Con Artists Play Troubling Game: Grand Theft Home The National Consumer Law Center — which recently issued a comprehensive report on “the rampant theft of Americans’ homes and equity” by con artists around the country who promise to save the home from foreclosure — advises home owners to ignore posters offering help that have been slapped on telephone poles and bus stops in working-class neighborhoods. The con artists essentially buy the property by paying off the amount that is overdue on the loan. They may promise to rent the house to the home owner, with the opportunity for the family to buy it back later, but they typically set the price higher than the owners can ever afford. Then they evict them when they fall short on the monthly rent payments. The underlying mortgage is often not paid off, so the home owners are not only evicted, but they also still owe on the original loan amount. Home owners in financial trouble need to talk to their lender or an attorney, the exact opposite of what the scam artists tell them to do, the report's co-author, Steve Tripoli, said. (www.washingtonpost.com)
Washington Post (6/4/05); Sandra Fleishman [Return to top]
The 50 Cleanest (and Dirtiest) Cities in America Portland, Ore., is the cleanest big city in the country, according to a ranking by Reader’s Digest of the 50 largest metro areas that scores their air quality, water quality, industrial pollution, Superfund sites and sanitation. Among the many smart things the city has done to deal with its pollution problems, when it was looking into a green building ordinance, it met with 200 developers to find out exactly what regulatory or financial hurdles were preventing them from using sustainable practices, and then laid out a plan. The remaining four in the top five cleanest American cities were San Jose, Calif.; Buffalo, N.Y.; Columbus, Ohio; and San Francisco. The dirtiest cities, according to the report, were Chicago, New York, Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Birmingham, Ala. (www.rd.com)
Reader’s Digest (7/05); Derek Burnett [Return to top]
States’ Case Challenging Species Act Is Rebuffed The Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal in a case challenging the constitutionality of Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce being extended to protecting animal or plant species that don’t have any commercial value and live in only one state. In the case of GDF Realty Investments v. Norton, concerns over six endangered small insect species living only in caves and sinkholes in two Texas counties stopped development of a tract west of Austin where new office, apartment and retail complexes, including a Wal-Mart, were planned. The developer lost the case in the Federal District Court in Austin and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans. In the petition to the Supreme Court filed last May, the developer said that the appeals court had “seriously misunderstood” recent Supreme Court precedents that had limited congressional authority under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause to activities that substantially affect interstate commerce. The appeal was supported by NAHB, the National Farm Bureau Federation and the states of Texas, Alaska, Delaware and New Jersey. (www.nytimes.com)
New York Times (6/14/05); Linda Greenhouse [Return to top]
Ultra-High-End Homes, Built on Faith While there are a lot more people these days who can afford to purchase very high-priced homes, homes selling in the U.S. for more than $1 million still represent less than 1% of the residential real estate market, according to Gopal Ahluwalia, NAHB’s staff vice president for research. National Census figures show that the average income for the top 0.1% of the population was $3 million in 2000, which is two and a half times higher than the number reported in 1980 after being adjusted for inflation. The major markets for superluxury homes are San Francisco, San Diego, New York, Washington, D.C. and some parts of Florida, Ahluwalia said. In Rye, N.Y., developer Gary Hirsch, chairman of Elk Homes, is building a $9 million, 11,000-square-foot house on speculation and isn’t worried about finding a buyer. Likely prospects include corporate executives locating from other parts of the country, Wall Street types from Manhattan or residents of surrounding suburbs who are looking to trade up. Customers in the market for houses priced at $3 million and up “like their houses to look old on the outside but to have all the modern conveniences inside,” said Westchester County, N.Y. developer Jeffrey Doynow. (www.nytimes.com)
New York Times (6/12/05); Elsa Brenner [Return to top]
