The Real Story

My Year of Living Dangerously: The Real Story on finance

The Real Story — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:41:04 +0000

It’s been a year since we started talking to people about all things real estate. In Blog Years, that’s 52 interviews, 222 podcasts and 403 posts, on subjects ranging from shadow foreclosures to Federal loan modification programs to environmentally friendly home design.

Today, The Real Story looks at what we’ve learned about the financial side of real estate: the first big lesson being that not only does every story have two sides, but also roots and branches that connect it to dozens of other stories as well, some worthy of headlines and some that would get lost in a big news day. In the last year, we have seen the Federal government step up its participation in the housing market, with the FHA taking on the role of a new subprime source—making loans with only 3.5% down. Needless to say, FHA loans now make up 25% of ALL new mortgages in the country—and HALF of all new home mortgages. By October, when the FHA’s reserves fell to .53%, well below its 2% reserve threshold, Congress stepped in, loan requirements were tightened, and minimum credit scores were raised. John Burns and his associates from John Burns Real Estate Consulting were on Capitol Hill for this news; the full report is in our archives.

Early this year, Representative Barney Frank announced that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, privately-owned and taken over by the government in 2008, are “likely to be abolished.” Why? Although they are giants, owning more than $5 trillion in residential debt, they haven’t been able to make it without significant taxpayer aid (to the tune of about $110 billion.) Chris George talked about his view of the government stepping back and letting private industry re-enter this part of the financial market last year; his discussion is still topical.

Stan Humphries, chief analyst from Zillow.com, told The Real Story that there are about 3 million foreclosures in the current market and that one out of every five US households are under water. Currently, there are approximately 500,000 homes in the US whose owners are not making mortgage payments. To put it in perspective, although foreclosures are no longer front page news, more foreclosures are projected for 2010 than 2009 and there are at least 4-5 years of foreclosures in the pipeline.

We have been told that the real estate market has hit bottom and learned to tally what Carolyn Said, real estate and financial reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle, calls “surface signs of stability.” We’ve been advised to keep an eye on the job market, the notices of default, negative equity, increasing interest rates, and to watch what happens to demand as tax credits are withdrawn. We have our marching orders; we’ll be reporting back on all of these issues in the next few weeks.

A beacon of hope

The Real Story — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:52:56 +0000

BRIDGE Housing is moving into a new era, with new leadership. Carol Galante, its president for the last thirteen years, has been recruited to head up HUD’s multifamily housing group. BRIDGE now has a new president and Rick Holliday, its co-founder has become its chairman.

Today, Rick talks to The Real Story about some of the things that never change at the beginning of every project envisioned—the need for community support, from the locals to the council level, and the process of introducing people to the BRIDGE process. That usually includes a tour of other existing BRIDGE projects to look at architectural design and scale, to see the quality of the upkeep and meet some of the residents. Each BRIDGE project needs to serve as a portfolio piece; something to point to with pride and serve as a demonstration for the next city considering bringing BRIDGE in.

In his words, he hopes that BRIDGE can be a beacon of hope, that it can serve as a model to demonstrate that good projects can be built, can be a good neighbor and can be managed well for the long-term. For more on BRIDGE, go to bridgehousing.com.

After the recession: What next for Bridge?

The Real Story — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:21:12 +0000

With this prolonged housing recession making both the private and public builders rethink their strategies and products, with the result being that many of them are leaving the Bay Area market altogether, what’s in store for BRIDGE Housing?

BRIDGE Chairman and co-founder Rick Holliday tells The Real Story that among the ways for BRIDGE to move ahead in its business of creating more affordable housing units is to look for ways to renovate and restore Bay Area buildings that are in foreclosure—in other words, get out of the building business in instances where that model doesn’t work, and develop a new model that lets BRIDGE apply both elbow grease and good management principles to buildings that have been over-leveraged and foreclosed upon.

In a nutshell, this kind of thinking would allow BRIDGE to take advantage of some of the banks’ underperforming assets, which might be resold at less than their replacement cost, allowing BRIDGE to convert some down-at-their-heels market-rate units into restored and retrofitted affordable housing stock.

