shades their back yard and house.
Instead, they installed a green, or living, roof. The greenery absorbs and filters rainwater, as well as adding insulation, which cuts heating and cooling costs.
For most homeowners, the biggest environmental impact of a roof is simply that it keeps the environment out. But there are innovations that aim to make the roof over your head an important tool in the effort to save energy and reverse global warming. And we're not just talking about solar panels.
There are cool roofs that reflect, instead of absorb, the sun's rays; roofs made with recycled material; and green or "living" roofs, like the one on the Harris-Jack house.
While the number of energy-saving options is growing fast, these roofs tend to be significantly more expensive than the traditional asphalt shingle roof. As a result, homeowners have been slow to adopt them.But Harris, a graphic designer, and Jack, a publishing executive, made the leap—choosing a green roof, partly for energy savings, and partly for aesthetics.
"We wanted to do something to see if we could save on energy bills," said Harris. "But it's nice just to look out at it. Now when people come to visit, we have to bring them to the bathroom upstairs to look at the roof."
Their green installation, on a flat section of roof at the rear of their house, consists of shallow trays holding a light, rocky soil and a mix of sedums, a drought-resistant, low-maintenance plant.
The cost of green roofs ranges from $15 to $35 a square foot—significantly more than a simple asphalt roof. The roofs require a structure strong enough to hold the plants and soil, even when the soil is saturated after a rainstorm. And some homeowners worry that if such a roof develops a leak, it would be more difficult to fix—though using trays lessens that concern.
But green roofs tend to last much longer, because the vegetation protects the roof structure from drastic changes in temperature, according to Jennifer Souder, a research manager at the Center for Green Building at Rutgers University.
"They can be a hard sell, because this is money you have to pay now," she said. "But over the long period, they can be cost-effective."
Green roofs also can help the environment by reducing storm water runoff, which washes pollutants into the state's waterways. And they can dramatically reduce the so-called urban heat island effect—the tendency of built-up, paved areas to be hotter than rural, natural areas. Souder said a test on roofs in Queens found that on a hot day, the air above a black roof registered 170 degrees; above a white roof, 115 degrees; and above a green roof, 85 degrees.
Though green roofs are still unusual, the industry grew 16 percent in 2009, according to the organization Green Roofs for Healthy Cities. They've been used on a number of public buildings, including Chicago City Hall.
Environmental concerns also are giving a boost to metal roofs, which make up an estimated 11 percent of the residential re-roofing market, up from about 4 percent a decade ago, according to the Metal Roofing Alliance, a trade group.
Metal roofs cost two to three times what an asphalt shingle roof costs, according to the alliance. But the group points out that metal roofs are lighter than asphalt shingles, and last decades longer.
They typically include at least 28 percent recycled material, and can be recycled at the end of their useful lives. In addition, the roofs can be coated or painted to reflect sunlight, which reduces the home's air conditioning costs. Some are Energy Star-rated, which entitles homeowners to a federal tax credit of up to $1,500 (which expires at the end of the year).
Bob LeSauvage had a very simple reason for choosing a metal roof on his Mahwah, N.J., home: "I'll never have to think about doing a roof again—and the next guy (who owns the house) probably won't, either," he said.
The steel roof LeSauvage had installed on his 1930s-vintage home last summer has a 50-year warranty.
So far, he's very happy with it. There's a layer of insulation between the wood and the metal, which muffles the sound of rain — though he said the acorns falling from a nearby tree do seem to make more noise than they did on the old roof.
Metal is not the only material that is recycled for roofs; roofs can be made out of recycled rubber and plastic, including old tires, carpet and bottles, and made to look like slate or wood shakes.
Even asphalt shingles, the workhorse of the roofing world, are getting an energy-saving twist. Asphalt roofs are the lowest-cost option, typically running $80 to $100 per "square"—a roofing industry measure that's equal to 100 square feet. That comes to about $1,000 to $1,200 for a 1,200-square-foot roof on a Cape Cod (not including installation charges). Larger houses, of course, cost more.
Because the asphalt shingles are affordable, they cover eight of every 10 homes in the U.S., according to the Asphalt Roofing Manufacturers Association.
But there are some new developments here, too—notably energy-saving "cool" roofs, which incorporate reflective granules to reduce the heat that comes into the attic.
