Costa Pacific Communities was honored by the National Association of Home Builders with four gold awards for its new community, Villebois. Category wins include Community of the Year, Best Logo, Best Website, and Best Product Design of an Attached Home Plan.
For more information on these awards, visit www.thenationals.com. For more information on Villebois, visit www.villebois.net.
Legend Homes was honored by the National Association of Home Builders with two silver Sales and Marketing Awards for the company’s television and radio advertisements, both designed to promote Legend’s new EarthSmart homes.
The television and radio ads feature L.E.S. (Legend EarthSmart), a talking home that explains Legend’s new goal of creating smaller, affordable homes employing state-of-the-art building practices coupled with the company’s strong focus on energy and resource conservation. The ads were created in conjunction with Art4orm.
To watch the award-winning commercials, go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu_yWKFdc_8
From www.realtor.org
After a rising surge from September through November, existing-home sales fell as expected in December after first-time buyers rushed to complete sales before the original November deadline for the tax credit. However, prices rose from December 2008 and annual sales improved in 2009, according to the National Association of Realtors®.
Existing-home sales – including single-family, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops – fell 16.7 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate1 of 5.45 million units in December from 6.54 million in November, but remain 15.0 percent above the 4.74 million-unit level in December 2008.
For all of 2009 there were 5,156,000 existing-home sales, which was 4.9 percent higher than the 4,913,000 transactions recorded in 2008; it was the first annual sales gain since 2005.
Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, said there were no surprises in the data. “It’s significant that home sales remain above year-ago levels, but the market is going through a period of swings driven by the tax credit,” he said. “We’ll likely have another surge in the spring as home buyers take advantage of the extended and expanded tax credit. By early summer the overall market should benefit from more balanced inventory, and sales are on track to rise again in 2010. However, the job market remains a concern and could dampen the housing recovery – job creation is key to a continued recovery in the second half of the year.”
An NAR practitioner survey2 shows first-time buyers purchased 43 percent of homes in December, down from 51 percent in November. Repeat buyers rose to 42 percent of transactions in December from 37 percent in November; the remaining sales were to investors.
The national median existing-home price3 for all housing types was $178,300 in December, which is 1.5 percent higher than December 2008. “The median price rose because of an increased number of mid- to upper-priced homes in the sales mix,” Yun said. It was the first year-over-year gain in median price since August 2007.
NAR President Vicki Cox Golder, owner of Vicki L. Cox & Associates in Tucson, Ariz., said market conditions are challenging in some areas. “There’s a shortage of lower priced homes for sale in much of the country, resulting in multiple bids in some areas,” she said.
“Raw unsold inventory has been trending down. As the market heats up again this spring, buyers may need to be prepared to move quickly on a particular home – the best advice is to begin working with a Realtor® now to be able to use the tax credit and benefit from the increased buying power in the current market,” Golder said.
Total housing inventory at the end of December fell 6.6 percent to 3.29 million existing homes available for sale, which represents a 7.2-month supply4 at the current sales pace, up from a 6.5-month supply in November. Raw unsold inventory is 11.1 percent below a year ago, is at the lowest level since March 2006, and is 28.2 percent below the record of 4.58 million in July 2008.
Distressed homes, which accounted for 32 percent of sales last month, continue to downwardly distort the median price because they generally sell at a discount relative to traditional homes in the same area. For all of 2009, the median price was $173,500, down 12.4 percent from $198,100 in 2008; distressed homes accounted for 36 percent of total sales last year.
According to Freddie Mac, the national average commitment rate for a 30-year, conventional, fixed-rate mortgage rose to 4.93 percent in December from 4.88 percent in November; the rate was 5.29 percent in December 2008.
Single-family home sales fell 16.8 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.79 million in December from a pace of 5.76 million in November, but are 12.7 percent above the 4.25 million level in December 2008. For all of 2009, single-family sales rose 5.0 percent to 4,566,000.
The median existing single-family home price was $177,500 in December, which is 1.4 percent above a year ago. For all last year, the single-family median was $173,200, down 11.9 percent from 2008.
Existing condominium and co-op sales fell 15.4 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 660,000 in December from 780,000 in November, but are 34.7 percent higher than the 490,000-unit pace a year ago. For all of 2009, condo sales rose 4.8 percent to 590,000 units.
The median existing condo price5 was $183,700 in December, up 1.0 percent from December 2008. For all of last year, the median condo price was $176,100, which is 16.1 percent below 2008.
Regionally, existing-home sales in the Northeast dropped 19.5 percent to an annual level of 910,000 in December but are 21.3 percent above a year ago. The median price in the Northeast was $241,700, up 3.2 percent from December 2008.
Existing-home sales in the Midwest fell 25.8 percent in December to a level of 1.15 million but are 8.5 percent higher than December 2008. The median price in the Midwest was $143,200, which is 1.8 percent above a year ago.
In the South, existing-home sales dropped 16.3 percent to an annual pace of 2.01 million in December but are 15.5 percent above December 2008. The median price in the South was $152,000, down 1.0 percent from a year ago.
