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Higher rents in the Chicago area and a boom in apartment-building construction didnt dent occupancy rates during the third quarter.

The average monthly rent, after move-in specials, for an apartment in the Chicago area during the three months ended in September was $1,110, up 1 percent from the second quarter, according to Reis Inc., a real estate research firm. Year over year, local rents rose 3.7 percent

The quarterly vacancy rate of 3.5 percent was unchanged from the previous quarter that ended in June and relatively flat from a year ago.

Nationally, the vacancy rate rose for the first time in 4 years, to 4.2 percent, up 0.1 percent, and largely caused by the jump in construction.

During the quarter, some 46,055 units were delivered to markets across the country, the second-highest quarterly number since 2002s fourth quarter. Year-to-date, more than 113,000 units have been constructed.

New construction continues to increase over time and will likely reach a post-recession high this year, Ryan Severino, Reis senior economist, wrote in the report. Meanwhile, demand has clearly declined from levels observed during 2010 and 2011. This type of slowing is expected, but demand should remain robust.

Despite the uptick in Chicago-area rents, the local market remains a bargain compared with many cities. For instance, average monthly rents were $3,185 in New York, $2,173 in San Francisco, $1,870 in Boston and $1,484 in Los Angeles.

Looking for something a little less expensive? Head to Oklahoma City or Wichita, Kan., where average third-quarter rents were $588 and $543, respectively.

mepodmolik@tribune.com Twitter @mepodmolik

Originally posted here:
Chicago-area rents rise while occupancy stays steady

The U.S. apartment-vacancy rate rose for the first time in almost five years, a sign that supply is starting to catch up to rental demand after a boom in multifamily construction.

The vacancy rate rose to 4.2 percent in the third quarter from 4.1 percent the previous three months, the first increase since the end of 2009, Reis Inc. said in a report. Net leasing gains of 37,233 units lagged behind the 46,055 new units completed, the New York-based real estate research firm said.

The completions were the second-most since 2002 as developers build more rentals to capitalize on demand sparked by the foreclosure crisis and younger Americans moving out on their own. The increase in vacancies from the lowest level in more than a decade is an inflection point in the apartment market, said Ryan Severino, senior economist at Reis.

We have passed peak occupancy and with the new construction coming on, occupancy is likely to decline going forward, he said.

Apartment developers are poised to finish building the most units this year since 1999, when the economy was booming, Severino said. With construction outpacing the net total of units likely to be leased over the next four years, we expect the national vacancy rate to slowly drift upward, he said.

So far this year, 113,024 apartment units have been built in the U.S., exceeding the 85,438 units completed through nine months of 2013, according to Reis.

Thirteen of the 79 largest U.S. markets had a vacancy rate of less than 3 percent in the third quarter, down from 16 in the prior three months, Reis data show. The national vacancy rate is still below where it was a year ago, at 4.3 percent.

Rents rose, partly because new units charge higher-than-average prices, Reis said. Effective rents, or what tenants pay after any landlord price breaks such as a free month, climbed 3.4 percent from a year earlier to an average $1,111 per month, and were little changed from $1,100 in the second quarter, according to Reis. Rents are at record highs on a nominal basis, according to the researcher.

The national apartment-vacancy rate is likely to remain at less than 5 percent through 2018 as demand continues from younger adults and lackluster income growth prevents landlords from raising rents more, Severino said.

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U.S. apartment-vacancy rate rises for first time in five years

ST. LOUIS Two months ago, amid much fanfare, Mayor Francis Slay kicked off an effort that put 51 homeless veterans into their own apartments in one day.

After so many years of wrangling with red tape, many of the vets couldnt believe theyd get free rent and utility assistance, until they were dropped off with a set of keys.

One of them, Kevin Stradford, 55, still cant believe it. His power was shut off Wednesday for unpaid bills. Two other veterans in the apartment complex in the 3100 block of Cherokee Street had the same pink slips hanging from their door knobs.

Program managers said five other veterans in the program were expected to have their power turned off.

They are supposed to take care of us up to a year, Stradford said. Ive got no income. They are not living up to their end of the deal. I cant even open my freezer because all my meat is in there. Who is going to pay for that when it goes bad?

Stradford said hed passed along cut-off notices hed received in the mail from Ameren to Gateway 180, the nonprofit agency in charge of case management for the rapid rehousing project hes part of.

