Foreclosure plague: No cure yet

The housing market is still sick, with a record number of foreclosure filings posted in July.
By Les Christie, CNNMoney.com staff writer

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The foreclosure plague continued to devastate last month.

There were more than 360,000 properties with foreclosure filings — including default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions — an increase of 7% from June and 32% from July 2008, according to RealtyTrac, an online marketer of foreclosed homes. In fact, one in every 355 U.S. homes had at least one filing during July.

“July marks the third time in the last five months where we’ve seen a new record set for foreclosure activity,” said James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac. “Despite continued efforts by the federal government and state governments to patch together a safety net for distressed homeowners, we’re seeing significant growth in both the initial notices of default and in the bank repossessions.”

The jump occurred as several foreclosure moratoriums phased out. They were initiated by many states to give the administration’s foreclosure-prevention efforts time to work. But for many help did not come: The modification and refinancing programs have met with less success than hoped.

“It’s starting to reach more and more people, but we have to do better and make sure the program reaches the millions of folks we intended it to reach,” said Jared Bernstein, an economics adviser to vice president Biden.

The picture would be even worse, however, without the programs.

“Each of these programs nips away at the problem of excess supply,” said Doug Duncan, cheif economist for Fannie Mae, “and fights against declining prices. … The hope is that the aggregated programs will result in less loss than would happen in the free market.”
Out of their homes

RealtyTrac statistics revealed that more than 87,000 properties were repossessed by lenders, effectively sending many families out of their homes. There have been a total of 464,058 repossessions — or REOs in industry parlance — so far this year (through the end of July).

“We’re seeing more option ARM resets, triggering defaults and more prime loans, which are failing due to job losses,” said RealtyTrac spokesman Rick Sharga.

That is resulting in more filings on higher priced homes, for two reasons: 1. option ARMs were typically used for more expensive properties; 2. borrowers using prime loans generally had better credit and were able to afford more expensive houses.
Best and worst

The worst hit areas continue to be in the “sand states,” with California posting the highest number of total filings, 108,104, and Nevada posting the highest rate of foreclosure at one for every 56 homes.

The other hardest hit states are Arizona, at one filing for every 135 homes, and Florida, at one for every 154. Las Vegas, with one for every 47 homes, had the highest rate among metro areas. That’s Sin City’s 31st consecutive month topping the list.

These were bubble states, where home prices soared and banks financed mortgages for anyone who could fog a mirror.

“We’re seeing the highest levels of foreclosures in the markets that had the highest appreciation [during the boom] and the worst lending practices,” said Sharga. To top of page

“A Tale of a Smarter City”

A great video and Americana Development thought it would share. This video shows how building a smarter and stronger city is better for everyone. Over 50% of our population world wide lives in cities…It is time that Americans invest and planners look toward creating solid land plans with a vision into the future for all humanity.

Transportation Planning High Speed Trains

Great Video. Americana Development is looking forward to the California High Speed Rail.

San Francisco Transbay Terminal

Along with the new terminal, thirteen towers have been proposed on sites around the new terminal, ranging from 300 feet to 1,200 feet tall. If built out to fund the construction of the new terminal, San Francisco will have a new tallest building and its skyline will be altered. City officials have decided to consider rezoning the area around the new terminal, and will analyze the potential to raise existing height limits (550 ft.max) upward, with the possibility of three towers exceeding 1,000 ft. in height. On December 21, 2006, Renzo Piano proposed a five tower complex of one 600 foot tower, two 900 foot towers and two 1,200 foot towers. Other towers are under construction nearby on Rincon Hill and at Millennium Tower (301 Mission Street).
Serious issues exist with regard to conforming emergency post earthquake transportation planning guidelines and placing massive amounts of building materials and glass directly above a major transit hub and its road and rail connections. In a March 21, 2008 article in the San Francisco Chronicle, the author, David Perlman speaks of “the danger to lifelines – the roads, rail tracks and bridges that must carry ambulances, fire trucks and fleeing cars after the quake; the airports that are bound to be unusable”. The article quotes “Keith Knudsen of the national nonprofit Earthquake Engineering Research Institute” on the special civil engineering needs of the area: ” the downtown area south of Market, where well-engineered high-rises are rapidly filling the neighborhoods, would be particularly dangerous in a major quake because the low-lying filled land there is subject to liquefaction.

The American Reset

The American Dream is a national ethos unique to the United States of America in which democratic ideals are perceived as a hope-filled view of the prosperity of its people. In the American Dream, first expressed by James Truslow Adams in 1931, citizens of every rank feel that they can achieve a “better, richer, and happier life.” The idea of the American Dream is rooted in the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence which states that “all men are created equal” and that they have “certain inalienable Rights” including “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The American Dream has been credited with helping to build a cohesive American experience but has also been blamed for overinflated expectations of its people. The presence of the American Dream has not historically helped the majority of minority race and lower class American citizens to gain a greater degree of social equality and influence. Instead, the American Dream has often been observed to sustain class differences in which well-positioned groups continue to be advantaged.

