Home Builder Developer - Interior Renovation and Design

LAS VEGAS The big run-up in apartment building may run out of steam this year.

Apartment construction across the country has more than tripled since 2009. Last year developers started more than 350,000 multifamily housing units nationwide.

Analysts say that apartment construction increases should dwindle in the next two years.

My forecast is for a leveling not a lot more growth, said Dave Crowe, chief economist for the National Association of Home Builders, which recently held its annual meeting in Las Vegas. We are at the level that can be sustained by the demand.

Apartments accounted for about a third of total U.S. home construction in 2014.

Crowe said apartment construction is peaking because of construction constraints and a shift by some renters into home buying.

We are starting to see some of the older millennials moving to homeownership, he said.

During recent years in most major cities, apartments have captured a larger than normal share of new households.

Whatever the job growth has been, all of the newly formed households have become renters, Crowe said.

He said that as renters age, they are more inclined to think about homeownership.

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Apartment building boom is hitting a ceiling after five years of increases

A BOOM in the building industry is creating thousands of jobs in construction but could lead to a drastic skills shortage.

The Federation of Master Builders has warned of a construction skills time bomb, with small construction firms in particular reporting shortages of key skills.

It says 42 per cent of firms are now struggling to find bricklayers and 44 per cent found it hard to recruit carpenters.

Meanwhile, the Home Builders Federation says 44,000 more new homes were started in 2014 than in 2012.

It says more than 100,000 extra jobs have been created by an increase in house-building in the past two years, but that tens of thousands more people will need to be recruited and trained.

Dorset is seeing the construction boom in action.

In Bournemouth alone, a major Hinton Hotel is under construction, the Citrus apartment building at Horseshoe Common is already 75 per cent sold, and work has started on a leisure complex at the former bus station site off the Square.

Rob Hooker, founding director of Poole-based Greendale Construction Ltd, said: Theres definitely an upturn and theres definitely more confidence out there, which means theres more volume of work for us all to do, not only on the house building side but on commercial and with NHS trusts and local authority work.

He added: No doubt about it, with the upturn in the industry theres going to be problems with skills shortages.

He said this could have an effect on costs. The downside is if there isnt a supply of decent labour, rates will start to increase and therefore the costs of building will go up, he added.

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Thousands of jobs in construction but will it mean drastic shortage in skills?

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Aibo's speech recognition is the foundation for a cloud technology providing itemized power usage

A sensor developed by Sony spinoff company Informetis gathers data for home electricity monitoring. Cloud-based machine learning algorithms crunch the data to chart how much juice major appliances are using, and the results are sent to a mobile app.

What happens to robots when they die? If you're Sony's defunct robot dog Aibo, your technology can return to life in smart homes.

Sony put its sophisticated robot to sleep in 2006 as part of a cost-cutting drive, but a startup spun off by the manufacturer is now using its artificial intelligence to monitor electricity use.

Tokyo-based Informetis is set to begin trials of a sensor, based on algorithms that helped Aibo understand speech, to continuously monitor the current and voltage going into a home or business. The technology can generate an itemized list of how power is being used.

Users could benefit by seeing a detailed account of electricity use by appliance, which could help them save money by consuming less power. They can also use the app to monitor power use when they're away from home, including identifying potential fire hazards such as irons left on.

"Electricity waves are surprisingly very similar to sound," said Josh Honda, a new hire at Informetis for global marketing. "How Aibo was distinguishing the commands it was getting from its owner -- that part of the analysis is the foundation of what we're doing in trying to separate or disaggregate the electricity into different components."

During a recent demonstration, a prototype sensor the size of a pack of cigarettes was attached to a power distribution board on the wall at Informetis. Data gathered by the sensor was sent to a Wi-Fi router, crunched in the cloud and then sent to a TV screen. Electricity used by appliances and lighting was displayed, and when an air purifier and table lamp were turned on, they also appeared.

Informetis has been selling an early version of the sensor to businesses in Japan. It can detect the electricity consumption for appliances such as microwaves, washing machines and refrigerators but not juice-sippers like phone chargers. It can distinguish the type of appliance but not the model.

When the data is uploaded to the cloud, an original codec is used for compression. Then, machine-learning algorithms based on those used for Aibo's speech recognition analyze the waveforms in the data and look for telltale signatures for appliances such as refrigerators using more power at regular intervals.