Stradford said Gateway 180 told him that it doesnt pay the bills, just submits the paperwork to the city, which receives federal funding for the program.

Kathleen Heinz Beach, executive director of Gateway 180, said Wednesday that the program has been a contractual nightmare because the city is bailing on their agreement to pay the bills.

IT'S BEEN DIFFICULT

The citys former director of homeless services, Antoinette Triplett, came up with the idea to put the vets into apartments. Its easier to provide wrap-around services and case management if people are housed.

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Highly publicized St. Louis program to get homeless veterans into housing hits snags

Nomaan Merchant and David Warren, The Associated Press Published Thursday, October 2, 2014 9:44AM EDT Last Updated Thursday, October 2, 2014 10:55PM EDT

DALLAS -- Four members of a family the U.S. Ebola patient was staying with were confined to their Texas home under armed guard Thursday as the circle of people possibly exposed to the virus widened, while Liberian authorities said they would prosecute the man for allegedly lying on an airport questionnaire.

The unusual confinement order was imposed after the family failed to comply with a request not to leave their apartment, according to Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins.

Texas State Health Commissioner David Lakey said the order would help ensure the four can be closely watched, including checking them for fevers over the next three weeks.

"We didn't have the confidence we would have been able to monitor them the way that we needed to," he said.

The family will not be allowed to receive visitors, officials said.

The case has raised questions about whether a disease that has killed 3,300 people in West Africa could spread in the United States. U.S. health officials say they remain confident they can keep it in check.

A woman who lives in the apartment, Louise Troh, said she has been quarantined with her 13-year-old son and two nephews.

"Who wants to be locked up?" she said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Troh said she was waiting for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to collect a bag of the bed sheets and towels Thomas Eric Duncan used.

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Ebola patient's relatives confined to Texas home under armed guard

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Best Countertops (210) 661-7900 - Video

The chateau-style residence has an updated kitchen with custom cabinetry, marble countertops and walnut parquet flooring in a herringbone pattern. There's a home theater, a music room, a game room and a man cave on the lower level. The master suite has a dressing room and a sculpted ceiling.

Those are a few features in the 10,000-square-foot Saddle River home that will be the setting for this year's Designer Showhouse of New Jersey, the first glimpses of which can be had on Wednesday at a $225-per-ticket preview party.

From Thursday through Nov. 16, public access is a more affordable $35 per person. The showhouse, at 11 Sawmill Road, displays the work of nearly two dozen New Jersey and New York interior designers. The grounds of the two-acre estate are being polished by two landscape firms for this major fundraiser of the Hackensack University Medical Center Foundation.

Visitors will see designer styling in the home's seven bedrooms, seven bathrooms, library, garden room, breakfast room and other areas. A showhouse boutique will bring shopping to the home's lower-level entertainment area. Outside, a cabana house near the pool is outfitted for entertaining with a kitchen and fireplace.

Showhouse admission includes a souvenir journal. Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays. Children under six, strollers and pets will not be admitted. Tickets for Wednesday's 6:30 p.m. showhouse preview party are available through hackensackumcfoundation.org. Call (551) 996-3720.

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Interior Design: Designer Showhouse of New Jersey to open Oct. 9 in Saddle River

J'ade, designed by Italian company CRN, can store an eight-metre speedboat in its floating indoor garage Hydraulic-powered hatch fills with 18,000 litres of water and can also be used as an indoor ocean pool The luxury vessel was nominated for Best Interior at 2014 Monaco Yacht Show 196-foot vessel also features a gym, hammam room, and aquarium, and can sleep ten guests in four cabins

By Andrea Magrath for MailOnline

Published: 10:13 EST, 2 October 2014 | Updated: 16:15 EST, 2 October 2014

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In the battle to be the most extravagant mega yacht on the seas,it takes a lot to really impress.

While helipads, waterslides, and movie theatres are commonplace additions to the yachts of the super wealthy, a stylish Italian vessel is making waves for being the first to feature a floating drive-in garage.

J'ade, by Ferretti group company CRN, features a hydraulic-operated hatch which can store an eight-metre speedboat without the use of a tender lift to hoist it out of the water.