GAF Materials Corp. of Wayne, N.J., the nation's largest manufacturer of roofing materials, estimates that such roofs can cut homeowners' cooling costs by 7 to 15 percent.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Welcome to Smallville
Once again, on the subject of small houses, some good stuff from The New York Times. One of the common themes of the modern smaller house seems to be lots of windows and open space to make the home feel larger. Lately the American Dream has been looking a lot smaller. Wallets, of course, have shrunk, and so have cars. Now houses, the very symbol of that dream, are shrinking too.
A survey by the American Institute of Architects reveals that 57 percent of architecture firms reported a decrease in the square footage of their residential projects in 2010 compared with 13 percent back in 2005, when size was still a virtue and a McMansion was considered a good investment. And according to the National Association of Homebuilders, the average house size dropped last year to 2,438 square feet, down more than 100 square feet from 2007.
“We went through a sort of baroque period, with an obsession for moreness,” said Alan Koch, a principal at Taalman Koch Architecture in Los Angeles. “I think the hysteria of ‘more is better’ is really cooling off.”
Replacing this moreness is the cult of small. Books like “Tiny Houses” (Rizzoli, 2009), the new edition of “Little House on a Small Planet” (Lyons Press, 2009) and “Small Eco Houses: Living Green in Style” (Universe, 2010) celebrate the beauty of smallness; in magazines, the microhouse has become a standard typology.
Koch and his partner, Linda Taalman, in particular have made a cottage industry out of smallness. Their firm is currently working on more than 10 of its prefabricated itHouses around California (average living space size: about 1,000 square feet). The houses are built using recycled materials and feature solar panels, but their most earth-friendly aspect is the footprint, which sets limits on construction materials and energy use. (Koch and Taalman’s own itHouse, near Joshua Tree, cost about $265,000 to build.) And according to Koch, the intimate scale helps to bring owners closer to nature — if not to one another — and forces them to pare down to the essentials.
“It gives you a chance to make a new start,” said Koch, who also sees a new focus on the quality rather than the size of spaces. Another of his projects, for the artist Uta Barth in the Mar Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles, started out as an addition to Barth’s 1,200-square-foot house but was trimmed down to just a renovation. “We kept paring it back, saying, ‘Why do we need that? Does this really need to be there?’ We thought, Instead of spending money on square footage, why don’t we just spend money on a nicer floor?”
Dirk Denison, a Chicago architect who specializes in large luxury houses, recently worked on the renovation of a 2,200-square-foot-house in Carmel, Calif. The owners, Kathy and Gary Bang, had downsized from four houses — including a 5,000-square-foot dwelling near Asheville, N.C., with a 1,100-square-foot guesthouse — to just one, which Denison reimagined with a large central courtyard and spaces that flow into one another. Now every room is used on a regular basis (rarely the case with their previous houses). “It’s very freeing to live with a lot less stuff,” said Kathy, who still can’t seem to believe that she owns only one set of flatware.
In cities where real estate is scarce, “less is more” is the only way to go. In the California cities of Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach, for example, ultrasmall lots pose a challenge to even the most creative architects. Houses of between 1,600 and 1,800 feet by architects like Dean Nota, Make Architects, LeanArch and XTen Architecture all feature multi-use living spaces on the top floors, large windows and wide balconies to maximize views, direct sunlight and the illusion of space.
Indeed, Duo Dickinson, a Connecticut architect who has written several books on small houses and designs them as well, said the best small houses share the same basic ingredients: interconnecting axes and vistas, high ceilings, a connection between inside and out, and density of storage. A case in point: the 1,300-square-foot renovation and addition by the San Francisco firm Apparatus in that city’s Glen Park neighborhood, on a corner lot that is only 13.5 feet wide. In order to make the best use of the space, the architects left the interior roof exposed and created rooms that serve multiple functions: the kitchen and dining room double as hallways, and the master bathroom also serves as a laundry room.
The Portland, Ore., architects Brian White and Michel Weenick of Architecture W recently built a 1,500-square-foot house in Nagoya, Japan, where multi-use rooms are the cultural norm. The kitchen functions as a dining room, and the living room is designed with sliding doors that can close off a guest bedroom with a Murphy bed. There is also a 650-square-foot apartment below for the in-laws.
