No other American industry has been as decimated by the current “Great Recession” than the new home-building industry. Not only did thousands of small (5 to 50 homes/year) builders go bankrupt, but many of their vendors failed too. Those that survived contracted, terminating hundreds of thousands of workers. Home building employment (builders plus trades contractors), reported in December 2010, now stands at 2.03 million (569,000 builders and 1.47 million in associated trades). This places the total net job loss since the peak of 3.5 million in 2006 at 1.42 million. This number does not include losses in businesses associated with new home building and remodeling, such as retail, finance, real estate and furniture manufacturing. What other American Industry has lost this many jobs? If only the new home-building industry had the political clout (and union connections) of the new car industry which, when faced with the loss of 250,000 jobs, got $75B in bailouts from the Federal Government. Read more…
(New partnership targets offenders in the multi-billion dollar underground economy)
SACRAMENTO, CA – The Contractors State License Board (CSLB) already is seeing results from a new multi-agency partnership that targets individuals who are breaking the law and making it increasingly difficult for law-abiding licensed contractors to compete for business. CSLB estimates that on any given day, tens of thousands of licensed contractors and unlicensed operators are breaking the law and contributing to the state’s underground economy. These individuals and companies will be at the top of the Labor Enforcement Task Force (LETF) target list. Read more…
It’s mind-numbing but 61% of Nevadans who have a mortgage are now underwater, owing more for the home than the home is worth. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Nevada is also the only state in the country in which total homeowner debt is actually higher than the total property value of owned homes — nearly two in three mortgaged homes are underwater. As of the end of 2011, 13.4% of mortgages were either already in the foreclosure process or more than 90 days delinquent on their payments.” Click here to see the other 9 states with the most underwater mortgages. Read the full story here: http://247wallst.com/2012/03/06/states-sunk-by-underwater-mortgages/2/
In 2010 The Irvine Company created Irvine Pacific Homes to build new homes in Irvine. Was this a big bold move on the part of The Irvine Company or was it a calculated intelligent strategy based upon good data? Seems more like the latter. It turns out that when it comes to a paucity of new homes and a surfeit of demand that Orange County has the second strongest new home demand in the country. Read full story Here
On March 7th Larry Webb shared his lessons learned as a homebuilder with an Urban Land Institute Leadership group. For anyone who has never heard Larry speak you must know that he is “beyond” engaging. The New Home Company is going to target the 2nd Move-up homebuyer market and also build for the multi-generational family. Read more…
By Paul Mayeski
If your Community is less than ten years old, there is a good chance that your Governing Documents require an inspection of all Association assets at one-year or three-year intervals. The purpose of the inspection is to find out if the Association Property is being maintained at a level sufficient enough to allow the assets to reach or exceed the “useful life” as determined by the Department of Real Estate (DRE) or your Reserve Analyst. Read more…
Commentary by J. David Rauch
Associa and FirstService began rolling up management firms approximately 15 years ago; the pace has picked up in the past 10 years, especially in California where FirstService acquired Merit Property Management in 2007. In the past 8 years Associa has acquired Massingham, NN Jaeschke, Equity, Professional Community Management (PCM) and, most recently The Prescott Company, among other large well-known California HOA management companies. An estimated 60,000 community managers from approximately 10,000 different management companies manage about 70% of the current 314,000 HOA’s in the US. There are 25,000,000 HOA homes housing 62,000,000 people in these HOA communities. Read more…
SB 459 became law January 1, 2012. The bill mandates that any person (manager or management company for example when advising their HOA client) who, for compensation, knowingly advises an employer to treat an individual as an independent contractor to avoid employee status shall be jointly and severally liable with the employer if the individual is not found to be an independent contractor. Read more…
The Fifth District Court of Appeal has eliminated a common tactic by the plaintiffs’ bar to avoid SB 800’s prelitigation right to repair. In Baeza v. Superior Court of Kern County (Castle & Cooke), lawyers representing both original and subsequent purchasers of homes that are subject to SB 800 claimed that the builder failed to comply with certain disclosure requirements contained in SB 800 (Civil Code section 912) and therefore the builder should lose its right to repair. Read more…
Traditional incandescent light bulbs are about to be switched off. The federal Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 set light bulb efficiency standards that will soon prevent the manufacture and importation of most incandescent bulbs. That has created uproar among many fans of traditional bulbs who complain about the cost, harsh tones, possible dangers and other drawbacks of the new bulbs. What you need to know… Read more…
