Faced with escalating costs, Southland Christian Church has filed an amended development plan for the site of the former Lexington Mall on Richmond Road.

The new plan would create a second commercial parcel fronting Richmond Road that could be leased or sold, and it would reduce substantially the size of the pond in front of the former mall.

The church, based in north Jessamine County, bought the 31-acre site in 2010 for a satellite campus.

Cost of construction, initially estimated at $19.3 million, grew to $24 million before two rounds of cost-cutting and scaling back, Chris Hahn, Southland's lead executive pastor, said Monday.

Neighbors who met Monday night at Perkins Restaurant in front of the mall said they were particularly concerned about how a smaller pond might affect water runoff.

Jim Capeley, president of Idle Hour Neighbors Alliance, said the area already has serious problems with runoff.

After just an inch of rain, a nearby creek "flows like a whitewater rafting, and it all goes down into this pond," he said. "Where's all that water going to go?"

Councilman Bill Farmer Jr., who represents the neighborhood, agreed to work with the group to help draft a petition and try to arrange a meeting with representatives of the church. He said he also would ask planning officials to look into the runoff issues and how the church's plan might affect the situation.

"I get a little angry when I'm duped, and this is a process of 'dupation,' as far as I am concerned," said area resident Carole Youngblood.

The original design showed one parcel and major reconfiguration of the pond to create a water feature. But Hahn said Monday that increased costs had forced the church to make changes.

Removing and disposing of contaminated sludge from the pond and beautifying the surrounding area would have cost about $750,000.

Filling in much of the pond and eliminating the water feature will save money, Hahn said.

Heavy equipment brought in to raze much of the long-vacant mall and construction equipment chewed up the 27-acre parking lot to the point it will have to be resurfaced at "a pretty significant cost," Hahn said.

Reconditioning the sprawling parking area and adding landscaping "to make it where it is nice, but not what we'd love to do" will cost about $1.2 million, he said.

Also, structural engineers found "a lot more to do when they got into re-enforcing the old Dillard's department store building than they, originally, estimated," Hahn said. The additional steel raised costs.

By selling or leasing the two parcels, the church will have more money to spend on landscaping two entrances off Richmond Road, Farmer said in his constituent newsletter last week.

The councilman said church officials had told him that without the extra money generated by the parcels, the pond would remain exactly as it is, with no additional improvements and no cleanup.

Overall, Hahn said, "We've made cuts of about $5 million to stay within budget. Because of that we had to re-think the design of the property."

Southland announced in July 2010 that it would buy Lexington Mall from Maryland-based Saul Centers, which had owned the mall since 1974.

The enclosed mall had been dormant for several years. The property includes the land on which Perkins and Applebee's restaurants sit. It does not include the property owned by Central Bank or Home Depot or the site of a former BP gas station.

Hahn said the former Dillard's building is being converted to youth and children's classroom spaces on the first floor, with church offices on the second. Most of the second floor will remain unfinished. "We want to see as we grow what to use the space for," he said. An adjoining new building — on the site of the former enclosed mall — will be the worship center.

Southland launched a three-year capital fund drive in December 2010. Members have pledged $18 million. The church has received about $8 million of those pledges, said Kurt Braun, executive director of finance and administration.

"It is pretty common in the church world for people to spread their pledges out over three years," Braun said, adding, "We are tracking pretty well at this point."

The church's amended development plan is scheduled to be reviewed by the Planning Commission's technical committee Feb. 22 and by the subdivision committee March 1.

It will go before the full Planning Commission at 1:30 p.m. March 8 in council chambers of the Government Center.

Herald-Leader staff writer Karla Ward contributed to this report. Beverly Fortune: (859) 231-3251. Twitter: @BFortune2010

Read more here:
Church's revised development plan for former mall has neighbors concerned

Jamaica Plain’s Home for Little Wanderers will soon be a home for just about anyone.

Developer Boston Residential Group has reached a deal to buy the nonprofit child welfare agency’s South Huntington Avenue property, tear everything down and put up an apartment building with as many as 200 units.

“We really like the Jamaica Plain neighborhood and location,” Curtis Kemeny, the company’s CEO, told the Herald. “We like its proximity to the Longwood Medical Area, to Angell Animal Medical Center, the Back Bay and to downtown employers.”

Boston Residential — which redeveloped the former Tower Records building on Newbury Street and created 65 luxury lofts at 285 Columbus Ave. — has started the permitting process and aims to start construction early next year. It’s a $75 million project, including the acquisition.

“It was a very competitive process,” Kemeny said of the negotiations with broker Colliers Meredith & Grew. “We were just glad we came out on top.”

