Definition of ‘Ditch’ Is Muddy at Best Both home builders and environmentalists have been pressing the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers to clarify whether a ditch is an isolated, non-navigable waterway open to development or a navigable U.S. waterway that deserves protection, and to bring consistency to how these determinations are made in the field. “There is a lot of confusion about ditches right now,” says Mark Sudol, the chief of the regulatory programs for the Corps of Engineers. “There is no guidance that says treat ditches one way or another.” NAHB says that ditches located miles from a large body of water should not be protected. “We’re talking about smaller, isolated areas,” said Duane Desiderio, staff vice president of legal affairs for NAHB. “If the federal government had its way, everything would be regulated. This isn’t about the Chesapeake Bay or the Everglades or marshy areas along Puget Sound.” Last January, the Government Accountability Office said that Corps districts differ in how they make judgments on ditches, tributaries and adjacent wetlands and some do not make their practices public. The Corps is surveying the districts on their decision-making practices, and results are due April 15. (www.washingtonpost.com)
Washington Post (3/29/05); Cindy Skrzycki [Return to top]
In the Hottest Markets, Renting Is a Bargain Soaring homes prices in many parts of the country have made renting a bargain, according to a 21-city analysis by Torto Wheaton Research in Boston. In San Francisco, the monthly cost of renting an apartment was 45% of the monthly cost of buying a home last year, down from 67% in 2001. In Washington, D.C., it was 59%, down from 82% three years ago; and in Miami it was 63%, down from 89%. Average home prices climbed 8.3% last year and 7.5% in 2003, according to data compiled by M/PF YieldStar, with many markets posting double-digit gains. Meanwhile, rents were up 1.7% last year, after falling 1.6% in 2003. In Phoenix, a one-bedroom apartment that rented for $700 a month a year ago now can be had for $550, says Lisa Sampson, a broker with All Star Apartment Rentals. But “the same house you could have bought for $150,000 last year is now $250,000.” Nationally, the analysis found that renting last year was 92% of the monthly cost of owning, down from 102% in 2001. “For the near term, it’s pretty clear that rents are a bargain in many places relative to the cost of buying the same unit,” says Eric Belsky, executive director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. (www.realestatejournal.com)
Wall Street Journal Online (3/24/05); Ruth Simon and Ray A. Smith [Return to top]
County’s Impact Fees May Double Impact fees for homes built in Citrus County, Fla., along the state’s west-central Gulf coast, could double, if county commissioners follow the recommendations of consultant Tindale-Oliver & Associates of Tampa to raise total fees from $3,131 to $6,465 per average home. Current impact fees raise about $30 million for the county over five years; the increase would generate about $40 million more. Clark Stillwell, an attorney for the Citrus County Builders Association, warned the commissioners that the low impact fees in nearby Sumter and Levy Counties could draw away business from the local building industry, which makes up 40% of the county’s economy. “You need to be conscious of what’s around you,” he said. “We do not want to be put at a competitive disadvantage.” (www.sptimes.com)
St. Petersburg Times (3/23/05); Justin George [Return to top]
No Dessert for You! Now Go to Your Tower Kids’ suites similar to the master suites enjoyed by their parents are “one of the most popular trends in upscale housing right now,” according to Gopal Ahluwalia, NAHB’s director of research. The suites can cost more than $30,000 and often come with a dressing area, a walk-in closet and space for entertaining or sleepovers. Developers are rolling out models featuring circular playrooms and turrets and marketing design concepts such as Rapunzel rooms and places for American Idol contestants to practice song and dance routines and apply their television makeup. About 75% of the homes sold by Shapell Homes of Milpitas, Calif., in the last 12 months included a special children’s area, compared with 25% five years ago, according to Nancy Rice, marketing director for the company, which sells homes that cost from $600,000 to $2 million. At the luxury end of the market, the average house is now 6,000 square feet, double in size from 25 years ago, allowing parents to put children in the unassigned space above the three- or four-car garage. For an extra $21,900-$32,900, Toll Brothers, of Horsham, Pa., will include a pair of junior suites in a bonus wing attached to new houses that range in size from 3,200-5,000 square feet and cost $400,000-$700,000. (www.nytimes.com)
New York Times (3/31/05); Andree Brooks [Return to top]
