Blog

Cleveland pre foreclosure homes are getting the attention of the Ohio Housing Finance Agency and Cincinnati-based American Homeowner Preservation.

The HFA has started crafting a special program to help unemployed homeowners after the state of Ohio received $172 million from the Obama administration for its statewide foreclosure prevention programs.

The AHP, meanwhile, will start holding information sessions for its foreclosure prevention program in Cleveland this April. The AHP program focuses on distressed borrowers who owe more than the values of their homes. Under the AHP scheme, homeowners sell their homes and then lease them back. They are also given the chance to buy back their homes at prices much below the amounts of their original mortgages.

Jorge Newbery, director of AHP, said that the AHP scheme is a solution fair to all parties of the mortgage contract. Distressed families are able to stay in their houses, lenders receive payments for the loans they provided, and neighborhoods do not get overloaded with abandoned bank-owned homes.

Newbery added that the AHP scheme is timely as there are now over 7.6 million underwater borrowers across the country, about 37 percent of the 20.8 million mortgage borrowers nationwide. The Cleveland information event in April will enable AHP to help reduce the number of Cleveland pre foreclosure homes.

In 2009, the pace of foreclosures in Cleveland slowed down by 19 percent both from 2008 and from 2007, but the total number of filings still reached 22,430, which was a relatively large number compared to filings in other metro areas.

The Cleveland metro area ranked 59th in a listing of 203 large metro areas based on foreclosure percentages in 2009. People who have pursued their plan to purchase foreclosed homes listings can search properties in the Cleveland area as the inventory of foreclosed homes in the area is still substantial.

Foreclosure activity statewide also resurged in February after declining in January. A total of 11,286 foreclosures were filed in Ohio in February, in addition to the 11,105 foreclosures posted in January.

According to Ohio Governor Ted Strickland and Senators Sherrod Brown and George Voinovich, the federal money allocated to the state will help a large number of Ohio homeowners keep their homes in the midst of one of the worst recessions the country had ever experienced.

With the determination of officials leading the HFA and AHP, it is hoped that the number of Cleveland pre foreclosure homes declines in the coming months.

WASHINGTON–Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), in a GOP primary battle, told Newsweek he was a not a “maverick” a word his own presidential campaign and biographer used to describe him. PolitiFact has the “maverick” McCain history.

The recent pullback in the valuation of Bombardier Inc. has led the Montreal manufacturer being raise to a “buy” late Tuesday at UBS.

Shares in the plane and train maker have fallen 12% since a disappointing fourth-quarter result last week and news that further production cuts for its regional jets may be a possibility in the weeks ahead.

However, Tasneem Azim, UBS analyst, notes that the shares now carry the potential of a 19% upside to her one year price target of $6.50 a share.

“We believe valuation has pulled back  sufficiently to warrant our upgrade of the shares,” she said in a note to clients.

Ms. Azim said the valuation may be still negatively impacted in the near term due to a weaker-than-expected outlook.

But over the next 12 to 18 months, she said the shares offer an attractive risk-reward due to the anticipated gradual recovery of the business jet market and greater profitability in its train division.

Scott Deveau

Virginia’s extremist attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli (R-VA), is threatening the recovery of the American auto industry with new climate denial lawsuits.  Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson has the story.

To the applause of automakers, Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation finalized landmark new fuel economy standards last week, completing President Obama’s campaign promise. Cuccinelli has already filed a lawsuit challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger the public, claiming that hacked “Climategate” emails prove a conspiracy by scientists involved with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to replace real science with “political science.” In response to the new fuel economy standards — the first rules to take into account greenhouse pollution — Cuccinelli is filing yet another lawsuit, according to spokesman Brian Gottstein:

In that motion, the attorney general’s office asked the EPA to reopen its proceedings in light of the recent evidence that the reports the EPA was relying on for its decision contained erroneous and/or unverifiable global temperature and other data. We will file a notice of appeal with respect to today’s ruling.

Cuccinelli’s suit against the science of global warming is baseless, as numerous Virginia climatologists have told the Wonk Room. Furthermore, the auto industry stands fully behind this new program,” as Dave McCurdy, President and CEO of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers has written.

