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editor
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 Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2005 5:13 pm Post subject: Condominium Gambles |
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WELCOME!
Condominium Gambles:
British Columbia
Magazine Subscription
| Quote: | The real estate doctrine of caveat emptor (buyer beware) makes home buying one of life's biggest risks but when it comes to shared ownership in a condominium corporation - especially in 'Super, Natural British Columbia, Canada' - the odds appear to be stacked against the buyer.
Check out item no. 3 in the e-mail from Ray B. we found July 11/05 under Watchdog Forum at http://www.bccondos.ca, a website devoted exlcusively to condominium construction failures locally referred to as 'leaky condos', which apparently account for a sizeable portion of the housing stock on Canada's Left Coast: |
| Quote: | | Some of us realize that yes, it is a gamble, but we gamble that even if the repairs eat up the equity, if we got the place for cheap, we are in effect, borrowing money to buy the place at the value it will be after repairs. We have seen most leaky condos that were repaired increase in value. (emphasis added) |
| Quote: | Unbelievably, Vancouver is held up as a model of good housing construction by the United Nations and, as such, will show the world how it's done as the city plays host to the third World Urban Forum (WUF)3 in June, 2006.
Nor is the condo gamble limited to leakers in coldest Canda. A forum called Worldwide Condos indicates similar debacles in New Zealand, Australia and Southeast Asia. We shudder to think of the multi-unit, wood-frame housing boom currently underway in Ireland. |
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| Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2005 8:47 am Post subject: |
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Tough new consumer protections allow UK homebuyers to hedge their bets against defects:
Devon Life
Magazine Subscription
Home Information Packs
Robert Paice, Partner at Hooper & Wollen,
looks at the thorny question of Home Information Packs
May, 2005
| Quote: | I think I may have referred to the proposed introduction of Home Information Packs in a previous article written in Devon Life, but the Housing Act 2004 introduces Home Information Packs from 1st January 2007. From this date, estate agents and others marketing homes for sale will be required to have a Home Information Pack and to provide copies to potential buyers on request...
The legal and estate agents professions have been waiting with baited breath for regulations, due to be published during the course of April this year, which the Home Information Packs will have to comply with. It is anticipated that these regulations will stipulate what the Home Information Packs must contain. At present, it is thought they will be in two parts. The first part of the Home Information Pack will contain the Home Condition Report which will be prepared by accredited home inspectors and will be produced in a prescribed form ... The regulations, the publication of which is awaited, should set out the certification scheme for home inspectors and the electronic register of Home Condition Reports. Those regulations hould also set out a scheme for approving an estate agent's redress formula. (From the back page of the May, 2005 issue) |
Our view:
| Quote: | | The electronic register of Home Condition Reports - truly a stroke of genius, in our view. And look at this - a public office under the auspices of the Deputy Prime Minister, no less, which is listed with helpful links and full contact information. Should we offer praise? Should we tell B.C. Billies how the professionals deal with property legislation in these days of substandard construction? Let's do! |
More criticism of new Home Information Packs:
COUNTRY LIFE
Magazine Subscription
Country View
How many houses are enough?
Existing housing stock can give first-time buyers
a piece of the property pie
By John Martin Robinson
May 11/06
| Quote: | | David Cameron recently addressed the perceived problem of inequality between those who own houses and those who find it difficult to get on the property ladder. He pointed to high levels of Stamp Duty, Gordon Brown's proposed development tax (which will add 6,000 pounds to the price of every new house) and the useless compulsory Home Information Packs costing 1,000 pounds each. (emphasis added) (-- p. 93) |
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editor
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| Posted: Sat Nov 12, 2005 3:20 pm Post subject: |
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...and gambling developers
Business 2.0
Magazine Subscription
The next real estate boom
In the coming 25 years, the biggest wave of development since World War II will turn America's major metro areas into giant "megapolitans" teeming with opportunity. Want to get in? We've found some strategies that are already paying dividends.
By Paul Kaihla
November, 2005
| Quote: | Nearly 20 years ago, Mike Ingram, almost broke, took the gamble of a lifetime. He packed his wife and six children into an Oldsmobile and U-Haul and drove 1,000 miles to Phoenix, leaving his life in Oklahoma City in the dust. The company that Ingram had run, a distributor of veterinary drugs and garden supplies, provided a decent living, but after Ingram's bank went belly-up, like many others at the time, Ingram decided to sell the business. Then 42, Ingram was prepared to take a flier on a tantalizing Plan B: buying plots of desert land in places like Arizona that were on the verge of a building boom. "Phoenix was set to go," Ingram says, "and so was I."
