Filed under: Housing

If you live in Philadelphia’s Society Hill, Atlanta’s Grant Park, or Dallas’s University Park, (and if you’re the type who doesn’t pay much attention to what’s going on in the world), you might be tempted to ask, “Housing slump? What housing slump?”

That’s because you live in one of the most lucrative neighborhoods in the U.S., as listed by Forbes. Neighborhoods in 15 major metropolitan areas made the list because they experienced the greatest increase in home sales prices since 1990 — between 300% and 4,000%. Many were downtrodden areas that benefited from an influx of development. A few others were already among the most upscale neighborhoods in the nation, and have thus far resisted the recent housing slump. For example:

• Bucking the Florida real estate downturn is Miami Beach’s City Center, with its mega-mansions with built-on docks. The 2006 median home sales price was $1.64 million, up 1,532% since 1990.
• Chicago’s Wicker Park benefited from an influx of young urban professionals and rehabbers. The 2006 median home sales price was $575,525, an increase of 1,870%.
• San Francisco’s Western Addition neighborhood is among the fastest growing in U.S. The 2006 median home sales price was $1.38 million, an increase of 522% since 1990.
• New York’s uptown neighborhood around 149th Street and Riverside drive features massive brownstones and federal townhouses. Its 2006 median home sales price was $774,708, up 4,391%.

See the article at Forbes.com for the complete list.

Share This

Share This

An anonymous reader alerts us to a story about efforts to alter the United States’ space exploration plans to focus on asteroid missions rather than a lunar base. Scientists, astronauts, and former NASA division directors will be meeting next month to develop an alternative to the Bush administration’s Vision for Space Exploration. We have previously discussed the possibility of a manned asteroid mission. Quoting: “Numerous planetary managers told Aviation Week & Space Technology they now fear a manned Moon base and even shorter sorties to the Moon will bog down the space program for decades and inhibit, rather than facilitate, manned Mars operations–the ultimate goal of both the Bush and alternative visions. The first lunar sortie would be flown by about 2020 under the Bush plan. If alternative-vision planners have their way, the mission could instead be flown to an asteroid in about 2025.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Share This

Share This

Weather Storm writes “Weather information from thousands of personal weather stations are being used for weather forecasting by several private and government agencies, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Department of Homeland Security (DOH). The Citizens Weather Observation Program (CWOP) was created by a few amateur radio operators experimenting with transmitting weather data with packet radios, but it has expanded to include internet-only weather stations as well . As of September 2007, almost 5,000 stations world-wide reported weather data regularly to CWOP’s FindU database. The weather data is forwarded each 15 minutes to NOAA’s Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System (MADIS), checked for temporary and spatial consistency, than utilized by personal forecast models and internal forecast verification programs. In a Febuary 2007 report (pdf) DOH listed CWOP as a national assets to the ‘BioWatch’ Network, stating that data from personal weather station could be useful in weather forecasts for perilous releases. In 2007, the FindU server received 422,262,687 weather reports which is a 29.5% increase over 2006.” They certainly come in stylish shapes.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Share This

Share This

Iddo Genuth writes “Researchers at the University of East Anglia are working to develop computerized lip-reading systems. Lip-reading is extremely hard for humans to master, but a software-based system has several benefits over even the most highly trained expert. The ultimate goal of the project is to convert lip-read speech into text. ‘Apart from being extremely helpful to hearing-disabled individuals, researchers say that such a system could be used to noiselessly dictate commands to electronic devices equipped with a easy camera - like mobile phones, microwaves or even a car’s dashboard. England’s Home Office Scientific Development Branch … is currently investigating the feasibility of using lip-reading software as an additional tool for gathering information about criminals or for collecting evidence.’”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Share This

Share This

For those in need, there’s a place known for friendliness
San Francisco Gate - When they first opened A Friendly Place, Lyons and O’Marie intended it to be transitional housing for women recovering from drug and alcohol addiction. To serve that need, they maintain 26 beds for women who are referred to them by substance abuse

For horse lovers, Calgary, Canada, has it all
San Francisco Gate - Even the housing market is taking off - a rarity at a time when home sales are slumping across most of the continent. Amid all of this growth, one of Calgary’s biggest industries is a throwback to the days of the Old West: horses. Every summer (this

Builder reworks Route 114 project
Boston Globe - The developer who has proposed to build upscale housing for seniors on 23 acres along the Ipswich River will present a formal agreement to the Planning Board on Tuesday that would limit the size of the project and outline public access to the private

Dozens arrested in gang, gun sweep
Boston Globe - Early Thursday, Roderick Carter, 24, of Dorchester, died after being shot in the Franklin Field housing development. On the same day, a man described as being white and in his 30s was found stabbed to death in a three-family residence on Tuttle Street