Killing the endangerment finding — as numerous state legislatures, attorneys general, and lawmakers in Congress are trying to do — would destroy the stakeholders’ fuel economy agreement. The United Auto Workers describe that “California and other states have agreed to forgo state-level regulation of tailpipe emissions and abide by the new national standard that will be created by these NHTSA and EPA rules.” If the denier Dirty Air Act efforts go through, UAW explains the “critically important progress” will be “overturned”:

However, the critically important progress that was achieved with this historic agreement will be undermined if EPA’s endangerment finding is overturned. Without this finding, EPA will not be able to proceed with its current rulemaking on light duty vehicles. If the joint rulemaking process collapses, NHTSA has indicated that it will not be able to meet the statutory timetable for implementing any fuel economy increases for the 2012 model year. And in the absence of the EPA standard, California and other states would certainly move forward with their standards, thereby subjecting auto manufacturers to all of the burdens that the one national standard was designed to avoid.

The fears of UAW that multi-state standards would be catastrophic are a self-fulfilling prophecy. Even though the American auto industry can certainly handle multi-state standards, a return to the Bush era of recrimination and lawsuit instead of a focus on competitiveness and innovation would be crippling. Cuccinelli is not only wasting taxpayer money trying to overturn EPA’s scientific finding, he’s trying to dismantle the historic agreement that all stakeholders agree will create American jobs and increase national competitiveness.

Related Post:

• Refuting state AG’s anti-science petition, Virginia climate scientists see “great risk” from greenhouse gases

It took a while — but pretty Brit Kate Middleton may be getting ready to make an honest man out of England’s Prince William.

Our friends across the pond are wetting their velvet knickers over news that William is planning to formally announce his engagement to his longtime love.

The scoop comes courtesy of Tina Brown – former Vanity Fair editor, author, and personal friend and biographer of William’s late mother Princess Diana. Brown claims that an impeccable source tipped her off about this very specific piece of info. According to Brown, aides will deliver the news on either June 3 or 4 and a wedding will follow in November.

Tina writes on her Daily Beast blog: “A high-placed source in royal circles tells me that two days in June have been mysteriously blocked out on the palace diaries – June 3 and 4. They suggest this is a likely date for the engagement announcement at last of the 27-year-old Prince William and his patient squeeze, 28-year-old Kate Middleton.”

“If so, a wedding itself would probably follow in November, like the wedding of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, who married at Westminster Abbey that cold, damp November day in 1947.”

Longtime Greenwich journalist Bernie Yudain, who was known as “Mr. Greenwich,” has died at the age of 91.

A former managing editor of the Greenwich Time newspaper, Yudain seemed to know more about the town than anyone.

He also seemed to defy age – and was still telling stories and spinning political tales at the age of 90. He remained sharp through the years and could tell a story with the best of them.

He was an institution in Greenwich and co-founded The Harpoon Club in which a public figure was roasted every year.

http://www.greenwichtime.com/local/article/Bernie-Yudain-beloved-newspaperman-and-Mr-434316.php#page-5

More on selling your by-products: The Dum Dum mystery pop is a mixture of two flavors (the end of one batch of candy meets the beginning of the next batch). Our candy lines are continuous and the switch over from one flavor to another results in some pops containing both flavors. Source: Dum Dum FAQs

It takes a real man to drive a hot pink car.

Ford’s entry level sedans and hatchbacks have never been packed with technology or exciting to drive. They were always something you bought as a compromise; you really wanted an Acura, but the Ford was cheaper. As soon as you could swing something else, the old Fiesta / Escort / Focus was relegated to trade in or sell-on-Craigslist status.

Times have changed, and Ford has high hopes for their global platform Fiesta. I had a chance to drive one this past weekend, and I’ll be the first to admit that Ford has a winner on their hands. How good is it? It’s very good. Very, very good.

Let’s start with the build quality. Previous entry level Fords have felt suspiciously like imports from Japan or Korea; there’s nothing wrong with a price point built car, but we all want something more for our money. Why can’t a Focus have the same solid feel as VW Golf, for example?