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Sony spinoff uses robot dog's brain to monitor home electricity

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Imagine you're buying a house. You're driving around with the realtor, who shows you what looks like a very nice option. It has all the features you want -- the pool, the granite countertops, what have you -- and the realtor keeps telling you that it's worth " so much more" than what you'd be paying. You start to think, "Maybe this house is a pretty great deal!"

But what if you found out that the owner of the house could directly influence the realtor's career? Would you still buy it?

As it turns out, the financial industry sometimes works in the same way, and it's yet another reason you shouldn't listen to stock analysts.

Hedge funds and analysts Looking at a database of 19,000 hedge funds and their ownership in public firms between 1999 and 2012, a recent working paper written by three business school professors found that the more hedge fund ownership a stock had, the more optimistic analysts' price forecasts for it were.

Looking at American companies and hedge funds, the paper concluded that hedge fund ownership one standard deviation above the average is associated with a 23% rise in optimism about prices.

The researchers theorize that this happens largely because hedge funds can directly influence analysts' careers. How? Through votes: Most brokers use client votes on analyst performance to determine things like bonuses and career paths. As it happens, a lot of votes are controlled or influenced by hedge funds.

At the same time, more optimistic forecasts mean better trading results for the funds. In other words, the two parties have every reason to please each other, even if they aren't doing it openly.

What do I do with this information? This is a good reminder that analyst forecasts should be taken with a grain of salt -- especially if there's a large amount of hedge fund ownership involved.

What's most important is that you do your own homework. The best approach to stock picking is to analyze a company's fundamentals, gaining an understanding of its strategy, market, and competition. In other words, rather than relying on biased analysts, come to your own conclusions by investigating the companies you're interested in and evaluating their profitability and future prospects.

When you do your own research, it doesn't matter what the analysts say and whether it is biased by their career concerns or not; you won't be listening.

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The Surprising Relationship Between Analysts and Hedge Funds

Illinois congressman Aaron Schock's communications director had a very bad day Monday when a Washington Post reporter happened to run into Schock's extremely chatty interior decorator.

Post style reporter Ben Terris was admiring Schock's outer officea fiery red affair reportedly adorned with golden sconces and black candleswhen a staffer volunteered, for no apparent reason, that the space was inspired by the popular British period television drama, Downton Abbey.

But then, the best part happened:

A blond woman popped out of an inner office. "Want to see the rest?" she asked.

She introduced herself as Annie Brahler, the interior decorator whose company is called Euro Trash. She guided me to Schock's private office, revealing another dramatic red room. This one with a drippy crystal chandelier, a table propped up by two eagles, a bust of Abraham Lincoln and massive arrangements of pheasant feathers.

Then, my phone rang.

It was Schock's communications director, Benjamin Cole.

"Are you taking pictures of the office?" he asked. "Who told you you could do that? ... Okay, stay where you are. You've created a bit of a crisis in the office."

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Aaron Schock's Interior Decorator Outs His Downton Abbey-Themed Office

The Rayburn House Office Building is a labyrinth of beige offices.

And then, theres ... Rep.Aaron Schocks new digs.

Bright red walls. A gold-colored wall sconce with black candles. A Federal-style bulls-eye mirror with an eagle perched on top. And this is just the Illinois Republicans outer office.

Its actually based off of the red room in Downton Abbey, said the woman behind the front desk, comparing it to the luxurious set piece at the heart of the British period drama.

This was a bold room. But the confidence was a mirage. For on Capitol Hill, caution is king when it comes to the micromanagement of ones image, even in the case of how a congressman decides to decorate his office.

And sometimes, a friendly outsider can inadvertently ruin a communications directors day.

A blond woman popped out of an inner office. Want to see the rest? she asked.

She introduced herself as Annie Brahler, the interior decorator whose company is called Euro Trash. She guided me to Schocks private office, revealing another dramatic red room. This one with a drippy crystal chandelier, a table propped up by two eagles, a bust of Abraham Lincoln and massive arrangements of pheasant feathers.

Then, my phone rang.

It was Schocks communications director, Benjamin Cole.

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Hes got a Downton Abbey-inspired office, but Rep. Aaron Schock wont talk about it.