Signs grow of a slowing property market in China
International Herald Tribune - Thousands of developers are apt to go bankrupt as bank loans dry up, a result that would please a government bent on slowing economic growth, Churchouse said, but a consequent drop in housing supply could stoke property prices rather than cool them

News Of The Day (And Weekend)
New York Daily News - Spitzer pitched his $400 million inexpensive housing proposal in Bushwick, saying the state has a “moral obligation” to help keep working families in the city. Spitzer and his parents blew the governor’s own contribution limit to help failed AG

UK, China boost links on tackling climate change
Forbes - Back home, Brown wants 10 ‘eco-towns’ to be built on former industrial sites, in part to ease the UK’s new housing shortage but also encourage low- and eventually zero-carbon living. The largest project — the Thames Gateway (nyse: GTW - news

Women, power and divorcing Bill Clinton
San Francisco Gate - Our clients who want to leave the business are looking for job training, housing and other services and choices, not for “rescue.” Trafficking is a gross human rights abuse that must be stopped, but the administration needs to comprehend that not all

Housing prices continue to suffer
Chicago Tribune - The most recent data from the closely watched Standard & Poor’s/ Case-Shiller single-family home price index from 20 major U.S. cities showed an overall year-over-year drop of 6.1 percent through October. Only three of the 20 cities showed an

Income annuities more insurance of money for life than investment
Chicago Tribune - Many financial advisers suggest retirees consider using a portion of their savings to purchase a lifetime annuity to cover basic expenses, such as food and housing. Dozens of you had never heard of income annuities, and several said your insurance agent

UAL Corp. bucks downward trend
Chicago Tribune - The company blamed growing competition and a slowdown in the housing market for slumping sales. Shares of Sears Holdings ended at $89.43, less than half their 52-week peak of $195.18. The stock of Boeing Co. fell the most in more than four years on

Mortgage lenders eager to help traditional borrowers
Chicago Tribune - Many subprime borrowers are refinancing into Federal Housing Administration loans that don’t require stellar credit. And other borrowers, say, with mediocre credit scores or not much equity in a home can refinance, too. In those cases, it just might

Helping the Mentally Ill Includes Teaching Them to Be Assertive
The Ledger - Polk County has too few housing and transportation options, he said, but there’s tiny, other than lobbying, that local mental health clients can do to change that. His most active client-based group is trying to dispel misconceptions about mental

Alliance stands up to NU
Boston Globe - Northeastern officials maintain that the benefits deal, signed months after construction began, does make significant contributions, including tens of thousands of dollars in scholarships for residents of nearby housing projects. Moreover, they point

Fast economic fix urged
Baltimore Sun - WASHINGTON - Acknowledging the toll taken by a housing slump and lagging consumer spending, President Bush urged Congress Friday to rush one-time rebates to taxpayers and tax incentives to businesses to give the nation’s economy a “shot in the arm

Share This

Share This

BobB passed us a link to a NetworkWorld article, exploring the ongoing realization in business circles of the dangers on the internet criminals pose. The piece raises the possibility that criminal elements are gaining access to US research labs in an effort to ferret out corporate and governmental information. One institute referred to in the article states: “Economic espionage will be increasingly common as nation-states use cyber theft of data to gain economic advantage in multinational deals. The attack of choice involves targeted spear phishing with attachments, using well-researched social engineering methods to make the victim believe that an attachment comes from a trusted source.” We just recently discussed possible hacker involvement in several municipal blackouts.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Share This

Share This

Filed under: Products and services, Management, Competitive strategy, Employees, Sears Holdings (SHLD)

I like Eddie Lampert and I like those Sears stores. I like Craftsman tools and I (sort of) also like the Kmart part of Sears Holdings (NYSE: SHLD).

For those who might be confused as to what Eddie is doing with his potential company “break up,” he’s taking a distressed operation and laying it directly at the feet of the rubes who have screwed it up. It’s a tactic that I myself would employ. Eddie Lampert is the somewhat silent watchful type, observant to a fault. He’s a “big picture” thinker in the classic style. He plans and plots and weighs. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

You see, Eddie “Golden Boy” Lampert isn’t the kind of fellow who’ll just blindly clear the decks of seasoned personnel in an effort to generate profit. If such were the case, we’d have seen way more of those pink slips flying long before now. I believe that by fracturing the company structure and by giving more divisional independence, he is now setting the stage for some timely and precise head-chopping down the road.

Eddie Lampert, worst CEO of 2007? Not in my book, not by a long shot. Yes, perhaps if you measure things strictly in growth dollars, Sears Holdings looks pretty ugly right now, but there’s far more to the retail game than just rapid growth. Give the man some time to reveal his hand, one carefully picked card at a time. Besides, Eddie Lampert doesn’t hold much regard for judgment by share price alone, and frankly my friends, neither do I.

Share This

Share This