I like the lines of the hatchback, but I’m not crazy about the sedan’s styling.

Throw away your biases, because the Fiesta feels solid. VW or Audi solid. The door closes with a convincing ‘thunk’ to envelope the driver in silence. You get the feeling that you’re in a much more expensive ride, and the instruments and dash help to convey this. Interior fit and finish is outstanding, and Chevrolet would do well to take notes on the Fiesta. The interior in this entry level Ford is nicer than the interior in the new Camaro, which stickers for 2x the price.

Yes, that is real leather in an entry level car.

Ford has up-contented the hell out of the Fiesta as well. It comes with Synch, Ford’s excellent do-it-all electronics interface developed with Microsoft. Want nav? You can get it. Want leather? That’s available, too.

Rear seat definitely promotes abstinence.

It’s clear that I like the interior, but how does it drive? Better than you’d expect. I drove the SE Hatchback and was surprised at how much feedback I got from the electronic power-assist steering. There was decent feel at turn-in, and the car transitioned in a quick left-right track segment with no drama. Sure it understeers at the limit, but I was really surprised at how high that limit was. Put on a set of stickier tires, drop the ride height an inch and you’ll surprise more than a few drivers in the corners. Stability control, called “Advance Trac ESC” in Ford-speak, comes standard on Fiestas, which should keep all but the most ham-fisted out of the weeds.

Power steering reservoir ruins the motor porn.

So what’s the weak link? My only gripe was that it could use more power, but what sub-$20k car couldn’t? The 1.6 liter Duratec motor features variable valve timing, but only generates 118 horsepower. Coupled with the six speed automatic, it felt like less horsepower than that. Still, the motor with the automatic transmission will get up to 40 mpg highway, so at least you’ll quickly save enough for an aftermarket intake and exhaust.

Based on my experience, I’d definitely add the 2011 Ford Fiesta to my “must drive” list for anyone looking for a solidly built and relatively sporty commuter car. Ford has really upped the entry-level ante, and both Chevy and Chrysler would be wise to buy a Fiesta for reverse engineering. They’d better get their orders in quickly, since I suspect Ford is going to sell a boatload of these.

The significant drop in Memphis pre foreclosure homes in February has allowed home prices to rise, based on data from a research firm specializing in real estate foreclosures.

Foreclosures in Memphis fell by more than 29 percent from February last year to 1,092 postings in February this year, equivalent to one foreclosure posting for every 507 residential units. The number also marked a drop of 21 percent from filings in the previous month of January.

Statewide, foreclosure activity also slowed down, although the rate of decline is much lower than the rate of decline in the Memphis metro area. Foreclosure postings fell by 5.6 percent from the preceding month, but posted a small uptick of 0.03 percent from filings in February 2009.

Nearly 3,700 foreclosures were filed in Tennessee in February, including 1,885 units in the foreclosed home sale lists of banks and 1,807 foreclosure sale notices sent to delinquent homeowners.

With a rate of one foreclosure filing for every 747 residential units in the state, Tennessee was ranked 23rd among the 50 states based on their percentages of foreclosures.

As the city of Memphis is the largest in Tennessee and Greater Memphis is the second largest metropolitan area, it is safe to assume that Memphis pre foreclosure homes have been contributing substantially to statewide foreclosure figures.

The Memphis metropolitan area includes the Tennessee counties of Shelby, Tipton and Fayette and the Mississippi counties of Marshall, DeSoto, Tate and Tunica. It also encompasses the county of Crittenden in Arkansas.

Memphis is home to the world’s busiest cargo airport, the Memphis International Airport, and home to nine Fortune 500 firms that include FedEx, AutoZone, Thomas and Betts and International Paper.

Notwithstanding the big companies, the unemployment rate in Memphis rose in January to 11.3 percent, an increase of one point from December 2009.

In 2009, the Memphis metro area posted a total of 15,334 foreclosure filings, marking more than 11 percent of decrease compared to filings in 2008. The number, however, marked an increase of almost 36 percent from filings in 2007.

