Home Builder Developer - Interior Renovation and Design

As many as 8,000 residential properties in Cook County, including 4,000 in Chicago, have been in foreclosure for at least three years without resolution, new data show, a situation that could further deteriorate already scarred communities.

Many of those properties that seem to get stuck or abandoned in the foreclosure process are in lower-income areas where annual household income is $49,000 or less, according to a study by Woodstock Institute.

Some of the at-risk houses, condos and apartment buildings are vacant, and the lenders have likely abandoned the foreclosure cases. Some continue to be inhabited while in foreclosure. Others are still in foreclosure while lenders consider short sales.

"You're stuck in this situation where nobody really has a long-term interest in the property," said Spencer Cowan, a vice president at the Chicago-based public policy and research group and one of the report's authors. "The titleholder knows it may be taken at any time. The servicer doesn't own it and may never own it. They may release the lien or just let it sit."

Mortgage servicers filed foreclosure cases against about 228,400 houses, condos and apartment buildings in Cook County between 2008 and 2012, according to Woodstock. Its research, though, looked only at the roughly 135,000 cases filed between 2008 and 2010 because of the long time it typically takes to process a foreclosure case through the county's court system.

Sixty percent of those cases studied completed the foreclosure process and were sold at auction between 2009 and 2012. The majority become bank-owned. An additional 34 percent were resolved in another way, such as through a mortgage loan modification, a short sale or a deed in lieu of foreclosure. The remaining 6 percent remained stuck in foreclosure three years after the original court case was filed, Woodstock concluded.

The study also found that in addition to the different treatment based on household income, properties in areas with a higher percentage of nonwhite residents were more likely to be sold at auction.

"Properties that went into foreclosure in lower-minority tracts seem to have had more alternative resolutions than properties in tracts with higher minority populations," Cowan said.

Woodstock's research used a random sample of 500 properties and extrapolated the findings based on the region's income distribution.

It estimated that nine of Chicago's 77 community areas contain more than 100 unresolved foreclosure cases. Most are those are in neighborhoods that bore the brunt of the city's foreclosure crisis. They are Ashburn, Austin, Belmont Cragin, Chicago Lawn, Humboldt Park, the Near North Side, Portage Park, Roseland and West Ridge.

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Unresolved foreclosure cases pile up in Cook County

Yves here. Im featuring this post in part as a development exercise to Cliff, a German economist who has been blogging off and on since 2011 and plans to post on a more consistent basis. He has been warned that the NC readership can be rough.

Im also of two minds about his argument. Initially I recoiled, because I think the personal service economy in the US has gone too far in some respects. To put it more precisely, the stratification of income has led to growth of the personal service economy, which serves to reinforce class distinctions. And Cliff takes up the fallacy that activities that are included in GDP are somehow better than if they occur outside the transaction economy. Vam Gogh sold only one painting over his entire life. Does that mean his output was worthless? Oh I guess it wasnt only because now auction houses make ginormous amounts from his work. But per this logic, paintings that are traded often are more valuable than ones that are displayed in museums or are owned by collectors for a long time.

Married women with kids who work in professional jobs (unless theyve managed to get a work at home gig, and I know all of one person who had that work well) are typically dependent on personal service workers, as in they need nannies (or at least some sort of part-time child care arrangement even if the kids are in school) and house cleaning. The big reason is the hours arent predictable and they often have husbands who have similar long work days. But that sort of efficiency leads to greater instability. I dont know how many times my friends have come unglued when something happens to their nanny (illness, death of parent, or they turn out to be bad news and need to be fired). Its really hard for them to manage while they are finding a replacement and difficult to find good caregivers.

And youve got the second-order problem identified by Elizabeth Warren in the Two Income Trap: having wives work means you dont have a reserve worker in case something happens to the (presumably higher income primary worker) spouses job. And two income households have higher fixed expenses (the biggie is two cars, although that would probably not be the case in Germany, where public transportation is good in big cities) but they also per above need to spend more on services, thus making it harder to save).

But the flip side is that there is rampant unemployment throughout Europe, with emigration from periphery Europe to the north in search of jobs. It would be vastly better if the surplus countries abandoned their demands for austerity. Economists have argued as a next-best that northern countries will start putting more operations in the South as their wage levels fall. But that wont provide relief any time soon. So perversely, more use by Germans of personal service workers would take up some labor slack at a time when jobs are in desperately short supply. But that seems a poor fallback to failed policies.

By Cliff, a German economist specializing in financial and macroeconomic policy analysis. Originally published at Cliffeconomics

Mowing the lawn appears to be a common pastime for Germans. Washing the car or ironing even makes it into a listing of ways to burn calories in a recent issue of the news magazine Focus. Does this make sense, economically?

Home production, i.e. productive non-market activities, are not captured in the national accounts. Time use surveys, such as the one carried out in Germany in 2001/02, show that adult Germans spend 25 hours per week on unpaid work, more than paid work on average.