The Home for Little Wanderers put the nearly century-old orphanage building on the block in August and plans to shift operations to its Longview Farm campus in Walpole, where it’s spending $23 million on a school and four new residential buildings.

A spokeswoman for the home, which leases its headquarters space on Huntington Avenue near Symphony Hall, declined comment yesterday.

The JP building was constructed in 1914, but it’s not a historic site or city landmark.

Kemeny said the new building is still in the design stage but would most likely be four or five stories — in line with the neighboring Goddard House and Sherrill House assisted-living facilities.

The apartments, primarily studios and one-bedroom units, will be “very high quality” but not at the same level of luxury as previous Boston Residential projects, Kemeny said, adding that he aims to make 13 percent of the units affordable in accordance with Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s housing preference.

“The general idea is to bring the residential fabric of Jamaica Plain down to this portion of Huntington Avenue toward Longwood,” he said.

Read more:
JP orphanage EYed for housing

Enlarge image Multifamily Buildings to Lead U.S. Construction Gains

Emile Wamsteker/Bloomberg

New townhouses, built into a rock quarry, stand in the Hovnanian Enterprises Inc. Four Seasons at Great Notch Spa and Club development in Woodland Park, New Jersey.

New townhouses, built into a rock quarry, stand in the Hovnanian Enterprises Inc. Four Seasons at Great Notch Spa and Club development in Woodland Park, New Jersey. Photographer: Emile Wamsteker/Bloomberg

Construction of multifamily units will lead the U.S. building industry again this year, allowing housing to contribute to growth for the first time in seven years, according to economists Michelle Meyer and Celia Chen.

Work will begin on about 260,000 apartment buildings and townhouse developments in 2012, up 45 percent from last year and the most since 2008, according to Meyer, a senior economist at Bank of America Corp. in New York. Chen, an economist at Moody’s Analytics Inc. in West Chester, Pennsylvania, is even more optimistic, projecting a record 74 percent jump to 310,000.

Home ownership rates, which have declined to the lowest levels since 1998, may keep dropping as the foreclosure crisis turns more Americans into renters. In addition, household formation will probably accelerate as an improving economy and growing employment embolden more people to stop sharing residences and strike out on their own.

“Given the ongoing shift from owning to renting, there is increasing demand for multifamily construction,” Meyer said in an interview. “Foreclosures are transitioning people out of ownership.”

Stocks rose today as Greece approved austerity plans to secure rescue funds. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index climbed 0.3 percent to 1,346.58 at 10:45 a.m. in New York.

In Europe today, the Confederation of British Industry said the U.K. economy will escape a recession and the recovery will gain momentum this year, avoiding the need for more quantitative easing by the Bank of England.

Japan Contracts

Japan’s economy shrank an annualized 2.3 percent in the fourth quarter, more than economists estimated, as slumping exports undermined a recovery from last year’s record earthquake, other data showed today.

The projected increases in U.S. multifamily construction extend gains in that began with a 6.8 percent increase in 2010 and a 54 percent surge last year to 178,300 units, according to figures from the Commerce Department. That portion of the market reached a record-low of 108,900 units in 2009 after declining for four consecutive years.

By contrast, starts on single-family homes fell last year to 428,600, the fewest in five decades of data. Bank of America’s Meyer projects single-family construction will grow 5 percent this year.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke last week highlighted the weakness in housing as limiting the economic expansion that began in June 2009.

Bernanke’s View

“The state of the housing sector has been a key impediment to a faster recovery,” Bernanke told the annual convention of homebuilders in Orlando, Florida, on Feb. 10. “Homebuilding remains depressed in most areas,” he said. “In contrast to the situation for owner-occupied homes, rental markets around the country have strengthened somewhat. Rents have been increasing and the construction of apartment buildings has picked up.”

A lack of investment in residential real estate subtracted 0.03 percentage point from economic growth last year, the smallest decline since the industry last expanded in 2005.

A report later this week may show housing starts opened the year on a positive note. Builders broke ground on 675,000 houses in January, up 2.7 percent from the prior month, according to the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News before Commerce Department data on Feb. 16.

One reason why multifamily units may rebound faster than single-family houses is the drop in demand. The homeownership rate fell in the fourth quarter to 66 percent, according to Commerce Department data. It peaked at 69.2 percent in the second quarter of 2004 and fell to a 13-year low of 65.9 percent in the second quarter of 2011.