A green spring cleaning out

The Real Story — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:22:27 +0000

Nothing says “fresh” and “new” like a thorough spring cleaning. Before you start scrubbing, you might want to focus on stuff. Even the tidiest of households seem to accumulate things over the winter, so this is a good time to assess stuff and do some clearing out.

The sustainable approach is to keep items out of landfills by donating and recycling. Decide where you’re going to start collecting piles for each, then start checking through drawers, closets, seldom-used rooms and the garage. Ask yourself: When did I last use this and will I ever use this again? You may have items that can be repurposed to new functions. For ideas, check out the Real Simple web site. If a item has no present or potential use—out it goes.

Donate it
One person’s old coat is another’s vintage find! Just think about what organizations might be able to use your castoffs. A local theatre’s prop department may need that end table or a college student, a set of dishes. Donate old books to your library for their book sale. Out-grown toys can always be used by a local preschool or younger kids in the neighborhood (with parent’s consent). Donate an old car to the autoshop program at the high school. Take things to any number of charities in your area that reuses items for fundraising and income.

For where to donate specific items, check out these links:
www.clutterfreeservices.com/resources.html
www.usedcomputer.com/nonprof.html
parents.berkeley.edu/recommend/charity/clothes.html

Recycle it
Anything paper can be recycled: magazines, newspaper, catalogs, mail, paper shopping bags, kids’ artwork. Put it in your recycle bin. Cardboard boxes are also recyclable, but you may want to keep a selection of sturdy boxes for your own mailing purposes. Take plastic shopping bags to the collection boxes at most grocery stores.

Sell it
If you’re interested in extra cash, consider a yard sale or reselling household items on eBay.

Remember: The important thing is to keep household items out of the waste stream.

Perception versus reality

The Real Story — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:04:10 +0000

Rick Holliday talks to The Real Story today about the perception of affordable housing—especially when it is announced in a neighborhood near one’s own. Rick, the Chairman and co-founder of BRIDGE Housing, makes no bones about the fact that the general perception of affordable housing is not positive—as he says, people worry about all the things that could go wrong, and don’t imagine any of the things that could go right.

So here are a few heartening things about affordable housing to help allay the fear factor: renters in BRIDGE communities have to compete for each available unit. That means that they have to have good credit, and a good history as a renter. Because BRIDGE manages its properties, its managers know that they can’t look the other way if there is a problem. BRIDGE is judged on the basis of its existing projects every day—if a representative from a city considering BRIDGE sees a property that doesn’t measure up to the market rate stock, they have little incentive to invite BRIDGE in.

On another note, we asked Rick: is it possible to build affordable housing, and keep it green? He tells us that green considerations have been a part of the envisioning process for new BRIDGE communities for years. Rick reminds The Real Story that one of the key goals of the green movement is to help get working people living closer to their work, so BRIDGE looks at location even more closely than it looks at individual green amenities, which may take years to pay back. A shorter commute, or a commute on public transportation makes an immediate, positive impact.

Building toward the future

The Real Story — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:51:45 +0000

Because BRIDGE Housing builds so many of its affordable homes as apartments, the original design and construction quality of the units, and the management standards set in place all have to hit a level of quality – otherwise, says BRIDGE CEO and co-founder Rick Holliday, the apartments don’t compare favorably to market rate units. And working at blurring the edges between market rate housing and affordable housing is good for the community at large.

Rick reminds The Real Story that affordable housing is built all over the Bay Area, including some toney zip codes. He recalls building waterside apartments in Mill Valley that were mistaken for market rate product, because everything about their design and landscaping was planned to fit seamlessly into Mill Valley.

That is why there is not a common design recipe for BRIDGE communities —they are designed to fit into the towns and neighborhoods in which they are built, just as market rate for sale and rental properties are envisioned. For more information on BRIDGE, go to its website: http://bridgehousing.com.

Working families priced out

The Real Story — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:31:40 +0000

Bay Area housing is “persistently and pervasively” unaffordable for working families, according to new research published by the Urban Land Institute (ULI) Terwilliger Center for Workforce Housing.

