Lego Island

Step back, Jacobsen, Utzon, Kjaerholm, Wegner, and all you other great Danes. When it comes to Danish design domination, the unrivaled champ is undoubtedly the almighty plastic brick—Lego.

Billund, Denmark, could easily be considered the prefab capital of the world: Each year, its factories pump out more than 19 billion modules, which are sent around the world and pieced together by more than 400 million people.

Billund is, after all, the home of Lego, one of the most intensely used building blocks on Earth. The company’s 2,350 different pieces and 52 colors form a nearly infinite number of combinations—–and for as many purposes, from creating a land of shipwrecked pirates to assembling an actual kitchen island in a Paris apartment.

The idea for Simon Pillard and Philippe Rossetti’s Lego kitchen sprouted five years ago, when Pillard put 500 blocks and a day’s worth of work into building a Lego-legged chair. The designing duo—–who create products together under the name Munchausen—–recently gave the seat a colorful companion. They covered their kitchen island—–a simple wooden block—–with 20,000 Lego pieces.

“We design mostly in black and white,” Rossetti says of their professional work. “Our apartment is our place for emotional release, the liberation of colors.”

This and more via Dwell

eco friendly house at HousingWatch.com

eco friendly house at HousingWatch.com

Energy Efficient Architecture

Energy waste is prevalent in every aspect of today’s society. Its consequences are irreversible and could prove catastrophic. As our nation’s leaders come together to work towards ending our world’s destructive path, one couple is surrounding their lives and working towards the fight for energy efficiency, via architecture and interior design. In our mini documentary “Reconstructing Earth,” we introduce you to Tryggvi Thorsteinsson and Erla Dogg Ingjaldsdottir, their construction efforts and plans for a more energy efficient world.

Reconstructing Earth - Energy Efficient Architecture from Einar Thorsteinsson on Vimeo.

Realtor tips for buying, selling homes

Buying a home is one of the biggest financial commitments people can make. Owning a home can be the ticket to a secure financial future, or it could very well end up pushing some into financial ruin.

Spring is the prime time for people to buy and sell homes. For those who are thinking about taking that leap into homeownership, here is some advice from experts such as Edward A. Mermelstein, co-founder of the international real estate law firm Edward A. Mermelstein & Associates in New York.

• Study: Buyers must do their homework. Review the closing numbers of comparable homes in the neighborhood. That information can be found on Web sites such as Zillow.com, Propertyshark.com and StreetEasy.com. Mermelstein points out the numbers available generally trail the market by three months.
• Credit: Clean up the credit score before applying for a mortgage, the experts advise. A bad credit score may not just affect your rates, but could prevent you from getting a mortgage.
  
• Go low: Mermelstein suggests buyers offer 10 percent to 15 percent below the current market price. Pricing is generally based on contracts signed three to four months before the listed price and don’t necessarily reflect the most current real estate climate.
  
• Get pre-approved: Buyers should get the mortgage pre-approved, Mermelstein recommends. You will not only know what the purchase parameters are, but you might be able to negotiate a better purchase price because you can close with more certainty and more quickly.
  
• Background check: Check the reputation of the builder and sponsor of a new home. This information can be obtained by the Better Business Bureau or by an Internet search. Ask friends who have used the builder.
  
• Title search: Be sure that any new additions or construction to an existing home has been properly filed with the local municipality and has been approved.
  
• Inspections: Buyers must always do an inspection. Hidden problems, such as mold or termites can torpedo the value of your home.
  
• Hire a lawyer: Mermelstein suggests buyers call your local bar association and ask for a recommendation.
  
• Understand homeownership: Be honest about what owning a home is going to cost you. Homeownership costs include not just the price of the home, but utilities, maintenance, taxes and insurance, according to the Greater Harrisburg Association of Realtors. If you’re buying an older home, it’s even more important to consider maintenance costs or repairs. Can you afford to replace a roof if needed in five years?
  
• Understand forms: Make sure the seller’s property disclosure is properly filled out and that you understand every entry on it, according to the Greater Harrisburg Association of Realtors.

If you’re selling

Selling a home can be a big undertaking and difficult to do in a housing market that is not as robust as it once was.

Still, sellers can do plenty to attract buyers and get the right price for their homes. The Greater Harrisburg Association of Realtors and Keith Sealover, an agent and owner at Keller Williams of Central Pennsylvania in Camp Hill offer sellers the following advice.

