The December 2009 issue of Computer Graphics World quotes Joe Letteri, a senior visual effects supervisor for the film "Avatar," describing the technical challenges of the project: "We had to go through a complete re-tooling and re-architecting." Gosh, architecting the first time is hard enough...
Work by these architects included in this Fall's tour: Zoltan Pali, FAIA - Studio Pali Fekete architects (SPF:a); Marc Angélil and Sarah Graham, FAIA - agps architecture; John Pugliese, Assoc. AIA - Cambia Designs LLC; Aleks Istanbullu, AIA - Aleks Istanbullu Architects. More at aialosangeles.org
A Wall Street Journal article about recent home price reports referred to Redfin as "a Seattle-based real-estate brokerage". That's like describing eBay as a thrift store located in San Jose. Redfin is a smart, innovated web-based company that happens to have its home office in Seattle. The company is dedicated to eliminating the broker middle-man, as much as is possible legally and practically, from the real estate searches and transactions everywhere. Zillow is on a similar mission (run by the guys who put travel agents out of business with Expedia) but isn't licensed as a brokerage as is Redfin. Insofar as it provides better service for the consumer that's a good thing. Just understand that when you're looking at a property on the Redfin or Zillow websites, it's probably not actually listed by Redfin or Zillow at all, but rather by a local real estate agent whose listing on the MLS has simply been lifted from the internet by those web based companies, often by agreement with the MLS.
Sunday morning while Fox's Chris Wallace was talking to Glen Beck about his version of restoring honor, CNN and NBC observed the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina with broadcasts from New Orleans which focused largely on restoring shelter. Naomi Klein's recent book The Shock Doctrine describes the "Rise of Disaster Capitalism" which operates on the "exploitation of disaster-shocked people." But the New Orleans shock has also yielded some creativity and innovation. In an exhibition of the Positive Power of Celebrity, Actor Brad Pitt showed off the results of his "Make It Right" effort, featuring homes aspiring to zero-energy consumption dressed in a decidedly modernist aesthetic, followed by actor Wendell Pierce discussing his efforts to rebuild the city's neighborhood with LEED certified homes of a decidedly more conservative architecture. Later on CNN HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan appeared standing on a New Orleans street. He resisted interviewer Ed Henry's attempts to nail him on recent optimistic statements about housing and the economy, citing overall increased equity nationwide and promoting new federal programs to help underwater and jobless homeowners, as well as renewed emphasis on rental housing quality. Reference was made to the current Time cover story "Rethinking Home Ownership."
We heard Jacquelin Novogratz, founder and CEO of the Acumen Fund, interviewed by Krista Tippet, host of the NPR show Speaking of Faith. In describing how she got involved in what she calls "patient capital" (low return investment in developing economies), Novogratz observed that as a banker she learned that banking isn't open to those who need it most. The same day we came across an article The Nation we thought related. It reported that the Boston Green Justice Coalition scrutinized the Obama administration's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and determined that few residents of less-affluent communities could afford the thousands of dollars needed to green their homes in order to qualify for the initiative. Then there was the New York Times article confirming our experience that banks still aren't lending even to those who might seem most qualified. Seems like the money remains in the hands of those tasked to hand it out.
Clear Take of State of Real Estate from NYTimes’ Nocera
Summary: The prospective buyer has two good rationales to fear buying a new home. One is the unemployment rate. The other is that people simply do not believe that housing prices are even close to hitting bottom. Buyers won’t reappear in big numbers until they can see the light at the end of the tunnel. The seller, meanwhile, doesn’t want to face the fact that his or her home is too richly priced, and won’t sell at a more realistic price. There is also an immense amount of inventory that has yet to hit the market but will, sooner or later. At the same time that the administration was offering a hefty tax credit to spur home sales, the government’s wholly owned subsidiaries, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, were imposing rules that made it increasingly difficult to buy a home. Wall Street securitizers won’t buy a mortgage from a bank — because Wall Street is just as fearful as every other participant in the market. Read the whole NY Times article.