The report, “Priced Out: Persistence of the Workforce Housing Gap in the San Francisco Bay Area,” examines the availability of for-sale and renal housing to workforce households. Approximately 30 percent of the metro area’s 2.7 million households fall in this category. The study found that only 15 percent of the existing for-sale housing stock in the Bay Area is affordable to workforce households earning the median family income. This compares to between 50 and 60 percent in many of the Bay Area’s peer metropolitan regions.

The study suggests “if current trends are any indication, housing production between 2009 and 2025 will leave unmet additional demand for at least 6,000 for-sale housing units appropriate for workforce households. Demand for new rental housing is projected to exceed supply by almost 23,000 units resulting in a total shortage of almost 29,000 workforce housing units. ”

Although released last week, the study cites figures from mid 2009. This raises the question: With home prices in many parts of the greater Bay Area under $300,000 and sliding, is it still so unaffordable?

Check out the report (www.bayareaburden.org) and an interesting calculator that factors the time/cost of transportation into the total cost of housing.

Bridge Housing: 25 years and counting

The Real Story — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:31:46 +0000

The Real Story is talking to Rick Holliday, co-founder and CEO of BRIDGE Housing, Northern California’s leading affordable housing developer. Rick explains the differences between non-profit, affordable and public housing, since the words are often used interchangeably—which is absolutely incorrect. Public housing is built and owned by the government to serve those members of the community with the lowest income. Affordable housing is just that—housing built for people whose monthly salaries are not high enough to keep up with the cost of housing in the communities where they work. Affordable housing is often built with school teachers, firefighters and policemen in mind. Non-profit housing is built, owned and managed by private organizations and operated at cost.

The idea of BRIDGE Housing came about just a little more than 25 years ago, when local Bay Area business leaders came together to talk about stopping the outmigration of workers from the central employment centers to suburban residential neighborhoods. At the time, the BRIDGE business plan was to look for opportunities to build affordable housing within the nine-county Bay Area; today BRIDGE is building in Southern California and Sacramento as well.

Interestingly, over all of its years in business, BRIDGE’s target audience hasn’t changed—which is a reflection of the way Bay Area housing prices were outpacing salaries—until the current market downturn. Rick points out that the silver lining in this housing crisis is that with foreclosures and short sales, there are now more affordable housing choices available than the state has seen in years.

Is our future formulaic?

The Real Story — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:24:43 +0000

Finishing up his week with The Real Story, Peter Palmisano of Pacific Union Development talks today about the kind of development we might be seeing in these capital-starved days. He likens himself and a number of other local developers as the kind of people who first ask themselves: what does the site say? That starts the envisioning process. The other extreme is represented by large institutional groups, who start with a formula and a product, and look for a site that will accommodate it. So will the near future of development be formulaic, or individualistic?

Peter puts his faith in the up-and-comers, the next generation of architects, designers and planners with vision and the ability to subordinate their own self-interest for the common good. The generational shift that we see coming can provide the development industry with a new breed of thinker, who brings technology and psychology together, uses common sense, and has enough sense of self to demand authenticity in that which is designed and built.

The Three E’s

The Real Story — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:43:43 +0000

In talking about creating community at Hamilton, Peter Palmisano refers to some of the guiding principles that he has lived by in his years in the development business: he calls them The Three Big E’s, and they stand for Economics, Environment and Expectations.

Looking at bringing a decommissioned airbase back to life as a neighborhood-based mixed use community, the development team had to take a realistic look at the economics of the proposed venture: the clean-up of the materials left behind from the base’s glory years with the Army Air Corps and the knock-down or retrofitting of old buildings on the site is a huge factor in the cost side of the equation YEARS before there is any return in terms of land or homes sales. So the question had to be asked: given the market conditions, given the condition of the site, and given the vision that would be necessary to underwrite to create enough momentum to launch this new community, could it fly?

The issues brought forward by the environment created a natural push-pull: the development team had to look beyond the enormous task of remediation and cleanup to focus on the out-of-the-box thinking so necessary to create a community of restored natural open spaces, walking trails, and even wild birds’ migration paths.

Finally, managing expectations—especially those of the community, who waited so long for Hamilton to open its gates and welcome the locals home. The neighbors were mindful of what a treasure they had in the historic Hamilton; they stayed engaged in the planning and building process to see firsthand just how the new Hamilton would live.