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196-foot J'ade mega yacht with world's first floating drive-in garage

The latest upgrades to the Presidio Officers Club, which reopens to the public Saturday, are a showcase of meticulous historic preservation. They also show how subjective a term like historic preservation can be.

While you can glimpse an exposed adobe wall from Spanish military days, most of the newly completed work involved the restoration of an earlier restoration from 1934 that relied on romantic visions of Californias roots. More recent additions to the complex, by contrast, have been altered freely in the latest round of work to bring them into sync with current design priorities.

Make no mistake: The $19 million rehabilitation designed by Perkins + Will for the Presidio Trust is another welcome step toward making the former Army post part of the Bay Areas daily life. But it is an act of reinvention as well as preservation, a case study in how turning back the clock is never as simple as it seems.

Other local examples of blurred history include such high-profile cultural buildings as the Contemporary Jewish Museum from 2008, which spills out from the shell of a much older Willis Polk-designed substation facing Yerba Buena Gardens. The lobby includes the original iron trusses and tile-clad columns, but they were stored off-site while a parking garage was inserted below. On a more mundane level, consider the frequency with which the facades of older buildings are retained while much larger structures are erected behind them.

But the goal at the Officers Club, billed by the trust as San Franciscos most historic building, wasnt to restore pieces of the past as much of an overall sense of what was.

We wanted to repair what needed to be repaired and leave everything else in place, said Christina Wallace, project manager for the trust, which manages nearly all of the 1,491-acre enclave at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge. The great thing about the Army is that they always added. They never took things away.

Relics of Victorian era

This is most obvious in the Mesa Room to the left of the main entrance: At the south end is a wall of exposed adobe bricks that were stacked there at some point between 1780 and 1812, a period during which earthquakes and fires periodically ravaged the Spanish garrison. The walls on either side are covered in thin strips of wood painted green, relics of the Victorian era when the small adobe building was expanded and, simultaneously, reclad in Old West style.

The overall tone of the room is set by the most thorough redo of all, 1934s Mission Revival makeover. The deep-set windows slathered in white plaster are from that era, as are the dark wood doors and beams that were artfully distressed back then to make them look old.

The faux historic 1934 details extend throughout the newly restored portions of the older wings of the complex, because thats what defined the building California Historical Landmark No. 79 when its period of historic significance ended in 1945. Army officials touted the Officers Club in 1934 as a faithful replica of the former building, complete with wrought iron grilles on the windows and a Mission Revival veranda and buttresses out front. Eighty years later, it feels more like a beguiling act of make-believe shipped in from Santa Barbara than a remote outpost of a fading empire.

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Presidio Officers Club preservation also an act of reinvention

Primarily due to the Stonebridge of Plainview apartment complex, permitted construction in the city is running more than double the pace set in 2013.

The citys September building permit report, released Wednesday, shows total permitted construction for the month at $6,292,722. That brings the total permitted construction to date in 2014 to $8,306,378. That compares to just $3,230,107 for the same period in 2013.

The bulk of Septembers construction activity is for a single new residential project, valued at $6,227,000.

According to city officials, that project is the 80-unit Stonebridge complex.

The Plainview City Council in July unanimously approved the annexation of a 5.79-acre site just north of the Walmart Supercenter for the project, at the request of apartment builder State Street.

That request was made, according to an announcement at the time, so that the complex could connect to city utilities and have access to Plainview police and fire protection along with garbage collection.

Up until the September report, construction totals for 2014 were trailing 2013 slightly, coming in at the end of August to $2.01 million compared with $2.38 million for the same period in 2013.

During the entire month of September, the citys building and zoning department issued a total of 16 permits. In addition to the apartment complex, the city issued one permit for residential addition ($5,000), six for residential remodels ($24,320), three for garage/carport ($4,700), one storage building (no value listed), one commercial remodel ($30,000) and three signs ($1,702).

For the entire year, five new residential construction permits have been issued for both single and multi-family projects: 21 for residential additions, 21 for residential remodels, one residential repair, four residential demolitions, two residential accessory structures, 23 garage/carport projects, four storage buildings, one new commercial, one commercial addition, 14 commercial remodels, three commercial demolitions, two commercial accessory structures, one masonry fence and 24 signs.

For the year, 127 permits for various types of construction have been issued by the city. Thats down 56 from the 183 total permits issued during the same period in 2013.

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Apartment complex boosts construction values 10-02-14