Existing-home sales in the West declined 4.8 percent to an annual rate of 1.38 million in December but are 15.0 percent higher than a year ago. The median price in the West was $236,000, up 2.7 percent from December 2008.
From www.federalhousingtaxcredit.com
Who is Eligible
Income Limits
Effective Dates
Types of Homes that Qualify
Tax Credit is Refundable
Payback Provisions
From apnews.com
Ben West was scheduled to fly into Haiti’s second-largest city on Jan. 15, to launch a project designed to address a critical problem in a country stripped of as much as 99 percent of its forests.
Haiti needed stoves. Haiti needed stoves because an estimated 800,000 of its residents cook either on an open fire or with an unimproved stove that resembles a baby’s crib with no mattress in it “horribly inefficient,” said West, general manager of the fledgling company StoveTec, a for-profit spinoff of the Cottage Grove nonprofit Aprovecho Research Center.
His trip to Haiti was intended to kick off an effort to put hundreds of thousands of cheap, durable, clean-burning, highly efficient stoves into the hands of as many people as possible for as low a cost as possible.
Then came a 7.0-magnitude earthquake, and “the whole game has changed,” West said.
Now it’s an urgent, emergency Band-Aid project, at least for the short-term, which is why StoveTec has shipped 1,344 cartons filled with flower pot-sized “rocket stoves” that stand a mere 12 inches high but can combust wood and biomass fuels at a scorching 850 degrees Celsius. They’re portable, up to 50 percent more efficient than an open flame and they emit up to 70 percent fewer greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
And they’re an essential component of what people fleeing Port-au-Prince need right now. As many as 25,000 people are scattering out of the city each day and setting up tents in fields on the outskirts, or on the way to Cap Haitien. They have beans and rice distributed by aid workers, West said, but they need to boil water to make it safe, and they need a way to cook that food.
What they need are stoves.
The stoves are being shipped to Miami, where they’ll be loaded onto a container bound for Haiti. Once in the country, representatives from the nonprofit groups Trees, Water and People and the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group will receive the stoves and distribute them to needy citizens, free of charge.
West’s company produces and sells the “rocket stoves” for prices starting at $8 to some of the 3 billion people who cook over an open fire or use unimproved stoves on six continents. He already had put together a partnership between StoveTec and nonprofits based in Haiti, with the aim of 5,000 stoves sold each month.
The company’s cost to manufacture the 12-inch high biomass stoves is about $20, but by funneling money it earns from carbon credit programs into the effort, and selling the stoves to consumers in the United States for about $40, StoveTec can subsidize the venture, getting stoves into the world’s poorest nations for half the production cost. StoveTec can reach 80 percent of the market for these stoves by selling them for $10 apiece, West said.
Selling them, instead of giving them away, makes the effort financially sustainable, but it also fosters entrepreneurial opportunities for distributors and retailers in the target countries and ensures a “buy-in” from customers, West said. People are more likely to use and care for something they had to purchase.
The stoves quickly pay for themselves. The improved fuel efficiency means people save money on expensive charcoal and wood. And tests based on the few dozen units that StoveTec has in Haiti now show even more impressive results than average. Much of what people use for fuel there now is charcoal StoveTec’s stoves can burn wood, charcoal or other biomass such as corn cobs and dung and the stoves in use there now are cutting down on the amount of charcoal needed for cooking by as much as 70 percent, West said.
The plan was to find nonprofits in Haiti that would be exempt from the 35 percent duty on imported goods that could raise the retail cost of the stoves from $10 to $18 apiece, to jump through the necessary hoops to qualify the effort for carbon credits, and to figure out how best to market the stoves to the people.
West’s aim now is to get several hundred thousand stoves into Haiti “quickly,” he said, at a rate of about 5,000 per month.
“People are going into the Dominican Republic, harvesting firewood from there to create charcoal and shipping it illegally across the border to Haiti because they can get over 10 times the price they can in the Dominican Republic for the same fuel,” said Sebastian Africano, stoves program consultant with Trees, Water and People, a Fort Collins, Colo.-based nonprofit that is distributing StoveTec’s devices in Haiti and elsewhere. “Fuel is very expensive there.”
From Forbes.com
The U.S. government has pushed hard to make homeowners out of one-third of Americans who still rent their homes. It introduced and later extended a tax credit for first-time home buyers, and has kept federal interest rates at their lowest levels since the 1940s.
Market conditions are such that now is a particularly good time for some renters to take the hint.
In Portland, San Francisco, Minneapolis and Washington, D.C., the premium to buy–the spread between what you’d spend on renting and what you’d pay each month for a mortgage–is far narrower now than its 15-year average. And economists predict a significant home-price hike in five years. So upgrading will cost much less than usual, and home buyers are likely to get a good return on their investment.
Note that buying isn’t necessarily cheaper than renting in these metro areas. In fact, it often remains a more expensive proposition. But for those determined to own, that investment is a better one now than it normally is.
