Voters in Clark County will decide next year regardless of whether to increase the sales tax to operate an extension of Portland’s light-rail transit program in Vancouver. In the meantime, officials are planning for the possibility that MAX will arrive in Vancouver with a brand new Interstate 5 bridge. A public open home this evening will supply an opportunity for area residents to provide input around the newest developments regarding station location and design in downtown Vancouver. Planners are considering moving a proposed park-and-ride structure downtown a prevent west onto Columbia Street between Fourth and Fifth streets. By shifting it out of a new cloverleaf onramp carrying vehicles onto the bridge from state Highway 14, city officials think they can much better incorporate the structure into the urban fabric of downtown Country Style House Plans.

“With it outside the loop, you may have a mixed-use function, particularly on the first floor,” stated Katy Belokonny, a C-Tran employee working within the bistate Columbia River Crossing office.

Designers have also proposed modifications towards the point where trains stop to choose up and drop off passengers along Washington Road in between Fifth and Sixth. At that point, the light rail line peels off the brand new bridge and meets Washington atop four feet of fill — a less-than-attractive entrance to companies now situated along Washington Street.

“We’re looking at incorporating stairs or risers to bridge that grade distance inside a much more creative way than just a retaining wall barrier,” Belokonny stated. “By the time it gets towards the Plaid Pantry, it meets the existing grade.”

Finally, officials want input on regardless of whether to block Fifth Street inside a cul-de-sac at Washington or push it an additional prevent east to Primary Street underneath the brand new Highway 14 onramp.

Source: The Columbian News

Sullivan & Associates Inc. sells the American Dream, whether you'd like it with or without bay windows, a two-car garage or a living room with vaulted ceilings.

The Tennessee-based company has more than 16,000 home plans that come with blueprints and licenses for builders and individuals who want to construct their own house.

But in the Internet age, the firm is struggling to make sure builders pay for the licensed plans, some of which are for homes that look quite similar, that the company posts on its website as copyrighted material.

That issue cropped up in Charleston last week, when Sullivan & Associates filed a federal lawsuit against regional home builder Eastwood Homes Inc., alleging that the layouts for the builder's Summerall, Moultrie and Sumter homes are too similar to Sullivan's Chesterfield, Chelsey and Chamberlain models.

According to court documents, Charlotte-based Eastwood built several Tanner Plantation homes using design plans without paying for them. In early 2009, Sullivan officials who noticed the homes during a visit to Charleston sent Eastwood a bill for $25,279.

Jason Fabrizio, division president for the builder, denied the allegations. "We didn't take any plans, and we didn't copy any plans," he said this week. "We disagree with that accusation."

Steve Vatter, Sullivan's copyright manager, said Eastwood bought basic design plans from Sullivan's but didn't purchase the licenses it needed to use them in its business. Eastwood lawyer Allen M. Nason said the builder's home design plans were created using in-house and outside designers and architects, then changed to fit specific customer requests.

Court documents included a letter from Eastwood responding to Sullivan's complaints. The builder noted that the two sets of home plans had different room sizes, certain wall slants and rooms in varying areas to set them apart.

Dana LeJune, a Texas lawyer who works with a handful of home design licensing businesses, including Sullivan & Associates, said he deals with this issue over and over again. He called the problem of pilfering copyrighted home plans "rampant."

"Some builders are just ignorant, but most of them are trying to cut a corner and get something for nothing," LeJune said.

Violators are rarely caught -- maybe one in every 10,000 homes built without permission of the architect or designer ever makes it to court, he added. But those who do can face steep penalties. LeJune said an Indiana company that built 285 homes without paying the designer for a license recently was ordered to pay $3.6 million.

LeJune said it's easy to go on Sullivan's website, print out a basic design plan and have it drawn up by a local draftsman. The company offers plans for all types of homes: ones on narrow lots, ones with porches, ones that can be built on hills.

Most sales come with detailed architecture plans that tell a builder how to complete the home. Prices are based on the square footage. Plans typically cost between $500 and $700 for a 2,000-square-foot model.

Source: Post and Courier News

Despite the fact that luxury house builder Bob Toll has told me over and more than once more that foreclosures don't compete directly with new construction, a minimum of not his pricey new construction (which I do not purchase for a second), the Monthly Sentiment Survey from the National Association of Home Builders has some pretty strong words towards the contrary.

The index held steady on the lowest level in a 12 months and a half, even though some had predicted it would bump up a bit. It was the sentiment expressed within the index release that really caught my attention:

“In common, builders haven’t seen any reason for improved optimism in market conditions over the previous month,” writes NAHB Chief Economist David Crowe. “Builders report that the two main obstacles to new-home sales right now are consumer reluctance within the face from the poor job market and also the large quantity of foreclosed attributes for sale." Foreclosures do matter.

Buyer traffic has deteriorated in new construction, and another report out today finds that while home prices stabilized temporarily thanks to the house buyer tax credit score, "leading real estate activity indicators such as first-time homebuyer visitors, present homeowner traffic, and investor visitors all declined, indicating decreased homebuyer demand," according to analysis director Thomas Popik of Cambell Surveys (in conjunction with Inside Mortgage loan Finance." “We’re in transition,” adds Popik. . “Individual homeowners listing non-distressed properties and mortgage loan servicers listing distressed attributes are holding out for prices established prior to the finish from the tax credit. Meanwhile, only a couple of homebuyers are prepared to transact at these prices – and these are the transactions going into the averages. That’s why we saw such declines in visitors and quantity in today’s marketplace.”

Although costs for regular properties are now flat (and we are awaiting another decline), costs for REO (bank owned inventory) are actually up an average 6.3 percent. Unfortunately banks repossessed a record number of properties in August, and we all know what much more supply means for costs. These days I'm in Atlanta at a name center for a non-profit known as CredAbility.

They used to be the Consumer Credit score Counseling Services of Higher Atlanta.

Their name and e-mail volume is up about 40 percent since the height of the housing boom, but what's more interesting is the alter within the profile of callers. They have higher credit scores, greater incomes (or greater incomes once they lost their jobs) and they are older. The center helps clients across the nation, and their quantity one complaint, as usual, is getting a response from loan servicers. The folks here are interested in what the President has to say at the CNBC Town meeting. The President has had precious little to say about housing in the previous 12 months, mostly generalities that we know already, although leaving all of the particulars of the Administration's housing bailout to his underlings. Sitting at a call center like this one, I'm confronted with the faces of foreclosure, or at least the faces I imagine, as I hear bits and pieces of stories and anxieties within the cubicles surrounding the one I borrowed for the day. But beyond the faces would be the real company impacts of foreclosures on the real estate market, which so many have said wouldn't come to fruition. Some argue there's renewed confidence in housing today; I do not see it, hear it or think it.

Source: CNBC News