Stuart Hills, the principal architect at Apparatus, sees his clients going smaller not just to save money but also to save face. “In the ’90s all my clients were driving Land Rovers, and now they all have Priuses,” he said. “They don’t want to be at the carpool line at their school with what’s perceived as a gas guzzler. It’s the same with houses.” But size, of course, is relative. Two thousand square feet seems modest until you compare it to Path Architecture’s prototype for an off-the-grid prefab house called the Roho, which at about 200 square feet is smaller than your average garage. A glass wall and double-height ceiling make the living space feel larger than it is.
A new development outside of Austin, Tex., called Agave has enlisted several local architecture firms to create what is billed as “the largest collection of modern designed homes in the nation.” (So far 130 houses have been built; plans call for 460 more.) Here, the average house size is about 1,600 square feet; the smallest is around 1,200. Open-plan designs put a premium on public spaces, and bedrooms are often smaller because “people really tend to just sleep in bedrooms,” said the project coordinator Chris Czichos, echoing the wisdom of Frank Lloyd Wright, whose Usonian houses allotted minimal space to bedrooms and bathrooms. Rick and Cindy Black, who have 12 houses in Agave, set a precedent back in 2005 with the design of their own 1,100-square-foot home, a series of lofty cubes near the University of Texas. The house, Rick said, “generated some buzz because it was pretty exceptional in Texas at the time.” Still, he sees the return to smaller living spaces as nothing new: “In the ’50s, four people lived in a 1,000-square-foot home pretty often. Standards have changed. We’ve got more stuff now.”
View original article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/t-magazine/03remix-lubell-t.html?_r=2&emc=eta1
Blogger Matthew Allan is a specialist in Savannah Real Estate, focusing on Savannah's downtown historic districts, including the Landmark Historic District, Victorian Historic District, Thomas Square Historic District, Starland Historic District, Baldwin Park, and Ardsley Park Historic District.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Death of the "McMansion": Era of Huge Homes is Over
Published: Thursday, 19 Aug 2010 | 11:42 AM ET
By: Cindy Perman, CNBC.com Writer
They’ve been called McMansions, Starter Castles, Garage Mahals and Faux Chateaus but here’s the latest thing you can call them — History.
In the past few years, there have been an increasing number of references made to the “McMansion glut” and the “McMansion backlash,” as more towns pass ordinances against garishly large homes, which are generally over 3,000 square feet and built very close together.
They’ve been called McMansions, Starter Castles, Garage Mahals and Faux Chateaus but here’s the latest thing you can call them — History.
In the past few years, there have been an increasing number of references made to the “McMansion glut” and the “McMansion backlash,” as more towns pass ordinances against garishly large homes, which are generally over 3,000 square feet and built very close together.
What sets a McMansion apart from a regular mansion, according to Wikipedia, are a few characteristics: They’re tacky, they lack a definitive style and they have a “displeasingly jumbled appearance.”
Well, count 2010 as the year the last nail was hammered into the McCoffin: In its latest report on home-buying trends, real-estate site Trulia declares: “The McMansion Era Is Over.”
Just 9 percent of the people surveyed by Trulia said their ideal home size was over 3,200 square feet. Meanwhile, more than one-third said their ideal size was under 2,000 feet.
“That’s something that would’ve been unbelievable just a few years back,” said Pete Flint, CEO and co-founder of Trulia. “Americans are moving away from McMansions.”
The comments echoed those made in June by Kermit Baker, the chief economist at the American Institute of Architects.
“We continue to move away from the McMansion chapter of residential design, with more demand for practicality throughout the home,” Baker said. “There has been a drop off in the popularity of upscale property enhancements such as formal landscaping, decorative water features, tennis courts, and gazebos.”
“McMansions just look and feel out of place today, given the more cautious environment everyone’s living in,” said Paul Bishop, vice president of research for the National Association of Realtors.
And homebuilders are heeding the call: In a survey of builders last year, nine out of 10 said they planned to build smaller or lower-priced homes.
Even in Texas, the land of go big or go home, they’re downsizing.
Diane Cheatham, owner of Urban Edge Developers in Dallas, said today, the average size of home they’re building is 2,200 square feet, down from 2,500 in 2005 — which was considered small for Dallas back then.
She said the trend there is more toward building green homes instead of big homes. Right now, they’re building a 1,200-square-foot uber-green home for a couple that’s downsizing from 3,000-square feet, Cheatham explained.