Take San Francisco. To live here has always required a hefty bump in monthly costs from renting; it’s normally an incredible 296% more expensive to buy than lease a home, and the city’s residents know this. That’s why 42% of them stick to renting. Even though in the third quarter of 2009 the premium was still in the triple digits–233%–it had shrunk by 63 percentage points from the above 15-year average. As with the other cities we’ve highlighted, you’re not getting nearly as good a deal by renting as you might have just a few years ago.
“Rents are falling, but not nearly as rapidly as home prices,” says Ron Witten, founder of Dallas-based Witten Advisors, an apartment market consulting firm. “Part of the reason is a shift away from home ownership toward renting,” he says, in part because mortgages have become harder for many to obtain.
Behind the Numbers
To find cities where it’s a good time to go from renting to buying, we used data from Witten Advisors, which calculated the premium to buy for 42 Metropolitan Statistical Areas across the country using data from the U.S. Census, the National Association of Realtors and a blended average of fixed- and adjustable-rate mortgages from the Federal Housing Finance Agency (which oversees and regulates lenders). We compared the premium in the third quarter of 2009 with the average premium over the last 15 years to find the biggest drops.
We also wanted to pinpoint markets where home buying is a smart investment, so we factored in the five-year forecast in the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index from Moody’s ( MCO – news – people )Economy.com. The cities on our list have some of the biggest discounts on the premium to buy coupled with big projected increases in home prices over the next five years.
One major market we didn’t look at is New York City, another spot where rents have softened less than home prices. Witten Advisors doesn’t track the metro area because accurate historical data on rental costs there is exceedingly difficult to obtain.
Quality of Life, at a Discount
Portland, Ore., makes our list for much the same reason that San Francisco does: It’s a picturesque, culture-driven city with good local services and amenities. The city is still not particularly cheap for buyers–but it’s cheaper than normal.
A family hoping to put down roots there would normally pay a 62% premium to go from renting to buying. In the third quarter of 2009, however, that premium shrank by 16 percentage points. At the same time, Moody’s Economy.com anticipates that home prices will jump 19% over the next five years. That’s partly because, like San Francisco, Portland has strict government limitations on building and a coastal location that keep sprawl in check.
“Portland has one of the most controlled environments in the country in terms of development rights,” says Stuart Gabriel, director of the Ziman Center for Real Estate at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. “Those supply constraints will push prices up.”
Jobs Stability
The presence of jobs–along with strong industries that will keep generating new ones–is a big factor in keeping demand for homes, and therefore home prices, high. The weak national economy has helped reduce the premium to buy for the time being, but where the labor market is relatively healthy, home prices are predicted to shoot up.
In Minneapolis, for example, where large companies including Target ( TGT – news – people ) and General Mills ( GIS – news – people ) have their corporate headquarters (and there’s a large university system), home buyers will only pay 14% more than if they were renting (24 percentage points lower than average), and home prices should climb by 15% in five years.
Similarly, in Washington, D.C., government jobs are plentiful, and anticipated to stay that way. The 6.1% unemployment rate here is well below the national average, which is partly why Moody’s anticipates a five-year jump in home prices of 15%. And, at the moment, the premium to buy is 20 percentage points lower than its usual 57%.
Of course, whether buying or renting is best is ultimately an individual choice, and one driven by a lot more than map coordinates. When subprime lending was rampant, many without the means to buy were encouraged to do so anyway–and it’s no secret how that turned out.
“If there’s anything we should have learned from this housing cycle, it’s that the decision to buy or rent ought to be a personal lifestyle decision,” says Witten. “In part, it’s a question about, ‘Do I want to be a homeowner’ in general, and specifically, ‘Do I want to be a homeowner now, with this economic uncertainty?’”
To claim the credit as part of your 2009 return, you will need: The standard Form 1040 and Form 5405 for the home buyer tax credit.
Any refund for which you qualify will be sent to you.
From federalhousingtaxcredit.com
$8,000 First-time Home Buyer Tax Credit at a Glance
The $6,500 Move-Up / Repeat Home Buyer Tax Credit at a Glance
Homeowners and building industry professionals are invited to attend a workshop on Thursday that offers an introduction to the LEED for Homes program, a leading environmental building certification standard.
LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, was started in 2000 and initially was used in the construction of office buildings. But the LEED for Homes program is tailored to the needs of single-family construction, promoting the design of buildings with low energy and water bills, reduced carbon emissions and healthier indoor air quality than found in standard construction methods.
Randy Hansell, Senior Green Building Consultant for Earth Advantage Inc., will lead the session.
The workshop will be held on Thursday from 8 to 10 a.m. at Earth Advantage National Center, 16280 S.W. Upper Boones Ferry Rd. The class costs $20 for the public, or $10 for active Earth Advantage builders and some others in the green building industry. Advance registration online or by phone is requested.
For more information, contact education@earthadvantage.org or 503-968-7160 x18.