Housing starts ratchet up in May

By Les Christie, CNNMoney.com staff writer
Last Updated: June 16, 2009: 9:37 AM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The nation’s builders boosted their production in May, starting new housing units at an annualized rate of 532,000, up 17.2% from the revised estimate of 454,000 in April.

The data release, a monthly report from the Census Bureau, also revealed that building permits jumped by 4% to a rate of 518,000 from 498,000 in April.

Both figures were higher than expected. A consensus estimate from Briefing.com had forecast that starts would rise 485,000 and permits to 508,000.

But despite those big improvements against record lows set the month before, the home construction industry still sits deep in the doldrums. In May 2008, new home starts showed an annual rate of 975,000. Two years ago, the rate was about 1.4 million units.

Builders’ confidence may get a boost from existing home sales, which have inched up from record lows set during the winter.

In the latest survey of builder confidence, released Monday, it actually declined a point to 15. Scores above 50 indicate more builders are optimistic about their industry that not and scores of 70 and more were common during the boom years.

“The outlook for home sales has improved somewhat in recent months, due largely to implementation of the first-time home buyer tax credit and gains in housing affordability,” said the chairman of the National Association of Homebuilders, Joe Robson.

“However, looking forward, home builders are facing a few headwinds, including expiration of the tax credit at the end of November; a recent upturn in interest rates; and especially the continuing lack of credit for housing production loans.”

Condo developers have been especially hard-hit by financing problems, according to Mike Larson, a real estate analyst for Weiss Research. That has led to volatility in the statistics for multi-family housing starts and permits.

Much of the rise in starts during May can be attributed to the 61.7% spike in multi-family housing starts. That compared with a nearly 50% drop in multi-family starts during April. Also noteworthy about the May report was the rise in single-family starts, which posted the biggest jump since January 2006 at 401,000 from 373,000.

“That’s evidence that the market is no longer falling off a cliff,” he said. “But we’re still not seeing any rip-roaring rebound. Tighter lending standards, rising mortgage rates, and a dismal employment market will all combine to drag out the turnaround timeline, and ensure the recovery remains a muted one.”

Every region gained housing starts in May. The Northeast was up 2%, the Midwest 11.1%, the South 16.8% and in the West a whopping 28.6%. Permits grew 5.7% in the Northeast, 8.9% in the Midwest, 2.3% in the South and 3.8% in the West.

Architecture On All 4 Sides

360 Architecture is an architectural practice focused on planning, design and execution. Buildings utilizing 360 architecture have creative design elements on all sides of the building. Typically in the 1980s and 1990s many buildings only had architecturally enhanced areas that faced the street or was in public view. Being at the turn of the century, ideas of this began to change.

Today many cities as well as developers ensure that all buildings have architectural significant benefit on all sides of structures. The days of matchbox construction is over and design integrity is in. However, due to the current state of the market, many cities and developers have cut back enhancements. Americana Development feels the deleting of these details cuts down sense of place and identity.

Introducing L.A. Live!

L.A. Live is an entertainment complex under construction in downtown Los Angeles, California. Adjacent to the Staples Center, L.A. Live built by owner Anschutz Entertainment Group, Wachovia Corp, and investment firm MacFarlane Partners with help from Los Angeles taxpayers. It will have 5,600,000 square feet of apartments, ballrooms, bars, concert theaters, restaurants, movie theaters and a 54 story hotel and condominium tower, on a 27-acre site. Here, people seeking entertainment offerings intersect with the sports and entertainment industries at work in an energetic, unique, urban environment covering more than 6 city blocks.

A one-of-a-kind entertainment campus, L.A. LIVE is truly a planning marvel within the backyards of anyone in the Southland. A high density mixed use project, will only help to foster the strong sense of place that Los Angeles has lacked for decades. With the foundation in place for L.A. Live, Americana Development is hopeful that future high density projects within the downtown core will be envisioned. Live, work, and play is a term in which many of our associated embody. This mind frame with L.A. LIVE will help to change the way we view downtown Los Angeles. Time Square in New York will have a West Coast equivalent.

The entertainment complex sounds all well and good, it will take the course of time to see how is all plays out with the market and current trends within urban living. Both KB and AEG have embarked upon a project that will change the way we view urban life center hubs. Full completion of the project is estimated early 2010, till then Americana Development looks forward to a one-of-a-kind planning marvel.