• Remove clutter: Place extra “stuff” into storage, according to the association. Buyers want to imagine their furniture in our home. That’s difficult to do if your home is too cluttered.
• Price it right: That means pricing a home at its true market value, according to the association. Price is everything. If you do not price your home correctly in the beginning, it will sit on the market and not sell. Real estate agents can help people put the proper price on their home.
• Clean everything: The association suggestions cleaning the outside of your house, too. Clean up leaves, refresh mulch, trim bushes and trees. Mow the lawn.
• Show plan: When a showing is scheduled at your house, make sure you clean up the house and leave. Cage animals or take them for a walk. When someone is viewing your home, you only have one chance to make a first impression. That starts the moment they drive up.
• Make repairs: Residential homebuyers almost always buy on emotion, Sealover said. That means if the carpet needs to be replaced, replace it.
• Go neutral: Lighter, brighter and boring is better for the resale of a house, Sealover and other real estate agents say. That way, people cannot object to the colors that are there.
• Model showing: To maximize the sale opportunity, Sealover advises sellers to make their home show like a model. That means keeping up curb appeal.
• Right time: Sealover said the midstate housing market has bear periods and bull periods. Sellers who want to get the best price for their homes want to put them on the market during the bull period. That’s the period between February and June, he said. May is the peak of the bull season, he said. The midstate housing bear market generally is between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. Timing can make the difference on price.

  By SHARON SMITH, The Patriot-News

Two Energy Credits To Trim 2010 Taxes

Still smarting from your 2009 taxes? Start whittling the bill for next April.

A good place to begin: two federal tax credits for homeowners who want to save energy, one of which expires at the end of this year. The credits have appeal both for true green diehards and those who are staying put due to housing market doldrums.

The credits took effect in their current form in February 2009. Both offer dollar-for-dollar write-offs against taxes, not just a deduction from income. And unlike many tax benefits, there are no income limits on who can use them.

The smaller benefit, known as the Residential Energy Property Credit, will appeal to a broader swath of taxpayers. It applies to 30% of the cost of retrofitting an existing home to save energy, up to $1,500. That means you have to spend $5,000 to receive the maximum credit. This benefit expires at the end of 2010, and amounts claimed in 2009 count toward the $5,000 total.

Items that qualify include insulation, windows, doors, roofing, hot water heaters and air-conditioning systems. Not included: ceiling fans or window air-conditioning units. Installation costs are permitted for some items but not others (see chart below). The Internal Revenue Service recently said that qualified items installed in an addition to an existing house also are eligible.

The other credit, known as the Residential Energy Efficiency Property Credit, is far more generous but typically requires greater expense and commitment to green living. It is for 30% of the total cost of items such as solar panels, windmills and geothermal heat pumps, and the credit amount is unlimited. It expires at the end of 2016.

Comprehensive information about eligibility is available on the National Association of Home Builders Web site and from the IRS. Retailers like Home Depot and Lowe's also provide useful guides. For a listing of separate state and local energy tax incentives, see www.dsireusa.org.

via WSJ

Foreclosures Hit Rich and Famous

While on a plane headed to New York I finally caught up on my reading of The Wall Street Journal. I came across an interesting article by Craig Karmin and James R. Hagerty.

The rich and famous now have something in common with hundreds of thousands of middle and lower-class Americans: The bank is about to take their homes. Houses with loans of $5 million or more will likely see a sharp rise in foreclosures this year, according to a RealtyTrac study for The Wall Street Journal.
Just this week, a Tudor mansion in Bel-Air belonging to film star Nicolas Cage was in foreclosure auction and reverted to the lender. On Wednesday, Richard Fuscone, a former top Wall Street executive, declared personal bankruptcy, forestalling a foreclosure auction that had been scheduled this week on his 14-acre Westchester mansion. Last month a Manhattan condominium owned by Italian film producer Vittorio Cecchi Gori was sold in a foreclosure auction for $33.2 million.
In February alone, 352 homes nationwide in this category were scheduled for foreclosure auction, the final step before a bank acquisition. That is the largest monthly number of these so-called notices of sale since the financial crisis began. By comparison, in all of 2009, there were 1,312 such notices. Economists say the super-wealthy are among the last to lose their homes in a mortgage crisis because they usually have high savings, better access to credit and other means for staving off foreclosure. But many of them work in financial services and other industries hit especially hard by the crisis, and have seen their wealth shrink in the market crash.
While the numbers are modest compared with foreclosures at other income levels, they suggest the possibility of a sudden spike in bank takeovers of the wealthiest Americans' property. Typically half the notices of sale result in homes being turned over to creditors, though the figure could be slightly lower for the richest Americans who have more financial options, according to Daren Blomquist at RealtyTrac. Big borrowers are more likely to default than ordinary people, according to data from First American CoreLogic. Its loan database, reflecting more than 80% of the overall home-loan market, includes 1,700 loans with balances of $4 million or more. About 14.8% of those loans were 90 days or more overdue at the end of January, compared with 8.7% for all home loans tracked by First American. Sam Khater, a senior economist at First American, said the bigger borrowers may be more prone to stop making payments when they have lost all their home equity. Mr. Fuscone, Merrill Lynch's one-time head of Latin America, put his mansion up for sale in November, asking $13.9 million. But he couldn't find a buyer. The court had scheduled a foreclosure auction for Thursday for the 18,471-square-foot mansion—with two swimming pools, two elevators, six fireplaces, 11 bathrooms and a seven-car garage. The personal bankruptcy filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court Wednesday temporarily freezes the foreclosure process. Reached by phone, Mr. Fuscone declined to comment. Brokers and real estate tracking companies say that his home is one of the most expensive properties to face foreclosure proceedings yet. The phenomenon is not limited to the New York area. Banks have taken over homes with loans of $5 million or more in Georgia, North Carolina and Colorado, RealtyTrac says. Mr. Cage had tried to sell his 11,817-square-foot Bel-Air property for $35 million but failed to get any offers, said James Chalke, a real-estate agent who had the listing. At a foreclosure sale Wednesday, the property attracted no bids from investors and so was acquired by the foreclosing lender. Annett Wolf, a spokeswoman for Mr. Cage, said he had no comment. A representative of Mr. Cecchi Gori, producer of more than 200 films including "Il Postino" and "Life is Beautiful," said his financial situation is improving. Wealthy people have the means to stretch out the distress process, sometimes for years. "It's very, very difficult for these people to believe they've had such a severe reversal of fortune," says Maggie Navarro, a real-estate agent in Pasadena, Calif. Marc Carpenter, a San Diego-based foreclosure specialist, adds that while it's much harder for potential buyers to get loans, there are also fewer buyers who can pay for top-dollar properties. "The upper end is definitely a lagging indicator," he says. "Now there are people you'd never expect two or three years ago to have problems, who live in multimillion dollar homes."
—Nick Timiraos and Josh Barbanel contributed to this article.

