Work-Site Thefts Rising
Builders in Florida are typically adding as much as 2% to the cost of a new home to cover losses from construction site thefts, according to the Florida Home Builders Association. The rise in thefts has been particularly big in Central Florida, where about 28,450 homes were built between March 2004 and March 2005. In Claremont, Fla., one of Lake County’s fastest growing cities, there has been a 32% increase from 2003 to 2004, according to the police. Larger home builders, such as Centex Homes, often hire off-duty police officers to patrol work sites, but small builders find the $25-an-hour expense too high. The perpetrators are sometimes workers coming in at night and stealing appliances they installed during the day, and with as many as 30-40 contractors going to a construction site, detectives say it is often difficult to determine who should and should not be there. Thieves are now even operating in the middle of the day. “They treat us as a Home Depot store,” said Frank Beaty, a production manager for Banyan Homes in Clermont, where criminals have hit the majority of his work sites. (www.orlandosentinel.com)
Orlando Sentinel (7/18/05); Martin E. Comas
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Alarms Fortify Secure Feeling
Despite a decline in burglaries, electronic security systems are gaining in popularity among home owners, largely because of a significant decrease in their cost over the past 15 years. In 1990, an alarm system cost an average of $1,509, according to J.P. Freeman Co., a Connecticut-based research, consulting and services firm, and the cost fell to about $1,000 by 1999. Today, a system can cost $95, with the buyer signing a $30-a-month monitoring contract. About 32% of homes in the U.S. have security systems today, up from 2% in 1979 and 20% in 1992, Freeman says. Unlawful or forcible entries into homes have declined from 110 per 1,000 households in 1973, to 84 per 1,000 in 1983, 58.2 in 1993 and 29.8 in 2003, according to the annual National Crime Victimization Survey conducted by the Justice Department. In his research on home security since the early 1990s, Simon Hakim, an economics professor at Temple University, has found that homes without security systems are about three times more likely to be broken into and they sustain about $400 more in thefts. (www.washingtonpost.com)
Washington Post (7/23/05); Rebecca R. Kahlenberg
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Hot Housing Market Opens Doors for Fraud
Mortgage fraud, which is often committed against working-class and poor Americans attempting to become home owners, is “pervasive and growing,” thriving on “collusion by industry insiders,” according to the FBI’s Financial Crimes Report for May. Suspected major mortgage finance violations reported by financial institutions increased from 4,225 in 2001 to 17,217 last year, and the money lost in that fraud has doubled in just the last year. “We’ve never seen so many schemes and such complexity to the fraud,” said Sarah Ludwig of the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project, which has helped lead investigations into predatory lending in New York. “Everyone works to defraud: the broker, the appraiser, the attorney and the inspector. Before a home owner knows it, they are in way over their heads.” The fraud includes deed thefts in which overly burdened home owners are persuaded to temporarily surrender the title to their house so that an “expert” can straighten out the mortgage. The “expert” then resells the house to the owner at a vastly inflated price, or simply evicts them. Property flippers are buying foreclosed homes and using false appraisals to mark them up by $100,000 or more. (www.washingtonpost.com)
Washington Post (7/29/05); Michael Powell
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The Push to Turn Men Into Appliance Shoppers
With recreation or media rooms in more than a third of the new homes now being built, according to NAHB, up from less than 10% a decade ago, appliance manufacturers and retailers are targeting male consumers with a broad array of appliances, from refrigerators to televisions. Using a sports tie-in, this fall Avanti Products plans to start displaying its refrigerators with huge magnetic panels featuring the logos of Nascar stars to college teams. Hannspree California Inc. has a new line of televisions that look like baseballs, basketballs and golf balls. The baseball TVs come wrapped in Major League-quality horsehide. For motorcycle enthusiasts, refrigerators from Heartland Appliances’ new $5,800-$6,500 Ten50 line come with black doors that feature huge, Harley Davidson-style flames. Some have handles that look like motorcycle handlebars and chrome frames that resemble car grilles. Electrolux AB’s Frigidaire is selling a “Beverage Center” that can hold and dispense a 16-gallon keg of beer from a spigot on the front. (www.wsj.com)