More Foreclosures

An increase in foreclosures may push the rate down even more. Lenders had slowed the pace of home seizures as they negotiated with attorneys general in all 50 states for more than a year over allegations of faulty and fraudulent paperwork used to repossess homes. That delayed the clearing of the market necessary to any recovery and increased demand for rental units.

The rental vacancy rate fell to 9.4 percent in the last three months of 2011 from 9.8 percent in the previous three months, according to data from the Census Bureau. It reached a nine-year low of 9.2 percent from April through June of last year.

Rental payments climbed 2.5 percent in 2011, the biggest gain since 2008, Labor Department figures showed.

Apartment real estate investment trusts such as AvalonBay Communities Inc. (AVB) have profited from the turn to rentals. It’s up 235 percent since its recession low on March 2, 2009, through Feb. 10. During the same period, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index is up 92 percent.

Strengthening Demand

“Apartments should benefit once again in 2012 from a combination of gradually improving labor market, a weak for-sale market, favorable demographics and modest levels of new supply,” Tim Naughton, chief executive officer at AvalonBay, said on a Feb. 2 earnings call. “We expect that demand will outpace supply again this year, which would propel operating performance and result in another strong year for AvalonBay.”

The jobless rate dropped to 8.3 in January, the lowest level in three years, and employers in the world’s largest economy add 243,000 workers to payrolls, according to a Labor Department report this month.

The improvement will contribute to an increase in the number of households being formed, further stoking demand for rental housing, according to economists like Patrick Newport at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Massachusetts.

“We will see a surge in household formation because of pent-up demand as people move away from their parents,” Newport said. “We will see a pickup in housing where there is a much stronger pickup in multifamily.”

IHS forecasts 1.5 million households will be formed in the 12 months through March 2013 from an estimated 972,000 in the year through March 2012.

To contact the reporters on this story: Robert Willis in Washington at bwillis@bloomberg.net;

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Chris Wellisz at cwellisz@bloomberg.net;

Link:
Multifamily Buildings to Lead U.S. Construction Gains This Year: Economy

Public Private Partnership delivers public art spaces, affordable and market rate housing and public parking in the heart of downtown Silver Spring.

Silver Spring, MD (PRWEB) February 13, 2012

The stars aligned two years ago when developer RST Development and Montgomery County, MD combined forces to launch construction on the Galaxy, a new five-story, 195-unit, mid-rise rental apartment building in downtown Silver Spring, MD. Leased and managed by Hercules Real Estate, the Galaxy’s leasing center was recently opened to prospective residents. A stunning, decorated model apartment is open for touring, public art is dazzling pedestrians and dozens of one, two and two bedroom with den apartments have been pre-leased. The Galaxy brings 82 affordable apartments and 113 market units to this dynamic section of Silver Spring.

“The Galaxy is opening its doors to residents at a very opportune time in the market,” said RST Development Principal, Scott Copeland. “Our location in the core of Silver Spring’s arts district, walking distance to the Metro, has great appeal to the growing number of individuals and families who want to rent in a close-in location. We brought in top local design talent and artists to create a fresh, contemporary design and a decidedly urban feel to this project.”

“The Galaxy team is fulfilling its promise to bring affordable and market rate housing as well as additional parking to downtown Silver Spring,” said Richard Y. Nelson, Jr., Director of the Montgomery County – Department of Housing and Community Affairs. “This public-private initiative demonstrates the opportunity we have for win-win-win developments in Montgomery County. The Galaxy is a win for residents of many income levels, a win for the County in bringing additional parking for a 24-7 neighborhood and a win for a development team that is opening the right product at exactly the right time.”

Galaxy residents will enjoy an abundance of light and air at this stylish addition to downtown Silver Spring. A public plaza greets residents and their guests as they approach the project and a peaceful interior courtyard with benches and sculpture provides for both a quiet visit and allows for tranquil views from balconies and patios. A green roof provides eco-friendly storm water management and solar panels reduce the building’s energy load.

Creating a pedestrian friendly path through the block between 13th Street and King Street, a new Art Walk will offer the opportunity for art installations by local artists. A stunning mural by acclaimed local artist, Martha Jackson Jarvis, greets residents at the entrance to the building.

Downtown Silver Spring combines convenience and extraordinary transportation access with an eclectic mix of dining, shopping, and entertainment. Galaxy residents will have front door access to the free VanGo shuttle service that serves more than two dozen Silver Spring stops, making outings to the many concerts, arts and crafts fairs, farmers market and cultural festivals easy and affordable. The Silver Spring Metro station is close to the project and three bus shelters with real-time schedule information flank the project. Bicyclists will find plentiful storage and the 368-car underground garage provides 208 dedicated spaces for residents as well as car share parking and public parking. A full service concierge and an Onsite Transportation Benefits Coordinator bring convenience and efficiency to life at the Galaxy.