With one foreclosure filing in the metro area for every 36 residential units, the Memphis area ranked 45th in a listing of 203 metropolitan areas based on percentages of foreclosure activity.

As the number of Memphis pre foreclosure homes dropped in February, the sales price median for homes rose by 5.5 percent to $80,200. The average price, however, for homes sold in February dropped by almost 5 percent to $112,035.

Masters of Apple accessories, Griffin’s A-Frame iPad stand holds your new precious in both upright and landscape formats while charging, and doesn’t let the dock block the speakers, thanks to cleverly-placed grooves. More »

CAP has sent a cohort of their experts into the field to China to study the rapidly expanding Chinese efforts to support clean energy R&D, innovation, manufacturing, and deployment. At one of their first stops on the tour, Julian Wong and Sarah Miller document how and why Serious Materials, a titan of Silicon Valley Innovation, has chosen to locate its new solar energy R&D facility in Xi’An province, instead of California.

(YouTube version)

Applied Materials, a prominent Silicon Valley technology firm that has been the leading maker of equipment to the semiconductor chip industry since the early 1990s, captured industry headlines when it announced the opening of the world’s largest nongovernmental solar research and development center in China and relocated its chief technology officer, Mark Pinto, from California to Beijing. And then The New York Times published a prominent profile of the new R&D center just last month.

So we hopped a two-hour flight from Beijing on Friday to visit Applied Materials’ new facility, which consists of a center for research and development, engineering, product demonstration, testing, and training for thin film and crystalline solar module manufacturing equipment and processes. It’s located not in Beijing or Shanghai, but in Xi’An, home to the famous Terra Cotta Warriors and about 8 million people—a midsize city by Chinese standards.

Shaanxi Province is one of China’s biggest coal mining areas, but Xi’An, the provincial capital, is becoming a cradle of clean energy technology development. It boasts 47 universities, more than any other Chinese city except Beijing and Shanghai, and this provides a strong source of human capital for its new High-Tech Zone.

We sat down with General Manager of Applied Materials’ Solar Technology Center Dr. Ruiping Wang during our visit to talk about other elements that make Xi’An, and China in general, attractive as the site of its solar research and development efforts.

Excerpts of the interview are in the video above.

Julian L. Wong is  a Senior Policy Analyst for the energy policy team and Sarah Miller is the Policy Advisor to President and CEO John Podesta.

Related Post:

• “Invented here, sold there.”

While Apple Inc. is providing a sneak peak of its next generation iPhone OS4 software on April 8, Microsoft Corp. has its own smartphone event just four days later. On April 12, the software giant will unveil Pink, its long-rumoured Microsoft-branded teen smartphone with social networking and instant messaging capabilities.

Unlike Windows Phone 7, which embeds its operating system (OS) into branded OEM smartphones, Pink is likely to be Microsoft branded and sold, says RBC Capital Markets analyst Robert Breza.

“With Pink, Microsoft will directly offer a smartphone phone over which they control hardware, software, marketing and sales, intended to offer a more tightly integrated Smartphone experience as opposed to the distinct hardware/software model of Windows Phone 7,” he told clients.

Reports suggest there are two Pink smartphones coming and they are manfactured by Sharp. Both will have touchscreens and slide out keyboards, and will run the Windows CE OS. They are expected to be launched in the second or third quarter of calendar 2010.

Speculation suggests Verizon will be the first U.S. carrier, with GSM versions coming later. Pricing and data plans are still to come, but Mr. Breza expects them to be entry-level.

Pink is entering an increasingly crowded social networking smartphone segment that includes the Motorola CLIQ, Samsung Rogue, LG Arena and others. However, there were an estimated 25 to 30 million social networking/messaging phones sold in North American in 2009, so the opportunity is a big one.

While unlikely to move the needle financially, Mr. Breza noted that Microsoft continues to view smartphones as a strategic imperative, and is seeking to regain share in the smartphone market lost to Apple, Google Inc. and Research In Motion Ltd.

