Cocoposts

Second Highland Clearances

A local official in Scotland attempts to draw a parallel between their "housing crisis" and the Highland Clearances. 

The Lochaber News attempts coverage but you have to pull a muscle for this to make sense - how too much debt preventing more mass construction debt to build subsidized council housing is anything remotely like the systematic depopulation of your country for herds of rich people's sheep. 

"The lack of social housing for rent has reached crisis point and unless there is immediate action from both Governments in Edinburgh and London then we may have another Highland Clearance on our hands."

While there is a strong desire from Highland Council to build new council houses, Cllr Cameron said its aspirations are hamstrung because of a historic debt on its existing stock which prevents further prudential borrowing.

"The irony is that today's generation aspiring for a home cannot afford former council houses which are on the market for £100,000-plus. The Thatcherite policy of selling council houses with massive discounts has come home to roost with a vengeance.

Everything but Parakeets

Coco's Variety in Los Angeles at 2427 Riverside Drive is having their first ever bike sale.  No relation, but  this goes on the post-retirement tour list - west coast version - though I'm sure the sale will be over by then. They have plenty of other cool stuff, like water.    From their website:

Coco's Variety sells flyswatters, glass 5 gallon water bottles, headache remedies, oil cloth by the yard, used bicycles, California souvenir tablecloths, Kit-Cat Klocks, gumballs, Mexican Cokes in glass bottles, squirt guns, tote bags adorned with hula girls, Lodge cast iron frying pans, old American-made tools, baskets for your bicycle, wood matches, reverse osmosis purified drinking water by the gallon and fancy Jadeite cake plates for fancy cakes on fancy occasions.

We sell everything but parakeets.

(Thanks Inky!)

Development Corruption

From Ireland is fascinating news of corruption in land development - local politicians bribed for lucrative rezoning.  In UK Yahoo:

Former government press secretary Frank Dunlop has been jailed for 18 months and fined 30,000 euro for corruption after bribing councillors to rezone land around Dublin for lucrative development deals.  The one-time lobbyist among Ireland's political elite admitted five counts of corruption more than eight years after first disclosing his role in the sleaze scandal.

From a Sunday Tribune editorial:  

All the councillors deny being bribed. All the landowners deny having any knowledge of bribes being offered to have their land rezoned. Dunlop is the only person to face corruption charges. So far. As things stand, he says, he bribed councillors on behalf of clients, but the beneficiaries of both the bribes and the corruption claim to have known nothing about what Dunlop was doing. Strange, but, it is alleged, true.

Magic!  Who knew?

Then the Tribune writer, Michael Clifford, spins-off mark about how the problem is corruption in planning, not in development. Nice redirection.

There is no reason to believe that the common good is any better served in planning today than it was in the early 1990s. Any system that bestows huge wealth overnight on a landowner – usually increasing the value by a multiple – will continue to be the subject of corruption. A councillor with bad thoughts might be too scared to accept a bribe these days, but that doesn't eliminate corruption.

As long as the system prevails, the common good will take a beating. (...)

This would be abhorrent to free-market ideology and vested interests. No government – and precious few politicians – has been willing to bat for the common good against such opponents. So corruption in planning is here to stay. It just mightn't involve naked bribes anymore.

Yet he keeps throwing around the phrase "common good" which is a meaningless platitude without a public process to define and shape policies - including land use policies that should become the yardstick for the zoning decisions.  You know, a planning process. 

Voices in the Car

Telling him to u-turn.   Recalculating.  Recalculating. 

Because one gps unit is not enough and he's doing research.  He must have three.  Three navigational devices but no map.  Women's voices tell him where to turn, not including the live one sitting next to him. 

A cell phone, a portable unit and one in the rental.  The later being the nicest voice - that of the Impala's.  I trust her more by the end of the trip, coming to appreciate the tenor of her delivery, the authority in her tone.  (Purely because of the size of the speaker, which was much larger than those little hand held units.) 

But no map. We trust our fate to the data entry of who knows who and where they are and whether they have ever or never been to Bayfield or Key Largo.

So Stupid It's Amazing

The declining housing market story by James Temple in the San Francisco Chronicle catches the point of discord about stimulating housing where there's an oversupply - giving tax credits for housing that they can't unload otherwise so they can build more of the same.

