Articles About Residential

The recent construction industry mantra of “Wait until next year” may be coming to fruition in 2011, according to a recent survey conducted by ENR.  The 1st quarter of 2011 Construction Industry Confidence Index (CICI) survey soared to 51 on a scale of 100, a significant increase from the 43 percent reported in the 4th […]

The Federal Reserve made some serious money in 2010. The central bank’s profit soared to $81.7 billion, a record high, primarily from growing interest earnings on federal agency and government-sponsored enterprise mortgage-backed securities.  The Fed’s balance sheet — which also can be monitored monthly — ballooned to $2.43 trillion, up $193 billion from 2009, as […]

Although analysts are sounding a cautionary note, the number of Americans applying for mortgages rose by 16.1 percent in the first week of March – the largest monthly increase since June of 2009. The activity could be due to investors with money to spend, and not the first-time homebuyers who will play a vital role […]

Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently called for the end of false debate over climate science, saying that we should not assume that China will create green technologies that Americans can adopt and to admit that global warming will impact the globe in coming years. In a speech at the APRA-E Energy Innovation Summit in […]

Canada avoided the collapse in housing prices that devastated American homeowners and the U.S. economy, thanks to tighter financial regulations, the lack of subprime lending and securitized mortgages. Foreclosures are rare.  As a result, Canadian real estate steadily appreciated while property values in Florida, Arizona and other hard-hit American markets tanked. According to James MacGee […]

The Obama administration and the Treasury Department have decided that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — the public-private housing finance model in place for the past four decades – will come to an end, although they pledged to continue backing the agencies’ existing obligations. “The GSE (government-sponsored enterprise) model is dead,” an Obama administration official […]

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is knocking heads with Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI), the new chairman of the House Budget Committee, about how to best control inflation while buying billions of dollars worth of Treasury bonds to build up the economy in a process called quantitative easing 2 (QE2). As the nation’s debt climbs to […]

New-home construction fell 4.3 percent in December compared with November to its lowest level in more than a year to a seasonally adjusted rate of 529,000 starts for 2010.  December saw the lowest level of new home starts since October of 2009, according to Department of Commerce statistics.  Starts ended the year 8.2 percent below […]

Although the Washington, D.C., residential market has held up surprisingly well over the past few years in an environment hammered by unemployment and foreclosures,  there is a question of whether the nation’s capital will spur recovery or if the rest of the country will drag down the local market.  Washington’s relatively low unemployment rate and […]

As Chicago’s longest serving mayor leaves his post in May of 2011, Richard M. Daley leaves a legacy that includes the iconic Bean in Millennium Park to the flower-filled planters that ornament 85 miles of the city’s streets.  Whoever fills his post will find that budget shortfalls resulting from the Great Recession will collide with […]