Wall Street Journal (7/14/05); Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan
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People With Disabilities Face Discrimination in Up to Half of Rental Inquiries in Chicago
A Chicago-based study conducted by The Urban Institute for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, “Discrimination Against Persons With Disabilities — Barriers at Every Step,” has found that hearing-impaired people were discriminated against about half the time when they used a telephone-operator relay to search for rentals. People using wheelchairs faced discrimination about a third of the time when they visited rental properties, the study found. The study highlighted that people with disabilities frequently have their requests denied for reasonable modification and accommodation necessary to make the available housing fully accessible, and nearly 20% of the housing providers with on-site parking refused to make reasonable accommodation of providing a designated accessible parking space for a wheelchair user. At least one-third of the rental properties advertised in the Chicago area were not accessible to people in wheelchairs. “We would all like to think we have made more progress in educating landlords about the Fair Housing Act, but this study paints a different picture of the problems faced by people with disabilities,” said HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson. He added that HUD intends to educate consumers and landlords about the rights of disabled individuals. (www.rismedia.com)
RISMedia (7/26/05); Beth Bresnahan
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The Quest for Quiet
Beating out crime and litter, noise is the top complaint people have about their neighborhoods, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In the annual Home Features Survey from the National Association of Realtors®, 65% of the respondents cited soundproofing as an important or extremely important home feature. The survey found that 38% of respondents said they desired less noise throughout the home, while 48% identified their bedrooms as the most important area for quiet. Owners who are concerned about noise are finding that builders and architects are increasingly receptive to working with them to reduce the problem when building a new home or soundproofing an existing one. Home owners who replace hollow-core doors with solid-core versions can reduce interior noise by up to 50%, according to Chris King, marketing manager for interior doors for Jeld-Wen. Pete Della Pietra, project manager for Natelli Communities in Gaithersburg, Md., recommends installing thicker-than-normal drywall in certain rooms, double-pane windows and underlayments beneath tile or carpeted floors. (www.washingtonpost)
Washington Post (7-30-05); Dan Rafter
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Speculators Seek Loopholes
As developers crack down on investors who are buying condominiums to flip them for a higher price, speculators are turning to loopholes such as owning units under limited liability corporations or claiming them as second homes. Savvy speculators who are buying “are quite explicit to say it’s not an investment,” said Jack Karabees, director of sales for Hudson Capital. “It’s a loophole in a way. You could have seven second homes.” Speculators can be caught when property records and mortgage filings are checked by lenders. Buyers who are going through the process of setting up an LLC are being told that they will have to close on the property first before it can be resold and that having an LLC doesn’t necessarily mitigate personal liability in the eyes of some lenders. Builders also can refuse to sell their units to corporations and LLCs, which don’t have the same rights as individuals to buy property, according to one legal researcher. (www.southflorida.bizjournals.com)
South Florida Business Journal (7/22/05); Susan Stabley
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L.A.’s Lofts Lure What Downtown Has Lacked: Residents
If current housing trends continue, the Los Angeles Downtown Center Business Improvement District expects to double its estimated population of 24,000 by 2008. Driving the influx of residents into the downtown’s historic core is the transformation of the upper floors of vacant, century-old banks and Art Deco headquarters into luxury lofts and condominiums. Of 50 historic buildings identified as candidates for housing five years ago, 44 have already been converted or will be soon, according to the Los Angeles Conservancy. The residential development has spurred interest in more services, with a chain grocery store being built downtown for the first time in 50 years. Another $1.8-billion project will feature a park, gourmet store, entertainment and 2,000 housing units. (www.csmonitor.com)
Christian Science Monitor (7/18/05); Sara B. Miller
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