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Week of March 3, 2008
On the House: Tackling housing worries
By: Al Heavens, Inquirer Real Estate Columnist
I promised myself and my loved ones that the inner workings of our family would no longer be fodder for this column.
But for today only, I have to go back on my promise. With the spring real estate season upon us, I think I can offer insights into today's economy using personal history.
First: recessions. We seem to go through these every few years, and we come out of them as well. I've yet to experience unemployment in 42 years in the workforce. My father often did when the economy tanked, however; he was out of work on two occasions for a year.
We lost a house because of it. Fortunately, my father had obtained a real estate broker's license to supplement his income, so we were able to sell the house at a very small profit, supplemented by his commission.
Not a first for my family.
In the Great Depression, my father's parents were living in a house the family had bought in the early 1880s, a few years after arriving from England. They lost it because my grandparents were unable to pay the property taxes. My grandfather had been out of work.
My wife and I bought our latest house in a recession - the one in late 2001, post-Sept. 11 attacks. Fixed interest rates had climbed to 6.25 percent, so I chose a 5-1 hybrid adjustable, with strict orders to my broker to let me know the moment fixed rates reached 5.5 percent.
Dems take lead in voter registration
By: James McGinnis, Bucks County Courier Times
One of the few GOP-controlled townships in Lower Bucks County, Bensalem has witnessed a surge in Democratic voter registrations since November, county records show.
There were 1,035 more registered Democrats than Republicans in town as of Friday, according to the county board of elections. Democrats haven't held such a lead since the 1970s.
Only two years ago, both parties were running neck and neck with registered voters. In 1995, the Republicans held the advantage, with 15,300 registered voters compared to 10,718 Democrats.
The current breakdown is 17,126 Democrats, 16,091 Republicans and 4,898 others listed as Independent or another affiliation.
Local Democrats cheered the new numbers, which they view as a call for change. Bensalem Republican Club Chairman Mike Brill said he doubted the change would have any impact on elections at the local level. Brill said he had yet to see the numbers from the Bucks County Board of Elections, and declined to comment further.
UW study: Rules add $200,000 to Seattle house price
By Elizabeth Rhodes, Seattle Times business reporter
Backed by studies showing that middle-class Seattle residents can no longer afford the city's middle-class homes, consensus is growing that prices are too darned high. But why are they so high?
An intriguing new analysis by a University of Washington economics professor argues that home prices have, perhaps inadvertently, been driven up $200,000 by good intentions.
Between 1989 and 2006, the median inflation-adjusted price of a Seattle house rose from $221,000 to $447,800. Fully $200,000 of that increase was the result of land-use regulations, says Theo Eicher — twice the financial impact that regulation has had on other major U.S. cities.
"In a nationwide study, it can be shown that Seattle is one of the most regulated cities and a city whose housing prices are profoundly influenced by regulations," he says.
A key regulation is the state's Growth Management Act, enacted in 1990 in response to widespread public concern that sprawl could destroy the area's unique character. To preserve it, the act promoted restrictions on where housing can be built. The result is artificial density that has driven up home prices by limiting supply, Eicher says.
Some homes could avoid public sewer hook ups
By: Danny Adler, Bucks County Courier Times
Some Northampton homeowners might not have to hook up to a public sewer system — for now.
After meeting recently with the state Department of Environmental Protection, township Manager Bob Pellegrino said that some homes on Jacksonville and Almshouse roads and in some sections of the Hill Road area could avoid getting public sewer connections if officials revise the town's Act 537 plan and prove there are no faulty septic systems there.
Fifty-eight homes in those areas could be excluded, said Tom Zeuner, executive director of the Northampton Bucks County Municipal Authority.
“If the township can document that there are no failed septic systems in those areas, [the DEP] will consider allowing us to remove those areas from the provision of public sewers. But only for perhaps a couple of years, which, in my opinion, doesn't really do us much good,” said Pellegrino.
Residents alarmed by tax bills
By: Jenna Portnoy, The Intelligencer
Middletown tax collector Tom Kearns usually receives about 65 property assessment change cards in January.
In November 2007, he got 53. The number was 164 in May 2007. He had 156 in June 2006.
In January 2008, he got a whopping 455.
Jack Boeggeman owns one of those 455 properties. He lives in a two-story “Pennsylvania” model Levittown home with beige siding.
Boeggeman, who bought his Levittown home in 1996, has appealed the reassessment in an effort to stave off a higher tax bill. He said he was shocked to learn the county increased his assessment by $2,650 due to a dormer he said was added in the early 1970s — before the last countywide reassessment.
The change would have increased his property taxes by around $500.
“It's just one of those things where I have to spend my time trying to fix it when I shouldn't have this in the first place,” he said. “There are going to be people who will swallow it.”
Every month, tax collectors across Bucks County receive notice that residents who added a porch or converted a garage to living space will get a larger tax bill based on the homes' increased value.
Borough to discuss acquiring land for open space
By: Danny Adler, Bucks County Courier Times
Yardley borough council wants to move forward with the new round of Bucks County open space funding.
