An excellent interactive map of New York City with income levels for various neighborhoods in reference to affordable housing. Don’t even click on the Upper East Side. [Source: Envisioning Development: What is Affordable Housing?]
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Dec 04 |
Affordable Housing in New York CityAn excellent interactive map of New York City with income levels for various neighborhoods in reference to affordable housing. Don’t even click on the Upper East Side. [Source: Envisioning Development: What is Affordable Housing?] |
Sep 22 |
Making Suburbia More Livable
Interesting on how changing demographics are making retrofitting suburbia almost necessary. However, this could also mean increased focus on developing communities in alternative locations with different characteristics. Housing coming a full circle? |
Aug 16 |
ReBurbia
Dwell Magazine and Inhabitat.com is hosting the first ever Reburbia competition: a design competition dedicated to re-envisioning the suburbs and have just announced the finalists. |
Jun 22 |
Females who rent weigh less: SurveyResearchers discovered homeowners, on average, outweighed renters by 12 pounds. In addition to excess weight, female homeowners were also carrying around more aggravation, making less time for leisure, and were less likely to spend time with friends. |
Jun 15 |
False alarm calls increase with foreclosed homes
Such calls are distracting firefighters from other more important calls in inhabited homes and putting a strain on the public emergency system. via ABC15 News. |
Jun 11 |
Your Odds Of DefaultingIf you took out a mortgage in 2007, there's an over 20 percent chance you'll default on it. |
May 13 |
Indian Megacities
Wall Street Journal has an article on India’s megacities with the tagline that they are choking India. But is that really what is happening in India? There is an inherent understanding that there is a conflicting dichotomy between urban and rural regions. But even if it does exist, quotes in the WSJ article itself contradict its byline: Shami Shafi, a 35-year-old laborer in Lucknow, has seen his daily income drop by half in recent months to 50 rupees, or about $1, for carrying bags of potatoes and other goods in a local market. But “I’m not going back to my village,” he says. If work gets harder to find, “I’ll just go to another city.” Atanu Dey, noted economist and widely-respected proponent of urban India points at the real culprits of urban problems. |
Apr 20 |
Solutions for Working Families
National Housing Conference (NHC) and its research affiliate, the Center for Housing Policy is hosting the “Solutions for Working Families” Learning Conference from June 28th to 30th. |
Apr 12 |
Effect of your Neighboring Homes
The effect of your neighbors homes on your property is a given in real estate. We tend to control what our neighbors do just because what they do affects us as well even though it doesn’t happen on your property. But what can we do when there are no neighbors to speak of (or to)? Camilo Jose Vergara photographs dwellings where one is occupied and other is not. He talks to the owners of the occupied homes about the dangers of vacancy next door. Can we relate this to the justification of bailing out owners of foreclosed homes because the state of their foreclosed homes affects us all? |
Mar 05 |
Low-Income (Potential) Homeowners still neglected
In the current housing crisis, low-income homeowners continue to face the brunt. |
Mar 03 |
Non-Existent Foreclosure Crisis?“Foreclosure rates aren’t really that high unless you live in Arizona, California, Florida or Nevada” [source]. William Lucy and Jeff Herlitz at the University of Virginia find that nearly 62 percent of the foreclosures in 2008 were in the above mentioned four states. |
Feb 20 |
Crisis of CreditThe Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.One of the best explanations of the current credit crisis. It shows how ordinary homeowners defaulting aren’t solely to blame and the problems are systemic tracing back to the lowering of the Fed rate and repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 that allowed creation of mortgage-backed securities. But I’m no economist and reasons are far more complex that I could even begin to explain here. The sociological impacts on the neighborhoods however are only beginning to show with abandoned homes that are only making the problem worse. |
Jun 17 |
Zillow is hiringLove dabbling in real estate data? Zillow, the online real estate website is looking for a Data and Analytics Specialist. Although I’m quite well versed in ArcGIS, unfortunately my knowledge of SQL is pretty limited which is one of the important criteria for the position. As Steven Levitt says, if you get the job after reading about it on here, don’t forget to double the value of my home in their database |
Jun 05 |
Economics of SawdustDownturn in the housing market leads to rise in milk prices? Alex Tabbrok at Marginal Revolutions observed this curious correlation in Vermont. Recycling is at the heart of the relationship; who would have thunk! |
May 30 |
Rent or Buy?The NY Times Rent or Buy Calculator compares the cost of renting versus buying a home. Enter your monthly rent, projected price of buying a house, mortgage rate, and property tax and the calculator will spit out the number of years after which buying is better than renting. An extremely useful tool especially in today’s sliding housing market where some homeowners are experiencing negative equity. But as with any online tool, don’t replace it with the experience of a human. Trust but verify. |