Galaxy amenities include a large, luxurious clubroom with pool table, flat screen televisions and a Wii™ station as well as a cyber café with a Wi-Fi Hotspot. A fully equipped private fitness center sports glass windows to the plaza. Apartments are designed with condo-grade finishes, from custom cabinetry to granite countertops and stainless steel appliances to ceramic floors, full-size washers and dryers, walk-in closets, patios and balconies. Families will enjoy not only the easy walk to local favorite restaurants, grocery stores such as Whole Foods, movies and shops but also the private “tot lot” with creatively designed play equipment.

The Galaxy was developed by RST Development after an extensive property assemblage and is an example of a public private partnership working together for jobs, affordable housing and development. The financing included a tax-exempt bond mortgage of $38.5 million provided by the Montgomery County Housing Opportunities Commission, along with a $5 million loan from the Montgomery County Department of Housing and Community Affairs, from the County’s Housing Initiative Fund. The County also provided a Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) agreement. The Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development provided Low Income Housing Tax Credits. The 368-space parking garage is the result of a partnership between RST Development and the Montgomery County Parking Lot District, who owned the surface lot that existed prior to development.

The Galaxy team is comprised of top quality firms in the areas of design and construction:

    Clark Realty Builders – General Contractor     A.R. Meyers & Associates Architects, Inc. AIA – Architect     Studio 39 – Landscape Architect     Hartman Design Group – Interior Design     Martha Jackson Jarvis – Mural     Streetsense - Marketing

About Hercules Living

Founded in 1995, the family-owned Hercules Real Estate Services now owns and manages over 40 properties, comprising of over 8,000 units, in six states – Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia — and Washington, D.C. Approximately 80 percent of Hercules Real Estate’s portfolio is designated affordable under the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program. In little over a decade, Hercules has emerged as one of the leading companies of its kind in the mid-Atlantic and Southeast regions. For more information, please visit http://www.HerculesLiving.com

###

Eric Burka
Streetsense
301.652.9020
Email Information

Read this article:
Galaxy Apartments Open In Downtown Silver Spring, MD

February 14, 2012, 1:36 AM EST

By Bob Willis

Feb. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Construction of multifamily units will lead the U.S. building industry again this year, allowing housing to contribute to growth for the first time in seven years, according to economists Michelle Meyer and Celia Chen.

Work will begin on about 260,000 apartment buildings and townhouse developments in 2012, up 45 percent from last year and the most since 2008, according to Meyer, a senior economist at Bank of America Corp. in New York. Chen, an economist at Moody’s Analytics Inc. in West Chester, Pennsylvania, is even more optimistic, projecting a record 74 percent jump to 310,000.

Home ownership rates, which have declined to the lowest levels since 1998, may keep dropping as the foreclosure crisis turns more Americans into renters. In addition, household formation will probably accelerate as an improving economy and growing employment embolden more people to stop sharing residences and strike out on their own.

“Given the ongoing shift from owning to renting, there is increasing demand for multifamily construction,” Meyer said in an interview. “Foreclosures are transitioning people out of ownership.”

Stocks rose today as Greece approved austerity plans to secure rescue funds. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index climbed 0.3 percent to 1,346.58 at 10:45 a.m. in New York.

In Europe today, the Confederation of British Industry said the U.K. economy will escape a recession and the recovery will gain momentum this year, avoiding the need for more quantitative easing by the Bank of England.

Japan Contracts

Japan’s economy shrank an annualized 2.3 percent in the fourth quarter, more than economists estimated, as slumping exports undermined a recovery from last year’s record earthquake, other data showed today.

The projected increases in U.S. multifamily construction extend gains in that began with a 6.8 percent increase in 2010 and a 54 percent surge last year to 178,300 units, according to figures from the Commerce Department. That portion of the market reached a record-low of 108,900 units in 2009 after declining for four consecutive years.

By contrast, starts on single-family homes fell last year to 428,600, the fewest in five decades of data. Bank of America’s Meyer projects single-family construction will grow 5 percent this year.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke last week highlighted the weakness in housing as limiting the economic expansion that began in June 2009.

Bernanke’s View

“The state of the housing sector has been a key impediment to a faster recovery,” Bernanke told the annual convention of homebuilders in Orlando, Florida, on Feb. 10. “Homebuilding remains depressed in most areas,” he said. “In contrast to the situation for owner-occupied homes, rental markets around the country have strengthened somewhat. Rents have been increasing and the construction of apartment buildings has picked up.”