1,200? Some of the hair in Texas is bigger than that!
“We’ve never built one that small,” Cheatham confessed, but added: “I think that’s just a good example of the trend right now.”
For a little historical context, 1,200 square feet was the average home size in America in the 1960s. That grew to 1,710 square feet in the 1980s and 2,330 square feet in the 2000s.
What’s more, many in the real-estate business say they think this trend of downsizing, or “right-sizing,” as Flint likes to call it, is here to stay.
“This is absolutely a long-term effect,” he said. “Think of families with small children who’ve been foreclosed upon … When these teenagers are in a position to buy a home, they won’t want to go through these experiences they saw their parents go through.”
Of course, the question becomes, what do we do with all these McMansions that have already been built?
It's tempting to make jokes about what you might do with a former McMansion but with crime on the rise in neighborhoods littered with abandoned McMansions, Christopher Leinberger, in an article for the Atlantic, asked a sobering question: Is this the next slum?
Luckily, people are starting to get creative: A film collective in Seattle has taken over a 10,000-square foot McMansion there, using it for both living and work space. They turned a wine closet into an editing room and tossed a green screen in the garage. And in a suburb of San Diego, one couple turned a former McMansion into a home for autistic adults.
The demise of the McMansion has stirred a growing chorus of murmurs in the real-estate community about the possibility that it may force a dramatic redesign of the suburban McMansion tracts into mini-towns of their own, turning these icons of excess into more practical spaces like offices, banks, grocery stores and movie theaters.
Though, given some of the poor quality of materials and craftsmanship, it begs the question, would it be better to just tear them all down and start from scratch?
View original article here: http://www.cnbc.com/id/38757287/
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
The Big Thinking In Condos Now Is To Get Small
Fascinating article, not just because people are buying such small spaces--I get that and am still trying to find a place to build the 9-Tsubo House--but because financing condos is the bane of our real estate existence in historic downtown Savannah. I'd be curious to know which lenders are making these loans. We have plenty of spaces that would make great mini-condos here in downtown Savannah, though, so once the financing environment becomes a little easier, maybe we'll join the trend.
Alexandra Gorbokon, a 26-year old public relations executive, has made an offer on her first home, a condo in downtown Chicago. She’s looking forward to eliminating her one-hour commute to and from the suburbs and filling her newfound free time with a better gym habit, enjoying her new neighborhood, and serving on a board in her building.
She’s a little less excited about squeezing her stuff into her new home’s tiny 600 square foot space. But she acknowledges that, at her age and with her modest $150,000 home price limit, living in a small space is a minor tradeoff for access to an urban lifestyle.
“I’m a little concerned about the size. I think it’s easy to grow out of this sort of space,” she says. “But I wanted to live in the city while I was still young.”
Gorbokon’s attitude about real estate is typical of her generation’s, says John McIlwain, a senior fellow for housing at The Urban Land Institute in Washington D.C. McIlwain says many new in-city condo and apartment buildings are offering smaller footprints to satisfy not only downsizing Baby Boomers but, especially, members of Generation Y who are moving out of dorms and parents' places and setting up their own households. Generation Y, he says, views a home’s location as more important than its size. They may also see living small and in-city as an environmentally responsible lifestyle.
“For Gen Y, the home is a place to live out of, not to live in,” he says. “They don’t think of this as a sacrifice. It’s just their lifestyle.”
The 'new small'
So with this renter and buyer in mind, numerous condo and apartment developers around the country are designing new homes with square footages resembling — and even far less than — Gorbokon's new home.
“Based on our experience, while anything under 1000 square feet is considered small nationally, the ‘new small’ might really average out at somewhere around 500 square feet,” says Janel Laban, executive editor for the interiors blog Apartment Therapy, which runs an annual “Small Cool” decorating contest. “Quality of life, which is often strongly affected by location, trumps size every time.”
A brief survey of completed and forthcoming buildings shows that with small-space projects, the more expensive a city, the smaller its definition of “small.” While mellow Portland, Ore., boasts 520-square foot homes, San Francisco’s “small” ranges from 250 to 350 square feet. Vancouver, British Columbia is smallest of all: There, a building called Burns Block will next year start leasing 30 “micro-lofts” with 270-square feet of space and prices starting around $700 per month. The tiny lofts might offer more room than a basement or converted spare room. Vancouver recently passed rules allowing homeowners to rent out accessory units as small as 195 square feet, according to The National Post.
