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Week of June 30, 2008

 

Building Codes Officials on Website
 

As of this morning, the names and phone numbers of municipal "Building Code Officials" are now posted on the Building Codes website of the Department of Labor and Industry.
 
To access this information, click on the link entitled "Municipal Elections and Contact Information" under the Local Enforcement header. By doing so, you will be directed to a new page off of which this table can be accessed.
 
As is noted on the new page, there are municipalities that, from time to time, will not have this information. This information may be missing because municipalities have failed to update this information or because the credentials of the person identified as the Building Code Official have expired (and the individual has been removed from the Department's database listing).
 
This table will be updated each business day around 8:00 AM.

 

Housing stimulus legislation advanced in the Senate this week to the brink of passage, then hit a snag that will delay further action until after the July 4 recess. [more]
 

   The latest gauge of the housing market's ongoing illness   [more]
   A pair of unfavorable reports   [more]
   Effective storm water and erosion control techniques   [more]
   Get your Green Building Update   [more]
   Farewell to Robert "Bob" Cleveland Sr.,   [more]
   NAHB offices will be closed on the 4th of July   [more]


On the House: Slump will end – eventually
By Al Heavens,Inquirer Real Estate Columnist

Your home has been on the market for six months, and there hasn't been a nibble.It's probably priced too high, and that long and frank chat with your agent is overdue.

Sales and prices are down or flat. Every bit of bad news discourages you further.

Don't despair. All is not lost.

The preceding four paragraphs are taken almost word-for-word from a story I wrote Nov. 6, 1994. From my personal experience, I could have written those same paragraphs in November 1987, when I was unable to sell one house and was settling on another.

Fourteen years ago, as they are today, economists were trying to predict when the end would be near and not doing too well at it, which led me to write, in paragraph five, "Although the road to recovery has taken an unexpected detour into uncertainty this year . . ."

As I recall, it was only when everyone stopped trying to predict an end that the real estate downturn actually ended.

It didn't start or wrap up at the same time in every place, or even in the same geographic area, and then, as now, not every town or neighborhood had the same experience.

I wish I could develop some sort of algorithm that genuinely predicts housing trends, so we could better manage them rather than just track how much things have risen or fallen. For example, prices in X increase to a point just below where a first-time buyer of moderate income in X cannot afford them, so bells go off and someone comes in and builds more affordable housing to flatten the trend.

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Cheat Sheet: Good home insulation will help you cool it, too
By Al Heavens , Inquirer Real Estate Columnist

 
As fuel prices keep skyrocketing, talk keeps turning to ways of saving energy. The focus tends to be on heating costs, but a well-insulated house in which air leaks are sealed means money saved on summer cooling costs, as well.
What kind of insulation should you use? That depends on your house and all sorts of other factors.
First things first: Insulation material has pockets of trapped air that prevent heat from penetrating it. How well the material resists heat transfer is known as its R-value. The higher the R-value, the better the resistance.
Need to know: Some types of insulation are relatively simple for a do-it-yourselfer to install. Insulating blankets come as batts (precut pieces) or in rolls, and may have a paper or aluminum-foil facing that acts as a vapor retardant. Blankets are made of fiberglass (spun from molten sand and glass); rock wool, made of natural minerals; or slag wool, made from iron-ore blast-furnace slag, an industrial waste product. These types can be used in unfinished walls, floors and ceilings where the spacing is standard (studs or joists 16 inches or 25 inches on center), and where there are no obstructions such as water pipes, electrical wires or gas lines.
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Despite backing, development on hold

By HILARY BENTMAN, The Intelligencer
 

A 402-unit senior housing development is coming to Richland, but with ongoing sewer capacity problems, it could be years before construction begins.
Greenway Development of Willow Grove recently received final approval to build Front Gate, a mid-rise condominium complex on 34 acres off Station Road for residents 55 and older.
The project, near the Quakertown Farmer's Market, also calls for extending Ronald Reagan Drive to Station Road, forming a bypass that would allow motorists to drive between Route 313 and Route 309 without traveling through downtown Quakertown.
For now, the 13-building complex, along with several other residential and commercial developments planned for Richland, is on hold because of inadequate sewer capacity to handle new construction.
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