Training Workers to Meet Present and Future Needs Progressing Concerned about a possible shortage of skilled construction workers as the existing labor force is aging, educators in Mississippi are taking proactive steps to expose high school students to opportunities for construction careers. That effort can start with the parents. “The first thing the parent thinks about is hammer and nails,” said Mike Barkett, state director of training for the Mississippi Construction Education Foundation. “They don’t realize that their child could also have a career in architecture, engineering, landscaping or estimating. A lot of the construction technology now is computer based. For example, you can use computer systems to lay out road construction.” Parents also don’t know that “a brick mason in high demand can make $26 per hour. He can run his own crew, become his own boss and work when he wants to work,” Barkett said. NAHB Immediate Past President Bobby Rayburn is proud of bringing the Home Builders Institute’s Project CRAFT to Jackson last summer to provide training and job placement to offenders aged 16-18. Once the student completes 840 hours of training, including hands on construction work on community improvement projects, the CRAFT program finds them a job. “This program has a successful track record in helping young people start careers in the construction industry, and it teaches them the value of community service,” said Rayburn. (www.msbusiness.com)
Mississippi Business Journal (3/7/05); Becky Gillette [Return to top]
Budget for Heartburn Rising building materials prices, along with a strong downtown housing market, prompted CIM Group to nix its plan for rental apartments in the second phase of its South Village development in Los Angeles and instead sell 267 condo units. Even builders who are willing to pay through the nose for materials sometimes cannot find them, says NAHB economist Michael Carliner. “Even if you are willing to pay the price, it’s hard to get, and that’s disrupting schedules,” he says, citing concrete as a prime example. Reinforcing steel was reportedly all but impossible to get a hold of at times last year. Carliner says that home builders have been hard hit by large increases in materials prices because of pre-selling houses before buying materials, which account for a third of a home’s cost. After eating the difference, they have now factored higher prices into future construction, even allowing for some contingency, he said. Gardiner & Theobald, a construction cost and project management consultant, is predicting that material costs will climb 6% in New York City this year, down from 8% last year. “Nobody knows what to predict in 2005 — 4%, 5% would be manageable,” says Dan Rosenfield, principal of Los Angeles-based Urban Partners. (www.theslatinreport.com)
Slatin Report (3/31/05); Steve Garmhausen [Return to top]
The Prefab Future, Practically Here Not including the price of the land — 6.2 acres on a heavily wooded hill near Amherst, Va., just off the Blue Ridge Parkway — a 1,150-square-foot, two-bedroom, one-bath mountain retreat with modern lines, a wide-open floor plan and sky-high windows cost the home owners $95,000. Labor costs were also minimal because the home owners, experienced carpenters, did much of the work themselves, but even if contractors had been used more extensively the home would have come in at around $150,000. That comes out to $130 a square foot, compared to $200-400 for many modern, architect-designed homes. The kit to build the prefabricated LV Home was purchased from architect Rocio Romero for $30,000 and it traveled on the back of a truck. The home owners first saw the house in “Prefab,” a coffee-table book published in 2002 and co-written by Allison Arieff, the editor-in-chief of Dwell magazine. “The technology exists, and the motivation on the part of consumers and designers exists,” says Arieff, but this type of housing is likely to remain in the hands of “a bunch of very committed individuals or small firms” until a large-scale builder or developer commits to it in at least a few regions of the country. So far, housing manufacturers have been reluctant to take the risk, he said. (www.washingtonpost.com)
Washington Post (3/31/05); Jeff Turrentine [Return to top]
Infill Development Picks Up Pace in Richmond County, Ga. Mirroring a growing national trend over the past three to five years, Richmond County, Ga., is seeing an increase in infill development, spurred by demographic trends that are making urban living more desirable. Ron Lewis, a principal in the Evans-based LRP Investments LLC, said his company is redeveloping a 2.5-acre parcel, where for decades an older couple lived in a small home. The property was purchased at the end of 2003 for $187,000 and divided into six smaller lots — each of which will have a roughly 2,000-square-foot home selling for about $250,000. “Many of the developers, who 10 years ago might have only been doing suburban housing, are now doing more diverse projects, including infill and redevelopment,” said Debbie Bassert, a land-use policy expert for NAHB. “The majority of the population today are now childless households, so this is why there has been a shift in consumer demand for different kinds of lifestyles,” said Amy Liu, the deputy director of the Metropolitan Policy Institute at the Brookings Institute. Those lifestyles often include the desire for short commutes, stores within walking distance and better access to a vibrant downtown, Liu said. (www.augustachronicle.com)