“Pink may help Microsoft address a growing entry-level target market,” the analyst says. “However, Microsoft will need to walk a fine line to avoid upsetting its OEM partners (already jittery following Google’s competitive Nexus initiative) whom Microsoft is simultaneously attempting to woo back from defections to Android.”

Jonathan Ratner

[JURIST] A North Korean court sentenced a US citizen to eight years in prison on Wednesday for illegally entering the country. Aijalon Mahli Gomes was arrested in January for illegally crossing the border and was charged with illegal entry and unspecified hostile acts. Gomes’s sentence includes eight years of hard labor and a fine equivalent to USD $700,000. The imprisonment of an American citizen is seen as a significant bargaining chip for North Korea, as the resumption of multilateral negotiations involving the US over the status of North Korea’s nuclear program increases in likelihood. Gomes is the fourth American to be detained for illegal entry into North Korea in the past 13 months, but none of those past detentions continued for longer than five months.
North Korea’s detention and treatment of prisoners has been the subject of criticism from numerous world governments and activist groups. In February, US rights activist Robert Park was released after a two-month detention for illegally entering North Korea in December. In August, North Korea pardoned two American journalists for their illegal entry, after negotiations with former US president Bill Clinton. The journalists had been detained in March for allegedly crossing the North Korean border with China.

This gives a new meaning to the phrase: “Til The Cops Come Knocking….” Gary Dourdan didn’t get his ass whooped by his girlfriend Maria Asis del Alamo as previously charged. Interestingly enough, the couple claims that they were just getting it in…rather loudly, we might add….when neighbors mistook their screams of passion for a knockdown dragout and called the cops.

Don’t you hate when that happens?

The former CSI star tried to explain all this to the Boys in Blue when they rolled up to his Los Angeles home last month, but they arrested Maria despite protests after noticing a scratch on Gary’s neck. The authorities have since sorted out the “big misunderstanding” and the domestic violence case against Maria was dismissed on Tuesday.

You might think that the popping of one of the greatest housing bubbles in history would have changed attitudes toward real estate. But not so, according to Fannie Mae’s National Housing Survey of attitudes in the United States.

Felix Salmon of Reuters can scarcely believe his eyes as he surveys the evidence, which, among other things, finds that the vast majority of Americans still firmly believe that a high level of home ownership is important to the economy.

“This is horribly misguided..,” notes Salmon. “Homeownership is, if anything a drag on the economy, since it funnels resources into unproductive overconsumption and helps to impede labor mobility. There is absolutely no reason to believe that countries with high levels of homeownership, like the U.S., have better economies than those with low levels of homeownership, like Germany.”

The survey also discovers that most Americans believe that homeownership is just as safe as putting money into a savings account—and safer than buying government bonds. It is as if the entire housing bubble never happened. Which raises the question: could it all happen again?

Freelance business journalist Ian McGugan blogs for the Financial Post.

Only ten of these Privé phones have been created—but if they sell more than one I’ll definitely be eating my felt brim at lunch. Each phone’s coated in 22ct gold, and has 76 diamonds studded around the LCD. More »

New Scientist has a fantastic article on making sense of cognitive genetics studies, the science that links certain versions of genes to behaviour, by taking the use and abuse of the MAOA gene as an example. If the name doesn’t ring a bell you may remember it being dubbed ‘warrior gene’, which as well as being inaccurate, was one of its least embarrassing moments.

For many decades, genetics and psychology only really interacted with the twin study, which, by comparing the differences between identical and non-identical twins, can indicate how much of the difference in the twins you’ve studied is due to the environment and how much has been inherited.

As it became possible to identify individual genes, and more importantly, as automated ‘gene chip‘ technology made this economical, studies began looking at differences between groups of people distinguished by simply having different versions of the same gene.

The idea is to see how a single gene influences behaviour, but because the gene and the everyday effect are so distant (it’s like trying to detect the effect of a day of farm weather on the flavour of your lunch) the story often gets mangled in the retelling.

The New Scientist article, by Not Exactly Rocket Science’s Ed Yong, tells the story of MAOA and its headline-making link with aggression, but it also serves as an essential hitchhiker’s guide to the science and pitfalls of linking genetics with behaviour.

