Articles About Residential

The long-abandoned United States Steel South Works on Chicago’s South Side moved closer to undergoing transformation to a mixed-use development when the Community Development Commission unanimously approved a $96 million tax-increment financing (TIF) district to fund the project’s initial phase. The Chicago City Council still must approve the TIF district, which would give the green […]

Foreign governments are a growth engine for New York City commercial and residential real estate at a time when many cash-strapped European nations are facing financial crises.  For example, Sri Lanka’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations has $8 million to spend and is looking at Manhattan office space.  Laos recently paid $4.2 million in […]

Urban cores with challenging infrastructure issues are not getting the right attention from government, so planners are creating their own public/private partnerships to obtain funding from various city sources to pay for necessary upgrades.  And, according to A. J. Robinson, President of Central Atlanta Progress (CAP) and the Atlanta Downtown Improvement District (ADD), his organization […]

Detroit is undergoing a radical downsizing – the most ambitious urban makeover in American history – that will shrink the city’s current 139-square-mile footprint to approximately half that size as abandoned neighborhoods are consolidated and returned to productive farmland. Mayor Dave Bing, a former Detroit Pistons player and All Star, is determined to shrink the […]

The latest numbers on housing starts, new home sales and rising prices indicate that the residential recovery is for real.  Because the housing crash was a primary cause of the Great Recession, word that the sector is rebounding is good news.  Housing permits and starts have increased in the last several months, and new house […]

Ten years after Mayor Richard M. Daley ordered a roof garden planted on top of Chicago’s City Hall, the city has 500 green roofs downtown and scattered throughout its neighborhoods.  According to Department of Environment spokesman Larry Merritt, green roofs cover approximately seven million SF, although that represents less than one-tenth of one percent of […]

A 43-story residential tower in south London’s Elephant & Castle neighborhood will receive eight percent of its power from three wind turbines  installed at the top of the structure.  The Strata Tower – nicknamed the Electric Razor – is being developed by Brookfield Europe and eventually will be home to 1,000 residents. The Strata is […]

Bank of America (BofA) is taking steps to write down mortgage principal owed by thousands of underwater homeowners in what has been termed “the mortgage industry’s boldest move yet” to resolve the nation’s foreclosure problem.  Bank of America can well afford the initiative. According to Betsy Graseck, a Morgan Stanley analyst, the ultimate cost of […]

The Obama administration has announced a new initiative to assist troubled homeowners by helping them refinance with government-backed mortgages that cut monthly payments.  The program would also temporarily reduce payments for unemployed borrowers who are actively job hunting.  The government is encouraging lenders to write down the value of loans for borrowers participating in modification […]

Families looking to refinance their mortgages don’t face quite the uphill battle that Jon and Laura Hagar have in their search for the right lender.  That’s because the Hagars’ house in rural Hot Sulphur Springs, CO, is made of 17,000 old tires.  The Hagars’ 2,700 SF house is built of stacked tire bales – five-foot-wide […]