Cost of Moving Up Keeps Many From Selling Homes The inventory of single-family detached homes for sale in Southern California was at a near-record low of three months in May, according to RealData Strategies, a consulting firm based in Brea, Calif. Six months is considered normal. Home owners willing to leave the area or downsize to smaller, less expensive homes have probably already done so, according to Raphael Bostic, an associate professor at the University of Southern California’s School of Policy, Planning and Development. “Now, you are left with a set of people who are looking to sell but also have to live in the area and therefore have to buy in the same area where they’re selling,” Bostic said. “That’s a different market segment.” Higher taxes; higher prices; and brokers’ commissions, escrow fees and other closing costs based on a percentage of a home’s sale price are persuading many home owners to sit it out. Robert Lacarriere, who is looking to keep his existing home as income property while upgrading to a bigger residence, figures that just selling his home — purchased in 1997 for $260,000 and today worth $850,000-$900,000 — would cost him about $50,000. The total valuation of residential alterations and additions for which permits were issued in Southern California last year was $2.6 billion, according to the Construction Industry Research Board, a 16% increase over 2003. A large portion came from renovations by people who had owned their homes for some time. (www.latimes.com)
Los Angeles Times (6/13/05); Annette Haddad [Return to top]
Raptors Have Building Projects in Their Grip Developers in Thousand Oaks, Calif. are waiting for four red-tailed hawk chicks to fly their nest in a eucalyptus tree before they can begin work on a $45 million college sports center and a 367-unit retirement community. To safeguard the chicks, biologists established a 500-foot zone around the nest within which no construction can occur until the birds are old enough to fly, feed on their own and become independent. “The good news is we have this big, beautiful site where 40% will remain open space,” said Warren E. Spieker, a vice president for Continuing Life Communities, the Carlsbad, Calif.-based partnership developing the senior homes. “But the bad news is all that space is also very attractive to birds.” Spieker sad that the hawks’ nesting has postponed by about six months the relocation of the company’s sales trailer, which will include a full-scale model of a two-bedroom, two-bath living unit when it opens in August. Supporting the hawk families has cost his corporation about $100,000, which represents a fraction of the project’s overall $175 million cost. (www.latimes.com)
Los Angeles Times (6/13/05); Gregory W. Griggs [Return to top]
Little Plastic Houses for You and Me Out of the same clear plastic that is used in soda bottles, Philadelphia architects Stephen Kieran and James Timberlake have designed an exterior skin that would be stretched taut over an aluminum frame to create a substrate onto which micro-components for lighting, heating, energy storage and information can be printed. The resulting electronic walls would be inexpensive and could be customized at the manufacturing stage and at home so that an entire side of the house could be turned into a movie screen or a window at the flick of a switch. SmartWrap would consist of two layers of a polyester film called PET. The two-inch space between the layers would be quilted with a highly porous silica that’s 99.8% air; it was developed by NASA as insulation for the Mars Pathfinder Sojourner rover. The two-inch barrier has the same insulation factor as a 17-inch-thick concrete-and-brick wall filled with polystyrene insulation. Organic photovoltaic solar cells, or OPVs, would be printed on exterior sun-facing surfaces to harvest energy and power organic light-emitting diode displays and lighting patterns on the inside. The researchers are now looking for a way to increase the efficiency of the OPVs, which convert no more than 6% of available light into electricity compared to about 18% for silicon. (www.popsci.com)
Popular Science (6/05); Jessie Scanlon [Return to top]
Developers Rushing to Beat July Deadline Worried about preserving their beach-front community as a tourist destination, city officials in Clearwater, Fla. have set a July 1 deadline when it will become tougher to level two-story shoebox motels so that they can be replaced by luxury high-rise condominiums. In a beach development boom that is well underway, it is thought that about 500 hotel rooms have already been lost to condominiums and perhaps a dozen more projects will beat the deadline. Lucca Development LLC plans to replace several of the city’s hotels, including the South Gulfview Boulevard Howard Johnson, with 102 condos in two buildings, one 148 feet tall. More than 100 hotel and motel rooms would disappear under this proposal. The British company Taylor Woodrow plans to replace a 217-unit Adam’s Mark Hotel with 113 condos and 78 hotel rooms. “When all the big projects were done and only the small ones were left to be developed, that’s when the government steps in, smiling in our face,” said Gunnar Hedqwist. He stands to lose $600,000 if redevelopment plans for his 22-unit motel aren’t submitted on time. Fewer condos could be built on his property under the new rules. (www.sptimes.com)
St. Petersburg Times (6/13/05); Aaron Sharockman [Return to top] | 