Today, Phoenix is still going. And Ingram, the dust-bowl migrant, is still cementing his reputation as one of the Sun Belt's most prescient speculators. The investments he scraped together in the mid-1980s for tracts of farmland - including a ranch once owned by John Wayne - helped ignite a suburban building boom that that hasn't let up...(First two paragraphs of the story at p. 84) |
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| Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2006 12:57 pm Post subject: |
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Wanna' bet these so-called 'sustainable communities' in China are built on toxic waste dumps?
Harper's
Magazine Subscription
Green Dawn
In China, sustainable cities rise by fiat
By Mara Hvistendahl
February, 2006
| Quote: | These high-density five- and seven-storey apartments nestled in southwest Tangye will house the villagers the city is displacing. Other sustainable communities around the world have had trouble attracting residents, and once people come, glitches in experimental technology and layout have made it difficult to retain them. Despite a regional housing shortage, it took four years to fill the 800 units of an eco-development in Malmo, Sweden, and only 100 of a hoped-for 5,000 residents have settled in a sustainable "utopia" in Arizona. (emphasis added) But the Chinese government will use its imposing will to ensure that its eco-cities are filled. China's urban growth agenda involves relocating entire downtowns and building new satellite cities outside existing urban areas. Overall, some 3.6 million Chinese have been evicted in the last decade to facilitate the country's ambitious projects.
...Technically, work on Tangye is still awaiting final approval, but this central road has already been paved and the state press reports that a first phase of construction will be completed in July. Because China can dispense with zoning laws and property rights, real estate projects move so quickly that many of the land-related protests sweeping the countryside occur only as the developments near completion. The government also is not afraid to handle such protests with force. In December paramilitaries fired on villagers who had blockaded a new wind-power plant near Hong Kong - a project praised by environmentalists as a model for mainland China - killing as many as 20. Just as in the economic realm, where China has wed capitalism to authoritarianism, the country has developed its own peculiar style of environmentalism. As many of the world's top eco-designers can now attest, it is a style that gets results. (-- p. 53) |
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| Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2006 10:29 am Post subject: |
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Barron's
Magazine Subscription
Coming home to roost
By Jonathan R. Laing
Feb. 13/06
| Quote: | The red-hot housing market may be fast approaching its date with destiny. Indeed, inside the mortgage trade, much anxiety is being focused on a looming "reset problem." Over the next two years, monthly payments on an estimated $600 billion of mortgages to borrowers with checkered or no credit histories - the "sub-prime" market - may zoom as much as 50% higher, as the two-year teaser rates on hybrid adjustable-rate loans expire and interest payments hit their fully indexed levels.
...Of course, if sub-prime borrowers have enough untapped equity in their homes, they will be able to refinance their loans on somewhat similar terms - the new teaser rates have risen to only 7.5% - and roll the dice for another two years.
But Glenn Costello of Fitch Ratings estimates that at least a quarter of all sub-prime borrowers facing resets may have precious little equity left, even with the huge surge in home prices in the past two years. Many piggy-backed loans to borrow the down payment on their homes, in addition to taking on a conventional mortgage. "For some borrowers, there will just be no loan-to-value gap left," Costello contends. |
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| Posted: Thu May 04, 2006 1:45 pm Post subject: |
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From Losing Streak:
Harper's
Magazine Subscription
The New Road to Serfdom
An illustrated guide to the coming real estate collapse
By Michael Hudson
Information graphics by Nigel Holmes
May, 2006
| Quote: | ...With the real estate boom, the great mass of Americans can take on colossal debt today and realize colossal capital gains -- and the concomitant rentier life of leasure -- tomorrow. If you have the wherewithal to fill out a mortgage application, then you need never work again. What could be more inviting - or, for that matter, more egalitarian?
That's the pitch, anyway. The reality is that, although home ownership may be a wise choice for many people, this particular real estate bubble has been carefully engineered to lure home buyers into circumstances detrimental to their own best interests. The bait is easy money. The trap is a modern equivalent to peonage, a lifetime spent working to pay off debt on an asset of rapidly dwindling value.