A lack of investment in residential real estate subtracted 0.03 percentage point from economic growth last year, the smallest decline since the industry last expanded in 2005.

A report later this week may show housing starts opened the year on a positive note. Builders broke ground on 675,000 houses in January, up 2.7 percent from the prior month, according to the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News before Commerce Department data on Feb. 16.

One reason why multifamily units may rebound faster than single-family houses is the drop in demand. The homeownership rate fell in the fourth quarter to 66 percent, according to Commerce Department data. It peaked at 69.2 percent in the second quarter of 2004 and fell to a 13-year low of 65.9 percent in the second quarter of 2011.

More Foreclosures

An increase in foreclosures may push the rate down even more. Lenders had slowed the pace of home seizures as they negotiated with attorneys general in all 50 states for more than a year over allegations of faulty and fraudulent paperwork used to repossess homes. That delayed the clearing of the market necessary to any recovery and increased demand for rental units.

The rental vacancy rate fell to 9.4 percent in the last three months of 2011 from 9.8 percent in the previous three months, according to data from the Census Bureau. It reached a nine-year low of 9.2 percent from April through June of last year.

Rental payments climbed 2.5 percent in 2011, the biggest gain since 2008, Labor Department figures showed.

Apartment real estate investment trusts such as AvalonBay Communities Inc. have profited from the turn to rentals. It’s up 235 percent since its recession low on March 2, 2009, through Feb. 10. During the same period, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index is up 92 percent.

Strengthening Demand

“Apartments should benefit once again in 2012 from a combination of gradually improving labor market, a weak for-sale market, favorable demographics and modest levels of new supply,” Tim Naughton, chief executive officer at AvalonBay, said on a Feb. 2 earnings call. “We expect that demand will outpace supply again this year, which would propel operating performance and result in another strong year for AvalonBay.”

The jobless rate dropped to 8.3 in January, the lowest level in three years, and employers in the world’s largest economy add 243,000 workers to payrolls, according to a Labor Department report this month.

The improvement will contribute to an increase in the number of households being formed, further stoking demand for rental housing, according to economists like Patrick Newport at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Massachusetts.

“We will see a surge in household formation because of pent-up demand as people move away from their parents,” Newport said. “We will see a pickup in housing where there is a much stronger pickup in multifamily.”

IHS forecasts 1.5 million households will be formed in the 12 months through March 2013 from an estimated 972,000 in the year through March 2012.

--With assistance from Alex Tanzi in Washington. Editors: Carlos Torres, Chris Wellisz

To contact the reporters on this story: Robert Willis in Washington at bwillis@bloomberg.net;

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Chris Wellisz at cwellisz@bloomberg.net;

See the article here:
Multifamily Buildings to Lead U.S. Construction Gains: Economy

BAY CITY — No one was injured, but two families were displaced by a fire that broke out early Saturday morning in an apartment building at 709 Seventh St. on Bay City's East Side.

Robert Phillips, assistant chief of the Bay City Fire Department, said the home and its contents is a total loss.

Phillips said firefighters were called to the blaze at 6:43 a.m. and arrived on the scene minutes later. The initial dispatch call included a mention of people trapped by the fire but everyone was out of the home within three minutes of firefighters' arrival.

Phillips said the cause of the fire is unknown with all options still being investigated. Fire crews on the scene reported the fire may have started on the second floor and later spread to the first. Phillips said the home's older-style balloon-frame construction may have contributed to the spread of the fire.

“Once it gets into the walls and attic it spreads throughout the house due to the balloon-frame construction,” Phillips said. “There are no firestops.”

Neighbor Roxanne Davis, a food service manager at the Bay County Jail, witnessed the fire and listened to the fire department’s radio chatter on her scanner.

“I kept running back and forth to the front of the house (and to the scanner),” Davis said. “I was curious why the (fire department) was still there.”

Davis noted that at first there was no visible smoke or flames but later they began shooting from the roof and windows of the structure.

It took until 9 a.m. to bring the fire under control including a 30-minute period where firefighters had to evacuate the house due to a danger of being trapped by the fire, Phillips said. Bay City firefighters were assisted by the Hampton Township Fire Department. 

Members from the Great Lakes Bay chapter of the American Red Cross provided relief and a Bay Metro bus was called in to act as area for firefighters to warm up due to the cold weather. Fire crews remained on the scene until about 12:30 p.m. with some investigators staying for another hour.

According to Red Cross officials, both families displaced by the fire are now taking up residence with other family members. Emergency Services Program Manager Ryan Manz said he did not know of any charities set up to help the victims of the fire, but said those wishing to help can donate to the Red Cross and designate the donation go to the families affected by the fire. 