Arlington Nation Cemetery

Arlington Nation Cemetery host to lush rolling hills of northern Virginia, the cemetery covers 612 acres and serves as the final resting place for 250,000 American veterans and their families, including two presidents, numerous sports heroes, dozens of famous generals and a handful of astronauts, scientists and entertainers.
But during the Civil War, Arlington was a far more humble place, with rows of unknown dead in ramshackle graves on a dirty field.
“You would not have wanted to have a loved one buried here,” says Thomas L. Sherlock, the cemetery’s historian. “It had none of the esteem or the prestige it has today. . . . We were burying two types of folks — soldiers who were unknown or soldiers whose families didn’t have the money to return them to Pennsylvania or to North Carolina or to Ohio.”
The land now owned and operated by the U.S. Army once belonged to the scourge of the Union, Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Arlington, in fact, became U.S. property only after the federal government seized it when Lee’s wife failed to appear in person to pay $92.07 in taxes.
But that’s getting ahead of the story, which begins back in 1778.
The Revolutionary War was underway. General George Washington led American forces in a battle for freedom against the British. John Parke Custis, son of Martha Washington by her first marriage, bought 1,000 acres of land on the Virginia side of the Potomac River.
Three years later, during the siege of Yorktown in 1781, Custis died while serving as an aide to Washington. Washington then adopted two of Custis’ children, Eleanor and George Washington Parke Custis, bringing them to live with him at Mount Vernon.
The boy grew attached to his adoptive father, and when the Custis estate was passed on to him, he decided to build a mansion to honor and commemmorate the first president. Later, the mansion was renamed “Arlington House” after the Custis family’s original property on the banks of the Potomac, given as grant from the Earl of Arlington.
George Washington Parke Custis and his wife had one child, Mary. In 1831, she married a promising West Point graduate named Robert E. Lee.
The land now occupied by Arlington Cemetery might have passed peacefully to the children of Mary Custis and Robert E. Lee and might have remained a privately held estate with commanding vistas of the Washington skyline.
But the Civil War changed all that.
Lee turned down an offer to command a new Union army being formed to fight the seceding southern states, refusing to abandon his native Virginia. The Lees left Arlington House for good on April 22, 1861, and Union forces quickly moved in, turning the house into a headquarters. Fort Myer soon was built on the land.
The government officially took over the property in 1862 after Mary Lee attempted to pay federal tax on the land through intermediaries but not in person.
On June 15, 1864, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton designated Arling-ton House and 200 surrounding acres a military cemetery under control of the Army’s quartermaster general. Shortly before that decree, the first soldier — Private William Christman of the 67th Pennsylvania Infantry — was interred at Arlington.
Soon afterward, burials began at Arlington of soldiers who died in Washington and Alexandria hospitals during the war. As the conflict continued, Union dead were gathered from the brutal battlefields of Bull Run, Bristol Station, Chantilly and elsewhere and placed in the new national cemetery, along with some Confederate dead.
But the bulk of the 500 southern soldiers now buried at Arlington — many gathered around a monument erected by the Daughters of the American Revolution — died in the Washington area after the war ended.
The Lee family would once more exercise its claim to the land, ultimately winning a battle in the Supreme Court, which issued a decision essentially charging the federal government with trespassing on private property.
Would the dead have to be dug up and transferred to a new site? The possibility was there, but General Lee’s son diffused the crisis in 1883 by accepting a payment of $150,000 from the government, and Arlington Cemetery as we know it now was established.

President of the United States and Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court William Howard Taft is buried at Arlington as well as President of the United States John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Pvt. William Henry Christman, 67th Pennsylvania Infantry, first military service man interred in Arlington National Cemetery, May 13, 1864.
Two Unknown Union Soldiers were interred on May 15, 1864. They were the first of nearly 5,000 unknowns now resting in Arlington National Cemetery.
The first graves in Arlington National Cemetery were dug by James Parks, a former Arlington Estate slave. Buried in Section 15. James Parks is the only person buried in Arlington National Cemetery who was born on the property.
About 1,500 United States Colored Troops are interred in section 27. The first black combat soldiers of the Civil War.
Also buried at Arlington National Cemetery are the unidentified, commingled, partial remains of the seven astronauts who died aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger Jan. 28, 1986

Crystal Cove Historic District

Gordon www.daytrippen.com

The 46 cottages that make up the Crystal Cove Historic District were built in the early 1900’s by artists and squatters on the 110,000-acre ranch of James Irvine II, who allowed them to build their modest dwellings. The cottages are now part of the 2,800-acre Crystal Cove State Park. The last of the year-round residents were evicted in 2001 as part of a plan to transform the ramshackle community into lodgings for park visitors. The park itself has 2,800 acres on both sides of the Pacific Coast Highway with 18 miles of hiking and mountain biking trails and more than three miles of beaches.

Located in the heart of Crystal Cove State Park’s 3.5 miles of pristine coastline, the Historic District first developed as a South Seas movie set due to its seclusion and tropical aura. The community thrived and became beloved for its relaxed, friendly atmosphere and picturesque landscape; and in 1979, the Crystal Cove State Park Historic District was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Built as a seaside colony in the 1930’s & ‘40’s, Crystal Cove endures as a magical escape for visitors who appreciate the opportunity to experience California’s natural and architectural beauty, untouched by time.
Thanks to the efforts of the Crystal Cove Alliance, all of the original cottages are still standing today – spared from the hands of developers. Twenty-one cottages have already been authentically restored to reflect the era between 1935 and 1955, when the Cove evolved as a community.