Robert Rivinius, chief executive officer of the California Building Industry Association, seized on the kernel of positive news in the single-family realm as evidence that a $10,000 state tax credit for buyers of new homes is working and should be extended. The organization, which says that two-thirds of the funds have been allocated, is lobbying legislators for an additional $200 million.

"The tax credit enacted in March is having the desired effect of stimulating home sales and clearing out inventory, which is helping to generate new construction and put people back to work in the process," Rivinius said in a statement.

Others argue that it's irresponsible for California, nearing the brink of financial insolvency, to offer hundreds of millions of dollars in tax credits to buyers of only new homes. Such a policy encourages new construction in a market where foreclosures are still rising and prices continue to fall, said Chris Thornberg, principal with Beacon Economics in Los Angeles.

"It's so stupid it's amazing to me," he said. "We have an enormous supply of excess foreclosed homes that need to be dealt with, and they should be focusing on that."

Merger Makes Megabuilder

The merger of two big sprawl home builders - Centex and Pulte is moving forward.  They will combine to create the largest housing development company in the country. Count them in on the Albuquerque region's housing market. 

The Detroit News added tidbits that hint at the impact of this scale of housing development on Michigan, where Pulte is based, and elsewhere. Think oversaturation.

Vicki Bryan, an industry analyst with Gimme Credit LLC, said the combination of Pulte and Centex will help draw down overhead costs and shrink the companies to a more reasonable size for today's market, in addition to setting Pulte up for big gains once homebuilding activity begins to rise.

"This is really good because not only are there too many homes, there are too many homebuilders," Bryan said.

Oversaturation of the new home market during the unprecedented growth in demand for U.S. real estate in recent years has hit Michigan hard. A number of developers who built farther into Metro Detroit suburbs hoping for big returns on investments have been hit with losses, as demand -- and prices -- fell swiftly.

This Business Week blog post by Aaron Pressman from April offers some more needed skepticism. 

There’s reason to be skeptical. After all, the homebuilding execs were blindsided by the end of the bubble after notoriously overbuilding particularly in some of the hardest hit states like Nevada and Arizona. Dugas today tells Bloomberg today that he’s “cautiously optimistic” after February’s upturn in home sales. He’s the same guy was seeing “encouraging signs” at Goldman Sachs’ housing conference in February, 2007, of course. Just two months ago, Pulte execs were saying they had too much inventory and now they’re adding everything Centex has, too. And our recent cover story not withstanding, no one thinks real estate prices and sales volumes will recover to the levels of a few years ago anytime soon.

Walk in Whitelodge Woods

One of these trips, we're not coming back.  

From the Whitelodge it's a short walk with a big dog to big trees on a big river.  This makes big cleaning tasks seem small and very unimportant.  It's only dust and dog hair.  I've suggested monogrammed lint rollers.  That, or solid waste disposal of the sofa.  But then where will Big sleep?

The wine tasting went well - if by "tasting" you mean "drinking".  A California Pinot Noir called Anapamu is best but hard to tell from the Cycles Gladiator.  The later has a naked nymph on the label which will make it more popular. Tonight, the Chards.

The latest wedding party delivery came in a couple huge bales.  The  neighborhood watch representative has cast a suspicious eye this direction.  It is the finest kind -  Red Cedar mulch. 

Hobbit House

From the San Francisco Chronicle and their real estate blog, On The Block comes the plans and photos of an alternative structure in Wales designed and built by Simon Dale with help from his friends, acquaintances and family.  

He calls it a Low Impact Woodland Home.  

MacDeath

The computer had a stroke last week.  It went clunk clunk and froze.  Then it took  all my photographs and recorded memories of the last two years to Mac heaven.  Or hell, perhaps.  I wanted to throw it against a wall but took it to the Genius Bar instead.  Then I wanted to throw it against a wall again but they took it away from me to put in its new hard drive.  

I'm at the Whitelodge  overseeing wedding preparations which were supposed to include some serious house cleaning.  So far I've gotten this computer to work and hooked up a new stereo.   Later - wine and champagne sampling from among multiple cases in the cococave, aka the storage shed. 

Now dust bunnies and I dance to Clapton while I plan my next trip to Italy to replace those lost photographs.  

   

Puppy Pics

Eva Hunter,  aka "Toodles".  Soon to be a big dog and definitely not boring at all.