Most everyone involved in the real estate bubble thus far has made at least a few dollars. But that is about to change. The bubble will burst, and when it does, the people who thought they would be living the easy life of a landlord will soon find that what they really signed up for was the hard servitude of debt serfdom. (-- p. 40)
...The problem for recent homebuyers is not just that prices are falling; it's that prices are falling even as the buyers' total mortgage remains the same or even increases. Eventually the price of the house will fall below what homeowners owe, a state that economists call negative equity. Homeowners with negative equity are trapped. They can't sell - the declining market price won't cover what they owe the bank - but they still have to make those (often growing) monthly payments. Their only "choice" is to cut back spending in other areas or lose the house - and everything they paid for it - in foreclosure. (emphasis added) (From 20, Negative Equity Traps Debtors, p. 46) |
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| Posted: Mon May 15, 2006 11:35 am Post subject: |
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From Losing Streak:
The Vancouver Sun
Daily Newspaper More Like a Real Estate Flier
Lumber companies face border tax
By Gordon Hamilton
May 9/06
| Quote: | Declining housing starts in the United States mean Canadian lumber companies are facing not only reduced profits but the prospect of a 10-per-cent border tax on exports ot the U.S., according to the Conference Board of Canada.
Profits in the Canadian wood products industry are expected to decline from $3.1 billion in 2005 to $2.2 billion this year and down again in 2007 to $1.9 billion, the conference board's wood products industrial outlook report states. The conference board report forecasts profits to remain the $2-billion range between 2007 and 2010.
Declining housing starts in the U.S. are already showing up and are likely to translate into softer lumber prices, Louis Theriault, director of industrial outlook for the conference board, said in a telephone interview. At the same time, production is expected to decline more than seven per cent over the next two years. Theriault said that as prices fall, companies will likely face either export restraints or a border tax averaging 10 per cent over the next two years.
"The question now is how quickly and how far home-building activity will drop," the report states. (From Business, p. E3) |
| Quote: | B.C.'s leaky condo disaster is entering its third decade. The worst of it is behind us but it is far from over and we are not nearly finished paying for it, or arguing about who is to blame. The human cost of the disaster is not measurable. Hundreds of thousands of British Columbians have been touched by it. For some, it was no more than a financial inconvenience. Their homes leaked, and they paid to repair to them. Others, especially in the 1990s, lost their homes, their savings and their health.
...The financial cost of leaky condos is measurable, but only parts of it are being measured. We do know that the average cost of repairing water-damaged condos has nearly doubled since the Homeowner Protection Office was created. Some figures indicate it has more than tripled. Government and industry sources agree the cost is going up because:
| Quote: | -More and more concrete highrise condo owners are discovering leaks, and they're more expensive to fix than low-rises;
-Low-rise buildings whose owners have put off repairs -- sometimes for years -- or tried to cover up the problem with cosmetic fixes are coming up for repairs with more advanced rot than buildings that were dealt with early;
-Construction costs are rising fast as B.C. rides another major building boom. |
| Quote: | One indicator of per-unit repair costs is the interest-free repair loans provided by the HPO.
"The average value of the loans has been going up quite significantly," said HPO chief executive Ken Cameron, "so it's now in the $60,000-to-$75,000 per unit range, whereas it used to be in the $35,000-to-$40,000 range."
The number of low-rise buildings turning up with building envelope problems is past its peak, but a second wave of leaky condos -- concrete highrise buildings -- is well under way.
"It's not over," said Carmen Maretic, a real estate agent who has been advocating for leaky condo owners for years. "It's very much still a problem.
"People are still dealing with the whole process of evaluating their buildings and going through whether a majority of owners can agree to do repairs." (From Westcoast News, p. B2) |
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| Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 2:44 pm Post subject: |
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Vancouver Magazine
Strata Hell
Condo owners who threaten murder. Treasurers who steal cash. Welcome to the weird world of strata councils
By Steve Burgess
September, 2006
| Quote: | *Dog mapping is just the beginning. In 2002, Drew and June paid $239,000 for a condo in a small building in Kits near West Eighth and Stevens, with only three neighbours. All three were single, fifty-ish women. First skirmish: the couple's decision to install laminate flooring. "The woman downstairs was weeping on the phone," Drew says. "She said they had a bylaw against hardwood floors because of the noise. Well, they didn't yet - but they were thinking about one."