Green curtains of viney plants are grown over trellises against a building’s windows and outer walls; as they grow, the plants help filter sunlight, keeping walls from absorbing heat and preventing too much solar heating inside buildings and reducing the need for air conditioning. And, they absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. And they can grow food... kyocera.com
In a post titled "You Only Get One Chance to Make a First Impression" Redfin illustrates its conclusion that a listing gets the most attention on its debut with a graph of online visits. That's because Redfin is primarily an online service. Although other studies confirm growing dominance of the internet as a source of buyers, studies that show the relationship of days on the market to the actual number of closings have similar conclusions and, to us, more credibility than a count of online "showings." Nevertheless Redfin provides some interesting information. For example, they note upticks in online activity "after 30 and 60 days, since some bargain hunters get alerts whenever a listing sits on the market for a month or two. About one in eight searches on Redfin filter by days on market, most to see only new listings, but some to see only old listings."
"...Housing will eventually recover from its great swoon. But many real estate experts now believe that home ownership will never again yield rewards like those enjoyed in the second half of the 20th century, when houses not only provided shelter but also a plump nest egg... There is no iron law that real estate must appreciate... Set against this dismal present and a bleak future, buying a home is a willful act of optimism. The experience we had from the late 1970s to the late 1990s was an aberration..." - The New York Times
Half of Homes Listed in ‘09 Didn’t Sell, Says Micro Survey
As continuing evidence of a standoff between buyers and sellers, a seven-market Redfin survey found that fewer than half of 500,000 homes listed in 2009 had sold by last week. Just 4% were still on the market. Redfin concludes that it's all about pricing... that is, seller overpricing. They don't say how the statistics compared to previous years or how many of the unsold homes are headed toward foreclosure. While the headline sounds dismal, one interpretation of the statistic might be that sellers just aren't that desperate to move. Although the real estate industry might disagree, lower housing turnover might not be such a bad thing in a broader cultural sense. Maybe more of us will be staying in the old neighborhood. More about the survey at Redfin.
Sunday morning while 
In an exhibition of the Positive Power of Celebrity, Actor Brad Pitt showed off the results of his "
Summary: The prospective buyer has two good rationales to fear buying a new home. One is the unemployment rate. The other is that people simply do not believe that housing prices are even close to hitting bottom. Buyers won’t reappear in big numbers until they can see the light at the end of the tunnel. The seller, meanwhile, doesn’t want to face the fact that his or her home is too richly priced, and won’t sell at a more realistic price. There is also an immense amount of inventory that has yet to hit the market but will, sooner or later. At the same time that the administration was offering a hefty tax credit to spur home sales, the government’s wholly owned subsidiaries, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, were imposing rules that made it increasingly difficult to buy a home. Wall Street securitizers won’t buy a mortgage from a bank — because Wall Street is just as fearful as every other participant in the market. 
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Green curtains of viney plants are grown over trellises against a building’s windows and outer walls; as they grow, the plants help filter sunlight, keeping walls from absorbing heat and preventing too much solar heating inside buildings and reducing the need for air conditioning. And, they absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. And they can grow food... 
In a post titled "You Only Get One Chance to Make a First Impression" 
As continuing evidence of a standoff between buyers and sellers, a seven-market Redfin survey found that fewer than half of 500,000 homes listed in 2009 had sold by last week. Just 4% were still on the market. Redfin concludes that it's all about pricing... that is, seller overpricing. They don't say how the statistics compared to previous years or how many of the unsold homes are headed toward foreclosure. While the headline sounds dismal, one interpretation of the statistic might be that sellers just aren't that desperate to move. Although the real estate industry might disagree, lower housing turnover might not be such a bad thing in a broader cultural sense. Maybe more of us will be staying in the old neighborhood. More about the survey at