At a meeting Tuesday night, council President Joe Hunter said the borough has sent a letter to the Fitzgerald-Sommer Funeral Home on River Road in an attempt to schedule a meeting to discuss acquiring a grassy area surrounding the funeral home.
Under the county's second open space bond approved by voter referendum in November, Yardley is eligible to receive as much as $243,742. Yardley was unable to spend the $149,577 it was eligible for with the last round of open space money, but borough officials say that with more funds now, they have more buying power.
Developer selected to revive Ardmore downtown withdraws
The Associated Press
A developer chosen for a $300 million revival of downtown Ardmore says tightening credit is forcing him out.
Edward Lipkin says he fears there will be delays in securing financing, and is suspicious of oral agreements with at least two major backers. He's president of EBL&S Development, based in Philadelphia, and an Ardmore resident.
Lipkin told Lower Merion Township commissioners about his decision Tuesday, saying he feels terrible about it. The project was to include a six-story office tower and boutique hotel straddling rail lines.
The Housing Nightmare Hits Main Street
By Luke Mullins, US News and World Report
One domino toppling the next. It's been a convenient metaphor for how troubles in the American subprime mortgage market have cascaded into a global financial mess. Rising interest rates collapsed the housing bubble, which caused a wave of subprime mortgage defaults and foreclosures. That, in turn, froze corporate credit markets as risk-averse investors stopped buying esoteric mortgage-backed securities and led to big losses at bond insurers. Auction-rate securities—an obscure corner of the credit market used by hospitals, museums, schools, and local governments—have been the most recent dominoes to tumble. "We've gotten to the point of almost paralysis in some segments of the market," says David Resler, chief economist at Nomura Securities.
The Worst-Case Scenario for Housing
By Kirk Shinkle, US World & News Report
A year ago, most economists talked in worried tones about the possibility that American home prices could slip after almost doubling during the prior decade. At worst, fretted Wall Street's more bearish forecasters, prices could drop as much as 20 percent from their peak in a more dire version of the last housing downturn during the early 1990s, when new-home sales dipped but existing homes held their value.
Sewer expansion plan out for bid
By: Danny Adler, Bucks County Courier Times
Northampton’s municipal authority on Wednesday unanimously voted to advertise for bids for the Harvest Acres portion of the township’s sewer expansion project.
Residents had pleaded with the Northampton Bucks County Municipal Authority, asking them to consider using less costly PVC piping instead of standard ductile iron pipe for the optional water system expansion.
The authority is investigating whether or not residents would want public water lines also installed while they are putting in sewers to the homes. However, the water project is not being mandated by the DEP like the sewer project and will only go through if it receives community support, municipal authority executive director Tom Zeuner said.
Be realistic, Ardmore planners urged
By: Anthony R. Wood, Inquirer Staff Writer
When Nancy Gold heard that developer Edward Lipkin had abruptly withdrawn his $300 million plan to revive downtown Ardmore, she was flabbergasted.
But she was not surprised.
Gold, who owns the King's Collar Shirtmaker shop on Lancaster Avenue and is past president of the Ardmore Business Association, said Lipkin's vision had been too ambitious, especially in a weakening real estate market, and would have taken too long to execute.
One of 12 people testifying last night at a public meeting on the prospects for revitalizing Ardmore's business district, Gold described Lipkin's pullout this week as an opportunity to rethink the project, and she urged Lower Merion Township commissioners to choose a more realistic alternative.
"We need a doable revitalization project that can be delivered in a timely fashion," one designed "to help the small mom-and-pop businesses who have been holding on by their fingernails," she said before an audience of about 30 in the township hall.
The commissioners are reconsidering proposals from the three developers who lost out to Lipkin in early January: BET Investments Inc., Strategic Realty and Dranoff Properties. Bruce E. Toll, chairman of Philadelphia Media Holdings L.L.C., owner of The Inquirer, is principal of BET.
Fewer housing plans on the table in Bucks
By: Jenna Portnoy, The Intelligencer
The last time this few new homes were planned for Bucks County, Simon & Garfunkel's “Bridge Over Troubled Water” was a hit. It was 1970.
Last year, the planning commission reviewed plans for 1,796 homes, which is about half the number reviewed in 2006, and less than a quarter the number reviewed during a recent peak 2001, according to a year-end report released Wednesday.
And this year doesn't look much better.
Voter interest surges in Pennsylvania suburbs
By: Derrick Nunnally , Inquirer Staff Writer
An onslaught of queries about registering to vote in Pennsylvania swamped suburban election boards yesterday as the nation's attention turned to the state's April 22 Democratic primary to settle a nomination fight that Texas and Ohio could not.
"The phone's been ringing off the hook," said Patti Allen, assistant director of the Montgomery County Board of Elections.
The sudden tide of suburban interest in the primary had two consequences yesterday.
First was the surge.
"The day after a caucus or a primary, we typically see a surge in telephone calls, e-mails and people coming in. Well, this is to the extreme today," said Deena K. Dean, director of the Bucks County Board of Elections.
How extreme?
"The phone doesn't stop ringing, for one thing," Dean said. "Secondly, my e-mail address is out on our Web site, and, well, I'm just not keeping up. We've also had a steady stream of people coming up to the counter as well, which is unusual."