Cubicle living
The 98-unit Cubix condominium building in San Francisco’s trendy SOMA (South of Market) district has sold about 66 of its tiny loft units, which start at 250 square feet and top out at 350, to a mix of young adults as well as to a surprising number of buyers in their 30s and 40s, says Jim Hurley, a broker with Vanguard Properties who is the project’s sales manager.
“The mix of buyers isn’t skewed as young as you’d think,” Hurley says, noting that many buyers wanted second homes or split their lives between a job in San Francisco and a home elsewhere. “The demographic has been surprisingly broad.”
Ranging in price from $200,000 to $250,000, the tiny units are stylish — with concrete floors, stainless steel appliances, stone bath surrounds, and energy-efficient passive ventilation. The Cubix compensates for its units’ small size with a transit-friendly location, community amenities (like Cubix’s rooftop “glass house” common area), and proximity to services (Whole Foods is nearby). Hurley says one new resident just completed her MBA, happily ditched her car to live downtown, and uses nearby regional train transit, public buses, car-sharing, or her own two feet to get around.
Shoebox Lofts
In Portland, Ore., small is a little bigger. The cheekily-named Shoebox Lofts, set to begin construction later in 2010, will share themes seen at Cubix and other small-footprint developments. The Shoebox’s layout includes two buildings linked by a courtyard, along with ground-floor retail and amenities such as bike storage and repair space. Because the building is set on a major bus corridor and in-city bike route, it won’t offer car parking but, instead, biker-friendly features like storage and a “bike repair” room. It’s within walking or biking distance to the city’s artsy Mississippi and Alberta areas.
The 17-unit project’s 520-square foot units will offer 16-foot ceilings and prices below $200,000, says developer Jon Gustafson. Portland-based di Loreto Architecture designed the spaces with a minimalist urban feel, says project designer Chris LoNigro. The look includes concrete floors, steel-joisted ceilings, and floor-to-ceiling “garage door” windows partially shaded with exterior wooden screens.
“It’s definitely a different lifestyle choice,” Gustafson acknowledges. “I wanted the spaces to be open so the owner could decide how to live in them.”
“This sort of smaller space we’re building is going to be important to the diversity of a lot of neighborhoods in the future,” he says, noting that other condo builders offering larger units can’t help but price them for twice as much. “It’s a place to get started.”
Also forthcoming: Two small-footprint developments in the Bay Area, each comprised of 300-square foot modular-built housing units from Zeta Communities, which has designed and is manufacturing what it calls SmartSpaces from a facility in Sacramento. The two projects — a 22-unit San Francisco condominium complex and a Berkeley apartment community — are currently “on hold” given the market, says Zeta Communities spokesperson Shilpa Sankaran.
“The demand is there,” she says. “There’s a high percentage of people in the San Francisco area who are single and can live in these units.”
Trend toward downsizing
The push to introduce smaller-footprint homes is reflective of the reversal in home size that’s taken place in recent years, says Stephen Melman, a spokesman for the National Association of Home Builders in Washington D.C. Melman, citing census data, says that the median size of newly-built condominiums peaked at 1,472 square feet in 2007, but fell to 1,355 square feet in 2008. (2009 data aren’t yet available.)
Indeed, buyers of smaller condos reason that, when and if they tire of a small space, they can rent it. Condominium associations of micro-unit buildings sometimes anticipate that owners of these units will, eventually, move up and out and may want to sublet. Cubix will let owners sublet units, but for 30 or more days at a time so as to prevent excess turnover or vacation renting, Hurley says.
“I made a big down payment and sought out permission to rent my place down the line,” says Gorbokon, the Chicago buyer, who, like many builders of small-footprint spaces, is planning ahead for a future where there will be plenty of demand for small spaces among those seeking big-city living.
View original article here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38097923/ns/business-real_estate/
Blogger Matthew Allan is a specialist in Savannah Real Estate, focusing on Savannah's downtown historic districts, including the Landmark Historic District, Victorian Historic District, Thomas Square Historic District, Starland Historic District, Baldwin Park, and Ardsley Park Historic District.
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