However, the clearest sign yet that the gene is no ruthless determinant of behaviour came in 2002 when Avshalom Caspi and Terrie Moffitt of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, published their findings about a sample of 442 men from New Zealand who they had followed from birth. A third of these men carried the MAOA-L variant. Now, aged 26, this group was indeed more likely than the others to have developed antisocial disorders and violent behaviour – but only if they had been poorly treated or abused as children. Moffitt and Caspi concluded that the so-called “warrior gene” affects a child’s sensitivity to stress and trauma at an early age. Childhood trauma “activates” bad behaviour, but in a caring environment its effect is quashed.

Since then, similar interactions between nature and nurture have become part and parcel of the MAOA story. Carriers of MAOA-L are more likely to show delinquent behaviour if they were physically disciplined as children. They are also more likely to be hyperactive in late childhood if their first three years were stressful, and to develop conduct disorders if their mothers smoked cigarettes while pregnant with them. The list goes on. Likewise, Beaver found that MAOA-H carriers were more likely to commit fraud, but only if they hung around with delinquent peers.

Link to NewSci article on MAOA, genes and behaviour.

Breakfast bars bridge the gap between large homes and small. They’re used for a quick morning bite in large homes, where they supplement a formal dining room and maybe even another casual kitchen table. Or, they might be the sole place to sit down and eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner in a small home:

Read Full Post

Ireland, Acre Resources

My client, a leader in the offshore renewable sector, with an ambitious portfolio of projects, is currently looking to recruit a Project Manager to join the team.

By being part of this company, you will drive forward their vision of supplying predictable, clean and renewable energy from their commercial offshore projects.

The role will include:

• The development of sites from initial selection and consenting through contractor selection, procurement, construction and post-installation support
• Managing the relationship with company’s clients

The ideal candidate will bring experience of working on large-scale offshore projects preferably within the renewables sector. Further to this, they will have:

• Previous demonstrable and extensive experience working in a project management role with recognised project management tools
• Experience of working with clients from design concept stage through to project delivery

Due to the high response we receive to adverts we are only able to respond to applicants closely matching the criteria.

More New York pre foreclosure homes are expected because of the rising number of homeowners considering strategic default. The sharp fall in home values and continued financial difficulties have been prompting homeowners to consider walking out on their mortgages.

The option of strategic default did not catch on as early and substantially in New York as in foreclosure-battered states like California and Florida, but as more New York homes plunge in value, more New York homeowners are considering voluntary foreclosure.

According to a research firm, more than 10 percent of all houses in New York or almost 117,000 homes, were underwater as of December 2009. In the prior year of 2008, an estimated 18,000 of all foreclosures in New York were voluntary. In 2004, there were only 529 strategic foreclosures across the state.

According to Manhattan bankruptcy attorney David Shaev, more middle-class homeowners are going to surrender their homes to their lenders as values plunge over the next few years. They will realize that it does not make financial sense to keep paying when values are falling.

Cuthbert Snyder is one among many New York homeowners who have already decided to walk away if their lenders continue to reject their applications for permanent loan modification. Snyder said that the house he bought for $309,000 years ago is now valued at only $150,000.

Although the number of New York pre foreclosure homes declined in the first two months of this year and although New York is not as battered as most other states, home values continue to fall in certain areas because of the effects of the recession.

Nearly 4,600 New York homes entered the foreclosure process in January and nearly 3,300 homes entered the same process in February.

In certain neighborhoods where there are plenty of foreclosed homes for sale, home prices have plunged by 20 to 30 percent. These sharp rates of decline have been prompting homeowners to look more deeply into their financial situation.

According to Jon Maddux, chief executive of YouWalkAway.com which guides mortgage borrowers through strategic default, the stigma of foreclosure has disappeared because of the millions of homeowners in foreclosure. The bitterness toward financial institutions which are largely to be blamed for the housing crisis is also making a strong push for homeowners considering voluntary foreclosures.

In certain neighborhoods in Queens, the Bronx and Brooklyn, more New York pre foreclosure homes are expected to enter the market if values do not stop falling.