He noted that any money above the amount of assistance given to the families involved would go to other families in a similar situation.

The property was valued at $56,000 before the fire, according to Phillips.

Read more:
Fire destroys Bay City apartment building Saturday, displaces two families

ALBANY, New York, February 13, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

New Report Added in ResearchMoz Reports Database China Thermal Power Generation Industry, 2011

China thermal power generation Industry, 2011 is valuable for anyone who wants to invest in the thermal power generation industry, to get Chinese investments; to import into China or export from China, to build factories and take advantage of lower costs in China, to partner with one of the key Chinese corporations, to get market shares as China is boosting its domestic needs; to forecast the future of the world economy as China is leading the way; or to compete in the segment. The report provides in-depth analysis and detailed insight into the thermal power generation industry, market drivers, key enterprises and their strategies, as well as technologies and investment status, risks and trends.

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Data sources: Governmental statistics organizations, market research (monitoring) centers, industry associations and institutions, import and export statistics organizations, and others. 

This report is divided into 9 parts 19 chapters as follow: 

Part 1 Industry Overview 
1 Industry definition and development overview
2 Industry macroscopic environment and its influence analysis
3 Industry international market analysis 
4 Industry domestic market analysis

Part 2 Basic indices
5 Analysis of the industry's scale and condition: 2006-2010 
6 Status analysis of gross assets analysis: 2006-2010 

Part 3 Economic operation 
7 Analysis of gross industrial output: 2006-2010 
8 Industry sales income analysis: 2006-2010 
9 Industry gross profit analysis
10 Industry import/export analysis in 2010 

Part 4 Competition landscape 
11 Industry competition landscape analysis
12 Industry key enterprises' competitive power comparison (top 20) 

Part 5 Key enterprises 
13 Comparative analysis of the economic indicators of the industry's key enterprises 

Part 6 Business strategy 
14. Development bottlenecks and coping strategies in Industry 
15 Enterprise development strategy analysis and recommendations in Industry 

Part 7 Market investment 
16 Comparison and analysis of investment activity coefficient and rate of return on investment in Industry 
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Part 9 Developments and trends 
19 Development trends and operation capacity forecast for 2011-2015 

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ResearchMoz: China Thermal Power Generation Industry - Market Research Report

All this time you’ve assumed that you can’t afford the home you really want: The cozy, comfortable house with all the neat features that you want to get your hands on, stuff like slate countertops; the island range with the stainless steel hood; the rustic beams on the ceiling. Oh, and some really cool lighting fixtures and a tiled shower with two shower heads.

Woo Hoo!

And you know you can’t afford that house because you’ve looked around and nobody’s building that cool house for less than a biodiesel-powered truckload of Krugerrands.

You know that the only way to hold down construction costs on a house is to strip all the niceties away.

The only reasonably priced homes for sale in your area are disposable vinyl and Styrofoam junk or ugly piles of brick and drywall

You’re half right. A typical builder’s “spec” home price gets into the stratosphere when you add all the goodies. But, the good news, you’re half right, too! The reason most houses get ridiculously expensive is that they’re pretty poorly planned.

Plan better – WAY better – and you can get what you want and keep those gold coins in your pocket.

Here are seven ways to beat the high cost of construction and home improvement:

1) Smaller is Smarter (Really?)

The summit of obviousness, making a home smaller makes it less expensive. But random hacking away with a machete is the wrong approach – we need a scalpel and a surgeon. So think carefully about redundancy – why do you need a dining room AND a breakfast room AND five stools at the kitchen counter? A living room AND a study AND a family room AND a sitting area in the master suite?

Most of these uses can be combined into the same space – one nice large place to eat, for example.
Think about your furniture and how you arrange it – when you don’t know how a room is going to be used you usually make it much too big.

Carefully trim out the wasted, unused space and put the cash into that homey board-and-batten wainscot you love. Or lots and lots of chocolate.

2) Efficient Use Of Building Materials

Way back when, some really smart guys figured out that if building materials were all designed on a common module, they wouldn’t have to use or waste so much of it. So sheets of drywall and plywood are both 8 feet tall and 4 feet wide. Which works great on an 8-foot x 16-foot wall, but not so good when it’s 9.5-feet x 17 feet.

Lots of wasted material!

For the same reasons, structural lumber for floors comes from the mill in 2-foot increments. So whose idea was it to make rooms 13-feet wide? Design your house as much as possible on the established modules of building materials and stop filling the dumpster with scrap!