Meanwhile Drew and June's bedroom wall was ballooning out due to water leakage -- "but only on dry days," Drew says. Turns out the upstairs neighbour was watering her plants and storing the hoses on the balcony, where they drained into the couple's bedroom. No action deemed necessary, the council decided. By a vote of 3-1, Drew and June now have a heritage house in New West.
The troubles flow both ways. Good strata councils must also deal with bad owners. Veda lives in Fairview Slopes near Oak and West Eighth. When the building was assessed for envelope repairs of about $700,000, the lone commercial occupant refused to pay. "She thought she bore no responsibility for the residential part of the building," says Veda. It took two years and lots more money just to get the case to court, incurring more debt to the residents.
Renting adds another level of complexity, with both sides unsure of their obligations...
Tony Gioventu is executive director of the Condominium Home Owners Association (scroll down for a heads-up on this outfit). He's heard some horror stories that could be served up with popcorn. A condo development in Maple Ridge, for example, where "the treasurer had a gambling addiction and drained the operating and reserve funds." Or a downtown development where "the treasurer and secretary had credit cards and ATM cards in the name of the strata council, which they used for personal stuff." There have been cases of boozy parties and even donations to political campaigns, all made with strata council funds. "If the strata council won't provide you with financial records and bank statements," Gioventu says, "you can almost guarantee there's trouble." (-- pgs. 73-74) |
| Quote: | | * Dog mapping - a procedure in which each dog's markings are recorded by the strata corporation to ensure prohibited but grandfathered pets are not replaced. Happens when strata councils pass a bylaw to restrict pets beyond a certain size. |
Link to this entry
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| Posted: Thu Aug 31, 2006 12:44 pm Post subject: |
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Lottery for prospective residents in UBC's newest student housing:
That's right. Here's an excerpt from the ad copy:
| Quote: | Marine Drive Residence provides condominium-style units for upper-year and graduate students in furnished shared four-bedroom and studio units.
Contemporary, Fresh, Stylish
Currently home to 550 students, when completed in 2008, our newest residence will welcome 1,600 students. Marine Drive offers furnished studio units and four-person shared units with private bedrooms in the high-rise and low-rise buildings. The west campus location offers easy access to the academic core. Many rooms in the high-rises have wonderful views of the water, mountains, campus and city.
...Contract Term
Marine Drive residence operates as a year-round university residence. Residents who accept an offer to Marine Drive residence will contract for the entire year-round session from September 1 to August 15 of the following year. Residents who accept a new contract for the following year will be able to continue living in their unit after August 15 till the new contract starts. Note that residents of year-round residence are exempt from the annual residence lottery. |
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| Posted: Wed Dec 20, 2006 4:44 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Gambling
Is For Casinos,
Not Condos.
Put your money down
on the place that's going up.
Turnberry's newest place.
| Quote: | Photo of forehead and expertly made-up eyes of
ubiquitous white female magazine model above hand
of five cards plus an inset photo of two large, ugly highrise
towers featuring surround banners that read,
'Now Selling' and 'UnderConstruction Occupancy June 2007'. |
Save the gaming for the
casinos. Turnberry Towers
is under construction
and soaring skyward.
We're a sure thing to have
you living high in the Las
Vegas sky, steps from the
Strip, enjoying Turnberry's
incomparable elegance
and excellence. Plus
Nevada's favorite tax
climate for primary residents.
(Magazine ad from a business magazine
purchased in Canada in 2006). |
If those inspectors ever do decide to nvestigate, here's what they'll find:
Condo owners in Las Vegas might have to pay for developer’s monetary mistakes
| Quote: | Nearly 200 luxury condo owners in the first tower at Turnberry Place, including “Six Million Dollar Man” Lee Majors, may have a mechanics lien filed against them, which would sully their credit record and tie up any sales of their units. Attorney Brian Berman said his client, drywall contractor Malco, is owed about $3 million by Florida-based Turnberry Pavilion Partners in a case that was decided in District Court last year. Judge Valorie Vega signed the findings of fact and conclusions of the judgment in July awarding Malco the money for work on tower one. Berman said Turnberry refuses to pay the judgment. A mechanics lien foreclosure will be filed against each of the owners, with the proportionate share of the judgment divided equally, Berman said. “I fear and suspect this will show up as a black mark on the credit of 186 owners and I wonder if attorneys for Turnberry told unit owners this is what’s going to happen,” he said. Turnberry has decided to appeal the court’s decision.
