New Residential Construction Report: July 2011

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AM Linkage: New Mural Coming to Lower Haight; Cable Car Roundabout Craziness; Dolores Park Shenanigans; More!

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The Chicago Fed National Activity Index: July 2011

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The Future: Let's Talk About Density, Baby/Let's Talk About You and Me (and Thousands of Other People)

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Wednesday, August 17, 2011, by Sally Kuchar

That's the unofficial theme song for Monday’s SPUR Lunchtime Forum, where architects from three firms in Portland, Seattle and San Diego presented their respective visions of how density and beautiful, functional architecture can co-exist (anticipated complaints from NIMBYS notwithstanding). While previous SPUR forums on the topic have discussed the issues of higher density from a top-down, planning-oriented perspective, here the architects provided examples of individual buildings they have built that fulfill the goal of cramming 100,000 people per square mile, a goal the architects said we will need to achieve in the Bay Area if the population continues to grow at the current rate. Just for reference, on a city-wide basis, San Francisco's density is currently around 17,100 people per square mile.

Despite being from far-flung corners of the West Coast, any of the projects would have fit well in the San Francisco urban fabric both stylistically and because they contain many elements that residents here want: ample outdoor space, affordable housing units, and a lively, pedestrian-scale streetscape at ground level. The only thing that would prevent these projects from being built in San Francisco was the lack of bay windows. While SPUR hasn’t published the presentations from Monday’s forum yet, for more information on the density issue, please see David Baker, Craig Hartman, and Dan Solomon’s presentations from from the first forum on the subject. - Michael Pearce
· Picturing West Coast density [SPUR]
· What would 100,000 people per square mile look like? [SPUR]
[photo via anna vignet]

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Refrigerator to the Rescue: A Minnesota woman has a Frigidaire...

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Thursday, August 18, 2011, by Sarah Firshein

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Will Bernanke Jump the Shark Tomorrow?

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[RBI Pending Home Sales Index] Baltimore Metro Area 7-2011 – Despite Most Active July in Four Years, Baltimore Home Sales Show Weakness

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Today we released the RBI Pending Home Sales Index for both Washington, D.C. and Baltimore metro area housing markets for RealEstate Business Intelligence (RBI), the research, analytics arm of MRIS, the largest MLS in the country. It is released 10 days after the close of each period, about 3 weeks before the NAR Pending Home Sale Index and 182 days before the Case Shiller Home Price Index covering the same period.

Here’s an excerpt from the just released July 2011 RBI Pending Home Sales Index [Baltimore Metro Area] report:

…. There were 2,407 signed contracts in July, the most since 2007. Market activity was 6.9% below the June total of 2,585 and 24.5% above the 1,934 total in the same month a year ago. The jump from the prior year total was due to the lull in the market in the months following the April 30, 2010 contract signing deadline for the federal homebuyer tax credit and therefore overstates the improvement in the market. The average June to July seasonal decline for the past five and ten years was 3% and 3.5%, roughly half the market decline seen this year in the same period. The likely cause of the larger than normal decline was a consumer pause during the heated Washington DC debt ceiling debate for most of month…

July 2011 RBI Pending Home Sales Index™ [Baltimore Metro Area]

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