More scam artists posing as landlords

The glut of vacant foreclosed homes has inspired con artists to concoct a new scam: posing as landlords to swindle prospective tenants out of rent and deposit money.

Cases of landlord impersonation have jumped throughout California in the past couple of years, according to sheriffs and legal aid clinics.

"With a lot of foreclosures, the property sits empty for a long period of time," said Assemblywoman Fiona Ma, D-San Francisco. "What we're finding is that scam artists will come in, change the locks and advertise on Craigslist at a very enticing price. They tell people, if you want to get this deal you need to come back soon with cash for the deposit. People give them the money, sign a lease, get keys and a couple of days later the legitimate owner (an agent for the bank) comes and says, 'What are you doing here?' Then they're out whatever cash they've laid out."

But many victims don't report the crime, law enforcement officers say, which makes it hard to know how common it is.

Unfortunately, most victims never get restitution. Because the victims pay in cash, police can't easily track down the perpetrators. One way people could guard against landlord fraud would be to check at the county recorder's office (or online where available) about who actually owns the property, but most people don't have the savvy or the time to do that, she said.

Complete Article at SF Chronicle

Green-building advocates take the LEED

Many four-letter words are being tossed around these torturous days in the world of commercial real estate.

Only one would not offend the polite police. It is, however, prompting considerable debate within companies and among property owners.

That word: LEED, for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.

Since its debut by the U.S. Green Building Council in 2000, LEED has rapidly become the rating standard by which green-building advocates measure commitment to the cause. As "going green" has evolved from a fringe lifestyle choice to a widespread initiative, even at work, the pressure has grown for building owners to at least consider LEED certification.

So landlords crunch numbers and evaluate operations to assess whether a LEED rating - from simple certification to silver, gold or platinum, the highest level - is worth the cost and effort.

For cash-squeezed commercial-property owners, never have those calculations been so important. With the recession, landlords are struggling to retain tenants and make mortgage payments as demand for office space - and, consequently, rental income - has dropped.

Then again, green-building advocates contend the time is fast approaching when not having a LEED-certified building could hamper a landlord's efforts to attract tenants.

View Full Article by Diane Mastrull

Los Angeles Top 40

"Los Angeles is a diverse city filled with green space, urban space and all different kinds of people, incomes and tastes. Although this can make for a disparate social scene, it makes architecture really interesting. See some of the top homes as voted on by Los Angeles Times readers in their new best hits list."

LA Times Top 40

Walk appeal. Homes in walkable neighborhoods sell for more: study

Homes located within walking distance of amenities such as schools, parks and shopping aren't only more convenient for their owners, often they're also worth more than homes in neighborhoods where driving is the rule, according to a new study released Tuesday.

The report looked at 94,000 real-estate transactions in 15 markets. In 13 of those markets, higher levels of "walkability" were directly linked to higher home values.

Controlling for other factors including a home's size, the number of bathrooms and bedrooms, age, neighborhood income levels, distance from the Central Business District and access to jobs, the study found that a one-point increase in Walk Score is linked to an increase in home value between $500 and $3,000, depending on the market, according to the study.

The premium for homes in neighborhoods with above-average Walk Scores ranged from $4,000 to $34,000, according to the report.

Click here for Full Article via Market Watch