3) Use It Where It Counts, Don’t Use It Where It Doesn’t

I visited Steve Wynn’s Treasure Island Resort in Las Vegas a few years back and remember how impressed I was that the décor in the bathrooms in the furthest back corner of the casino was just as nice as the décor in the baths up front.

But Steve Wynn has a net worth of $2 billion. You probably don’t. So while I hope you become a billionaire, don’t spend like one just yet. Go ahead, put the granite countertops in the kitchen and the master bath, but not in the laundry room. (A classic “Parade of Homes” head-scratcher, that one.)

And your kids can do without solid brass faucets, crown molding, and a hand-painted tile backsplash in their bath. (Go ahead, ask them – they don’t care!)

Same with carpet. Nice stuff in the family room, cheaper everywhere else. Put the money in finishes and fixtures you’ll enjoy every day.

P.S. – Steve Wynn still has his $2 billion AND a hundred bucks of mine.

4) Design for Low Maintenance

This one sounds like a paradox: Spend more here to save more later. Cheap siding, roofing, and windows will cost you way more in the long run than quality components will now. There are entire industries built around the hope that you’ll buy replacement windows and a new roof for your house someday, probably much sooner than you think.

Quality is the tortoise in this race. Do it right the first time.

5) Lower Your Energy Bills – Dramatically

This goes way beyond insulation, Argon-filled glass, and geothermal systems, and will be the subject of a lengthy article in the near future. In the meantime, don’t make the mistake of designing a home that isn’t climate- or site-specific and try to force it to be highly energy efficient – you’ll be addressing less than half the problem.

The real problem you need to solve is how your house DESIGN responds to the climate and the site. For example, don’t put a big wall of glass facing prevailing winter winds where the heat will get sucked out like a black hole.

Remember your 7th-grade geometry, how a square encloses the most area with the least perimeter. Remember how you thought you’d never need to know that? Turns out it comes in handy! So call up your old math teacher and tell her she can be proud because you’re going to use that knowledge in your house design. You’re going to enclose your new highly-efficient floor plan in a relatively square footprint and reduce your heat loss with fewer building materials!

Do this right and you get a big bonus – a tight, energy-efficient house doesn’t need an expensive geothermal heating system at three times the cost of a conventional furnace. Cha-CHING!
Bonus #2 – that square box is going to be better-looking, too…read on.

6) Boxy is Bee-you-tee-full

We have millions of really great-looking homes in this country, though most were built over 70 years ago. The designers and builders of the first American suburbs were experts at making simple homes elegant and attractive.

Good-looking homes are very often based on relatively simple box forms, properly proportioned, composed, and detailed.

Today, too many designers compensate for their lack of skill by loading the exteriors up with as much stuff as they can – gables, complex roof forms, heroic-scaled arched windows, inappropriate details, etc. Lots of money spent and nobody benefits but the home builder (and the replacement-window guy I mentioned above.)

 

Keep the house forms simple and you’ll save a ton of green on the building materials. Look to the early 20th century suburbs for inspiration and lessons on the elegant simplicity of the box. You’ll have a better looking home that you can be proud of.

7) Good Design Sells

Speaking of good looking, energy-efficient, less expensive, low maintenance, smaller homes, guess what? They sell faster and for more money! Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!!

My all-time favorite blow-my-own-horn story is of my client who (8 years later) sold his house in two weeks – without a real estate agent – for twice what he paid to have it built. All he did was stick a sign out front. The buyer said it was the uniquely functional and interesting floor plan and irresistible exterior design that sold him on it.

How happy do you think he is that he invested in better design?

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Richard Taylor is a residential architect based in Dublin, Ohio and is a contributor to Zillow Blog. Connect with him at http://www.rtastudio.com/index.htm.

Note: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion or position of Zillow.

 

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Seven Ways to Beat the High Cost of Home Building

Katarina and Tom love the character and charm of their 100-year-old house, but they admit that adapting the century home to modern-day living was a bit of a challenge. Back when the house was built, one common living room was all anyone ever needed.

Fast forward to 2012, and it's a totally different story. Katarina, Tom and their two rambunctious boys have just one space in which to live, play, work and entertain. The family's attempt to introduce the trappings of modern living into this stately old space resulted in a jumble of multipurpose furniture and a mishmash of electronic equipment, with wires and cables snaking everywhere across the floor.

There's no doubt this room presented several design challenges — among them, a lack of usable wall space, which was broken up by windows, doors, radiators and a nonfunctioning fireplace. I definitely had my work cut out for me, but I do enjoy a challenge. So I devised a plan that merges old with new, and tradition with technology.