... Penny Perez, daughter of Malco owner Sal Scialabba, said the 25-year-old business was toppled by Turnberry’s refusal to pay for change orders, loss of production and overtime work. “The project was really mismanaged,” she said. “There were huge obstacles to overcome. The main problem was their architect from Florida had no idea what the county (building) codes were in Las Vegas. Plans were drawn simply wrong. They wanted their schedule. They wanted to sell these units. We were told to go without the information to build.”
Turnberry is fighting other litigation. The homeowners association in tower one filed a $21 million construction defect lawsuit against Turnberry Pavilion Partners in 2004 alleging rain and wind intrusion into their million-dollar condo units on Paradise Road.
More on the Paradise Road development at 'Work continues on Lake Mead Promenade center' by Hubble Smith at the review.journal Oct. 18/04.
A Turnberry resident who requested anonymity said the defects date back to 1999, when the first tower was built. The defect allegations are primarily related to exterior finish and interior surfaces. Also, condo buyers at Krystal Sands, a failed high-rise project that Turnberry bought for about $90 million, have brought a class action lawsuit against the developer for breach of contract. (Excerpt from a report by RISMedia, Aug. 31/06, attributed to the Las Vegas Review-Journal). |
STILL MORE hype from a TV ad Nov. 15/05 comically referred to as the PBS Nightly Business Report.
| Quote: | | JEFF YASTINE: For the last few years, Las Vegas has had the well-deserved reputation as being one of the hottest markets for single-family homes in the country. Less well known is the high-rise building boom that`s beginning to change the skyline of the city`s famous Las Vegas strip. As our series "Las Vegas on a Roll" continues, we look at what`s driving the city to go vertical. These are the sounds people hear inside the Las Vegas strip casinos. But this is the sound you`re more likely to hear outside. It`s a construction boom like no other, with cranes dotting the horizon of central Las Vegas. On the strip, off the strip, it seems high-rise condo towers are crowding into a skyline long dominated by the casino hotels. The high- rise construction trend in Las Vegas is about six years old, but it`s only really taken off in the past two years. And it`s to the point now that, by some estimates, there are more than 50 different tower projects that are either being built, proposed or planned here in the central Las Vegas area. For condo owners like Mac and Frances MacDonald, this is what it`s all about, a penthouse home in the sky, with a view to match. (Excerpt from Las Vegas on a Roll,"-Part 4: The Condo Craze Reaches New Heights) |
Link to this entry
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editor
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| Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2007 10:38 am Post subject: |
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Economist.com
Cracks in the facade
America's riskiest mortgages are crumbling.
How far will the damage spread?
Magazine Subscription
March 22/07
| Quote: | CASEY SERIN knows all about the excesses of America's housing bubble. In 2006 the 24-year old web designer from Sacramento bought seven houses in five months. He * lied about his income on “no document” loans and was not asked for anything so old-fashioned as a deposit. Today Mr Serin has debts of $2.2m. Three of his houses have been repossessed; others could share that fate. His website, Iamfacingforeclosure.com, has become a magnet for those whose mortgages are in trouble.
Mr Serin and people like him are Wall Street's biggest uncertainty just now. How many Americans are saddled with mortgages they cannot afford on houses that are losing value? The answer matters to anyone who bought high-yielding mortgage-backed securities when a booming property market made mortgages look safe. It also matters to investment banks, which packaged the securities and often own subsidiaries that originate mortgages. It may determine whether America's economy falls into recession. It could even affect the outcome of next year's elections.
Most of the damage so far is in the “subprime” mortgage market, which lends to people whose income is too low, or whose credit history too patchy, to qualify for an ordinary mortgage. On March 13th the Mortgage Bankers Association reported that 13% of subprime borrowers were behind on their payments. Some 30 of America's subprime lenders have closed their doors in the past three months. The cost of insurance against default for the riskiest tranches of subprime debt has soared. The worst effects may not be felt until the mortgage payments of many borrowers with no equity in their homes rise sharply.
Is this a mere irritant in America's vast economy, or the start of something much worse? Opinion on Wall Street is divided. Most argue that the mortgage mess, though a blight on anyone caught up in it, will not spread. The number of mortgages at risk is too small for defaults to threaten everyone else. Even if a fifth of the $650 billion of adjustable-rate subprime loans went bad, that would be a blip in the $40 trillion market for debt. If repossessions extended the housing downturn, it would not derail an economy that—housing apart—remains healthy, with unemployment of 4.5% and jobs growing strongly.