Augusta Chronicle (3/29/05); Adrian Burns [Return to top]
Apartment Market Booms Despite Rising Rents in D.C. With a vacancy rate of 3.1%, less than half the national average of 6.6%, Washington, D.C. is the strongest apartment market in the country, according to Delta Associates, a real estate research firm. The average monthly rent for an apartment in the high-job growth area is $1,255, compared with $865 nationwide. Rents in the D.C. market increased an average 4.9% last year. At the same time, home values increased 27% to a median price of $371,000, according to the National Association of Realtors®, double what they were in 1999, and leaving renting the only alternative for some residents. More than half of the apartments in the Washington market have one bedroom; about 20% are studios; and the rest are larger. (www.washingtontimes.com)
Washington Times (3/29/05); Tom Ramstack [Return to top]
Riding Laptops to Work Telecommuting offers the best hope for reducing the gridlock in Los Angeles, according to guest columnist Ted Balaker, a Jacobs Fellow at the Reason Foundation and the author of a forthcoming study on the topic. “Despite hefty public subsidies, transit’s share of work trips in the L.A. metro area has dipped slightly since 1980, and it now stands at about 5%,” Balaker writes. “Meanwhile, telecommuting has more than doubled. Right now, telecommuting is only one percentage point behind transit and costs taxpayers nothing. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, on the other hand, spends nearly $3 billion of taxpayer money per year.” Balaker says that the city’s mayoral candidates ought to be finding ways to encourage businesses to embrace telecommuting, which will become an increasingly viable option as broadband connections gain market share and the price of computers and laptops continues to fall. Telecommuters save AT&T $25 million annually in real-estate costs, he says, and the company reports that telecommuting helps it attract and retain good employees. Looking at Washington, D.C., an analysis by George Mason University found that traffic delays there would drop by 10% for every 3% of commuters who decide to work at home. (www.dailynews.com)
Los Angeles Daily News (3/23/05); Ted Balaker [Return to top]
Specialty Contractor Builds Showpiece Deck In a departure from the standard deck, which is about 8 feet by 12 feet, or 96 square feet, “People are building huge decks in upscale markets, with all kinds of fancy things like double decks and stairways going between levels,” said Gopal Ahluwalia, NAHB’s staff vice president for research. “But decks, nationally, are standard only in very upscale markets.” Decks are usually the first thing that people add to their homes, he said. Specialty contractor Bill Cooke has built a deck that covers about 1,250 square feet — 13 times bigger than average — and features corner benches and an observation perch overlooking the back yard. The deck wraps around four mature trees the home owners wanted to keep and an outdoor shower will be added to it this spring. In nearly all of his projects, Cooke says he uses a composite material called Trex, which is made from recycled polyethylene plastic from bottles and grocery bags and hardwood sawdust. A wood grain pattern can be imprinted in the material to make it look like natural wood, and it comes in seven colors and three different textures. “It’s uniform and has no splits, cracks or splinters and it’s not susceptible to bugs or rot,” he says. “It’s virtually maintenance free. You do have to hose it down to clean it.” (www.newsoak.com)
Daily Oklahoman (3/26/05); Beverly Bryant [Return to top]
Builders’ Blues NAHB economist Michael Carliner says that whether building materials costs increase this year or not, builders probably will raise their prices after their experiences last year. “Most new homes these days are pre-sold, so last year’s prices were based on what builders thought would happen, and they ended up getting squeezed,” Carliner said. NAHB estimates that materials prices boosted the cost of building a house by $5,000-$7,000 last year, he said. “This year, many builders are building a contingency factor into the sales contracts, although we don’t think the increases in materials costs will be as great as in 2004,” he said, as housing demand softens slightly in reaction to rising mortgage rates. Compared with February of 2004, the Producer Price Index for this February showed increases of 37.7% for the price of steel, 9.4% for concrete products, 10.8% for lumber and 6.3% for asphalt. Builders in the Philadelphia area say there is a shortage of masonry products, bricks, concrete products and oil-based products such as vinyl for siding and pipes, and asphalt for roads and driveways and roof shingles. The price of oil is also a factor in transportation costs, and some major developers, such as Toll Bros., have regional material supply centers to reduce them. (www.philly.com)
Philadelphia Inquirer (3/27/05); Alan J. Heavens [Return to top] |