Macroeconomic indicators may be reminiscent of the extent of home production in Germany. Labor participation, particularly among women, is low, possibly on the account of home keepers and stay-home mothers. Work hours have traditionally been lower, providing at least more opportunity to engage in home production also for those in jobs. These indicators distinguish Germany in particular from the US, where consumers are perceived to rather pay than doing stuff themselves. (For disclosure, Cliff uses dry cleaners, car washing, but doesnt have a lawn to mow.)

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Why Germans Should Stop Mowing Their Own Lawn

WEST SACRAMENTO-

It aint easy being green, especially for lawns during a drought.

Thats where lawn painters like David Bartlett come in. His business, Xtreme Green Grass will dye your lawn green in a time when homeowners must conserve water.

People like nice yards, you know? They like to sit out front and have their coffee and tea and look at green grass, Bartlett said. Its the American dream.

Normally, business is a little slow for Bartlett.

We would probably do 10 yards a month. Now, were triple that. We probably do one or two jobs every day, he said.

The dye Bartlett sprays on lawns generally lasts around six months with regular mowing.

Some may think the idea of painting your grass green is silly, but West Sacramento Environmental Services Manager Paulina Benner doesnt think so.

It makes sense that people would do that, Benner told FOX40.

Benner notes that there are also better options than dye, like fixing leaky spigots or planting drought-tolerant grass.

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During Drought, Business Booms for Grass Painters

Former NFL star running back Eddie George has a secret passion he wants to share with America: architecture. He signed on to be a judge on a new NBC reality show called American Dream Builders, in which hell get to put his Ohio State University landscape architecture degree to good use.

This opportunity presented itself for me...not only to show the talents of a landscape architect, but also to be creative, George told the Associated Press at the Television Critics Association Press Tour.

George played in the NFL for nine years with the Tennessee Titans and Dallas Cowboys. He also won college footballs Heisman Trophy in 1995. On the side though, he had his firm, Edge Group, in Columbus, Ohio. He also earned an MBA at Northwestern University.

American Dream Builders will be hosted by designer Nate Berkus and will judge as well with George and interior decorator Monica Pedersen.

The show involves 12 contestants in two teams who have to renovate a house in each episode. In the finale, the last two contestants will have to redesign two Southern California homes to win a cash prize of $250,000, NBC said in a statement. Theres also an online contest to win a chance for the shows winner to renovate a viewers home.

It's interesting to see the contestants react to Eddie's judgment week after week, because if they don't get the details right, he notices every time, Berkus told the AP.

George noted that he has a differing view of renovations from Berkus and Petersen.

If Eddie can't watch football wherever they put the sofa, he wants to send them home, Petersen said.

American Dream Builders starts on Sunday, March 23 on NBC.

image: Wikimedia Commons

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Former NFL star Eddie George to judge on new NBC home building reality show

1/50 Land Clearing Dio Day #1!
first in the series hope you enjoy!

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1/50 Land Clearing Dio Day #1! - Video

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Slagter Boyz Land Clearing and Stump Removal

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Ricardo Mazalan / AP file

A HALO Trust worker searches for land mines in Bagram, Afghanistan, in 2009.

By Jamieson Lesko and Alexander Smith, NBC News

KABUL, Afghanistan -- More than 50 employees of a land mine-clearing charity in Afghanistan were kidnapped by armed Taliban fighters before being freed in a "police operation" on Tuesday, officials said.

The workers were seized at dawn while in trucks on their way to clear a minefield inHerat province.

Tim Graham / Getty Images file

Princess Diana visited an area cleared of land mines by the HALO Trust in Huambo, Angola, on Jan. 17, 1997.

They are employees of the British-based HALO Trust, which has decades of experience clearing land mines around the world. The charity's work in Angola was famously visited by the U.K.'s Princess Diana in 1997, a trip which sparked the anti-land mine campaigning for which she was later renowned.

The workers were taken to a remote, mountainous area, according to authorities.

Gen. Hamid Hamidi, thedeputy police chief for Herat province, told NBC News that all of the abductees were released following a "police operation."

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Princess Diana charity's workers seized by Taliban

KABUL, Afghanistan, Jan. 21 (UPI) -- Afghan security forces freed dozens of employees of a British anti-landmine charity Tuesday hours after they were kidnapped by the Taliban, officials said.

The kidnap victims were Afghans employed by the HALO Trust, which organizes the clearing of landmines in conflict areas around the world, NBC News reported. Officials said their trucks were ambushed as they headed to an area in Herat province at dawn.

HALO, which has its headquarters in Thornhill in Scotland, also has offices in the United States. The organization got a boost in 1997 when Princess Diana, seven months before her death, visited a minefield HALO was clearing in Angola.

Dr. Farid Homayoun, HALO's Afghanistan program manager, told NBC that 54 of its employees were abducted and were now accounted for. Gen. Hamid Hamidi, deputy police chief in Herat, said a "police operation" freed them.

The Taliban has not released a statement taking responsibility for the kidnapping.

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Afghan forces free British land mine charity workers

Interior Designer / Wall units / Media units New Gurgaon call - 8860030007 Savoy Interiors Gurgaon
via YouTube Capture.

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