Growing numbers of pessimists disagree. They think the subprime squeeze marks the start of a broader credit crunch that could drag the economy into recession. Stephen Roach, the famously gloomy chief economist at Morgan Stanley, recently called subprime mortgages the new dotcoms. Just as the implosion of a few hundred internet ventures in 2000 sparked a much broader stockmarket correction and an eventual recession, so the failure of the riskiest mortgages may distress the rest of a debt-laden economy. |
I'mgoingtojailforfraud.com.
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editor
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2007 11:09 am Post subject: |
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Forbes
Magazine Subscription
Paradise, Slightly Dry
Spokane is no Seattle. But cheap land and favorable taxes are luring entrepreneurs from the costly, congested coasts.
By Mark Tatge
April 23/07
| Quote: | | Downtown Spokane, dowdy and depressed for years, is coming back. A $115 million mall, anchored by Nordstrom and Macy's department stores, has been the catalyst. The historic 283-room Davenport Hotel, closed since 1985, reopened in 2002 after a $45 million restoration. The hotel completed a $40 million, 328-room tower addition in January. Spokane's art deco movie palace has been rescued by private donors who contributed half the $31 million restoration cost. (State and local government kicked in the rest.) It will become home to Spokane's symphony. Developers plan 2,850 new housing units downtown, triple the current number. (-- p. 81) |
Leaky condos like these in Washington state? You bet!
| Quote: | | Our confidence in multi-unit housing owned and (mis)managed as a condominium corporation is not high, to say the least. A Google search of the terms, 'water intrusion litigation Washington state,' yielded a whopping 262,000 hits April 26/07. |
Further proof, if more was required:
| Quote: | Condominium Development (April 2007)
Washington State Bar Association Continuing Legal Education seminar
Course Book
Price: $70.00
Item#: C07707
Topics Include: Risk Management Strategies for Developers • Local Regulation of Condominiums • Condominium Conversions • Declarant Liability for Construction Defects • Condo Associations • Protection of Condominium Unit Purchasers (emphasis added)
Seminar date: April 19, 2007
116 pages |
Link to this entry
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editor
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2007 2:08 pm Post subject: |
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Vancouver Magazine
How to Play the Real Estate Game
The *Density Game
By realty boostersTyee Bridge, James Glave and Michael Harris
April, 2007
| Quote: | Vancouver's response to sprawl and its acidic side effects - urban decay, cloverleaf gridlock, gobbled farms and wetlands - has been a bag of urban renewal tricks, with an emphasis on densely populated, mixed-use neighbourhoods. Thanks to the efforts of municipal savants like former co-director of planning Larry Beasley and marketing geniuses like Bob Rennie, condo living was rebranded from a squalid lowbrow compromise into a pret-a-porter downtown cocktail party, complete with those granite countertops and stainless steel appliances.
In the past 15 years, our downtown population has doubled; the success of our density effort even coined a global urban design buzzword, Vancouverism. Now, at least for a certain upscale, trend-conscious audience, the term density no longer connotes the nasty scratch-and-claw of the urban jungle. It has visionary loft to it, the conceptual shimmer of a halcyon metropolis. A condo, a futon and a latte for every citizen - at least for those who can handle the mortgage.
... Sullivan's initiative makes candid use of the ecological footprint model of UBC community and regional planning professor William Rees.