First, we tackled the fireplace. It hadn't been used in 50 years, so we expected it would need work — we just didn't realize how much. We had to call in a chimney expert to repair and insulate the exterior brickwork and insert a stainless-steel liner down the entire length of the chimney. Just when we thought we were done, we discovered that the hearth was not structurally sound. In fact, it was ready to fall into the basement. Major repairs were needed before we could even contemplate bringing in the new gas-log set I had ordered.

As you would expect, Katarina and Tom's living room featured a plaster ceiling and walls. The room had only one dim ceiling light, and I wanted to brighten things up by installing recessed lights and a couple of elegant wall sconces, along with state-of-the-art, ceiling-mounted speakers. We replaced the old ceiling with a more modern equivalent, but applied molding to give it a traditional look. The walls were covered in elegant, glass-beaded striped wallpaper, which is the perfect backdrop to this multitasking space.

One of the things that Katarina and Tom love about their century home is the radiator heating system, but the heating elements took up quite a bit of space. The solution was to construct customized covers, which conceal the heating elements behind a stylish screen while creating much-needed display surfaces.

Throughout this project, the emphasis was on using each and every square inch of space, and the custom cabinetry I designed for the perimeter of the room is no exception. The cabinets house the family's audio and video equipment and provide a surface to display lamps, pictures and accessories. Katarina's desk is flanked by lots of shelving, providing plenty of storage for files and books. Best of all, the cabinets hide the unsightly wires and cables from all the modern gizmos and gadgets.

I positioned a rich brown sectional sofa directly across from the now-functional fireplace and added a couple of comfortable yet classy chairs and an ottoman to round out the room's seating. The thin legs and open bottoms of the antique-mirror coffee table and side tables help create a feeling of spaciousness. The traditional shape of the mirror over the mantle evokes the room's historical roots, while the woven wooden window shades work to transition the eye from the beautiful gardens outside to the elegance inside.

Katarina and Tom had become bogged down by the challenge of introducing modern technology into the living room of their stately old home. The space was full of promise, but also full of problems. A multitasking theme was central to this design. Space-saving solutions and cutting-edge equipment, combined with just the right emphasis on tradition, brought this living room into the modern age without sacrificing any of its classic style.

Interior decorator Candice Olson is host of HGTV's "Candice Tells All." For more ideas, information and show times visit http://www.hgtv.com/candice-tells-all/show/index.html.

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Design: Century-old living room gets a modern twist

By Steve Cook  Print Article

Homeowners are ready to make 2012 a banner year for remodeling and the latest cost-for-value research suggests that getting the most bang for every buck is more important than ever.

The Remodeling Market Index (RMI) hit a five-year high at the end of 2011, indicating that residential remodeling should continue to grow in 2012, according to panelists at a press conference at NAHB’s International Builders’ Show. After a slow start, home improvement spending is expected to trend up later this year, according to the Leading Indicator of Remodeling Activity (LIRA) released by the Remodeling Futures Program at the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. If this momentum continues to build during the second half of the year, remodeling activity is on course to end 2012 on a positive note.

However, consumers want to get the most for their money.

Remodeling Magazine’s annual Cost vs. Value report for 2011-2012 found that the trend right now is replacement over remodeling—swapping out the old for the new rather than doing a total gut job, which can be much more costly. Exterior replacement projects—such as new garage doors and a new entry door—offer some of the best returns at resale, allowing home owners to recoup close to 70 percent or more of the costs of the project at times of resale.

The following are the top, mid-range projects from this year’s report, based on what home owners stand to recoup at time of resale:

1. Replacing the entry door to steel
Estimated cost: $1,238
Cost recouped at resale: 73 percent

2. Attic bedroom (converting unfinished attic space into a bedroom with bathroom and shower)
Estimated cost: $50,148
Cost recouped at resale: 72.5 percent

3. Minor kitchen remodel (including new cabinets and drawers, countertops, hardware, and appliances)
Estimated cost: $19,588
Cost recouped at resale: 72.1 percent

4. Garage door replacement
Estimated cost: $1,512
Cost recouped at resale: 71.9 percent

5. Deck addition (wood)
Estimated cost: $10,350
Cost recouped at resale: 70.1 percent

6. Siding replacement (vinyl)
Estimated cost: $11,729
Cost recouped at resale: 69.5 percent

For more information, visit http://www.realestateeconomywatch.com.

Copyright© 2011 RISMedia, The Leader in Real Estate Information Systems and Real Estate News. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be republished without permission from RISMedia.

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Remodeling Looking up in 2012