... You can already see it happening: townhouses in West Vancouver, infill housing in Shaughnessy, Dunbar's shrill but ultimately futile resistance before the steamroller of densification. (emphasis added) (-- pgs. 45-46) |
| Quote: | | *Note: Density here should be read as a comment on the corporate bilge stinking down what ought to be a thoughtful report criticizing steamroller civic approval for more and more and STILL MORE inaccessible, barrier-full, substandard, mismanaged, poorly planned and frequently just plain unwanted by the neighborhood multiunit, multifamily, multistorey condo development - P.U.! |
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Last edited by editor on Thu Jan 22, 2009 5:21 pm; edited 14 times in total |
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editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Sun May 20, 2007 9:29 am Post subject: |
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Harper's
Magazine Subscription
Undoing Bush
How to repair eight years of sabotage,
bungling, and neglect
June, 2007
| Quote: | The other major economic disaster under Bush has been the unchecked growth of the housing bubble, and although this, too, was inherited from his predecessor, Bush in this case deserves an even greater share of the blame. By the start of the Bush Administration, housing (which over the prior 40 years had just kept even with the overall rate of inflation) had on average, and after adjusting for inflation, risen approximately 23 per cent over their mid-'90s levels - a substantial but still containable surge. In 2001, however, when the stock bubble collapsed, Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve Board chairman, seized on the expanding housing bubble as the best tool for boosting the economy out of the recession. He pushed the short-term interest rate down to 1.0 per cent - the lowest level in almost 50 years - and, more important, assured investors of the safety of the housing market, telling Congress in the summer of 2002 that "recent sizable increases in home prices...reflect the effects on demand of low mortgage rates, immigration, and shortages of buildable land in some areas." By 2006, prices were 73 per cent higher than their pre-bubble values, for a total of more than $8 trillion in unsustainable wealth.
What should Bush's successor do to reverse the damage? Unfortunately, once financial bubbles are allowed to develop, there are no easy solutions available. Even if a "soft landing" is possible, the notion that such a thing is somehow desirable does not really make sense. In the case of the housing market, if the bubble is allowed to deflate slowly, then the more than 140,000 people who buy homes every week are still purchasing them at bubble-inflated prices. These are the people who will take the greatest hit when the prices eventually adjust to a sustainable level. (emphasis added) A slow adjustment may well be more harmful for existing homeowners as well. Americans have been borrowing at a record pace against their home equity, pulling out close to $600 billion in the peak year of 2005. They have been willing to draw against their equity because they assumed that prices would stay high and likely move higher. If house prices only adjust slowly, then more homeowners will have drawn down equity based on incorrect expectations about the path of the housing market. (From 6. The Economy by Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic Policy Research in Washington, D.C., at p. 53) |
Link to this entry
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Last edited by editor on Tue Jan 20, 2009 11:13 am; edited 2 times in total |
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editor
Site Admin
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Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Sat Aug 18, 2007 1:23 pm Post subject: |
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B.C. condos 'slip-slidin' away:
Guess why this land was undeveloped until recently?
Well-known flood and drainage woes made building and buying an unacceptable risk at * Coho Creek Estates in Maple Ridge, B.C.:
Negotiations and Love Songs
Audio CD
By Paul Simon
Featuring Slip Slidin' Away
Watch the Youtube.com video
| Quote: | Many thanks to a Wandering Watchdog from Maple Ridge for the heads-up regarding major, costly drainage issues at the complex. Funny, developer Mosaic, with housing projects in both Seattle and Vancouver, doesn't mention drainage issues in its advertsising copy describing what it calls Past Successes. Here's what the ad said when we checked the website Aug. 1/07:
| Quote: | COHO
Pitt Meadows, BC
COHO is a collection of 70 three-storey Georgian-inspired townhomes centrally located in the waterfront community of Osprey in Pitt Meadows. |
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What the experts said:
| Quote: | Development in floodplains and other hazard areas may place people and property at risk.
Predicted changes due to climate change may exacerbate risks associated with spring flooding, landslides and forest fires. In addition, the economic contribution of renewable resource lands such as forests and farms may be impacted by extreme weather conditions.
... Development in forest fire interface areas may increase the risk of property loss and ecosystem degradation. (emphasis added) (From Chapter 5.1 Natural Resources of the Official Community Plan for Maple Ridge, p. 8) |
And again:
| Quote: | FLOODPLAIN HAZARD
The major development constraints facing Pitt Meadows are due to its low-lying topography which creates flood hazard and high water table/drainage concerns. Other constraints are posed by the deep peat and bog soil conditions which may require considerable fill and/or pre-loading prior to any development. The majority of the municipality is within the defined 200-year flood zone. Only the Highlands area and some small areas in the north part of the municipality are outside the floodplain.
3.1 Lands within the floodplain should, as much as possible, be used for non-capital intensive uses such as outdoor recreation or agriculture. Some areas adjacent to the developed highlands may be considered for development subject to the floodproofing regulations of the Ministry of Environment and any other applicable agencies. (emphasis added) (From the Pitt Meadows Official Plan, May, 2000, p. 16) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2967#2967
Last edited by editor on Tue Jan 20, 2009 11:47 am; edited 15 times in total |
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