FRIDAY - BRING ME THAT HORIZON
How to Turn Almost Any Space Into a Guest Room
- 15 Ideas to Try in Your Garden This Year
- How to Turn Almost Any Space Into a Guest Room
- Emerging Trends in Real Estate: ULI Report Offers Outlook
- Study Highlights Silicon Valley’s Powerful Economic Mix
- CoreLogic Reports 273,000 Residential Properties Regained Equity in Q3 2014
- How California Bested Texas
- Google's new bus is for the people
Emerging Trends in Real Estate: ULI Report Offers Outlook - The Urban Land Institute has released its annual report on the key emerging trends that will shape the real estate market in 2015. Commenting on the report, Mitch Roschelle, a U.S. real estate advisory practice leader with PwC, stated, “Unlike previous reports and previous cycles, we are seeing sustained growth. In the past several years, we reported that real estate market participants’ main fears revolved around the uncertainty with the economy. Now, the trepidation in their eyes has more to do with the ability of the growing real estate markets to adapt to a series of mega trends impacting society and the global economy.”
Study Highlights Silicon Valley’s Powerful Economic Mix - The comprehensive report, released by a group called the Silicon Valley Competitiveness and Innovation Project, looked at a total of 23 indicators of economic strength and compared Silicon Valley with five other regions across the United States.
The group said it was looking for a strategy to enhance innovation, and to ensure that residents had access to the jobs in key industries. Based on the strength of Wednesday’s findings, the strategy should mostly amount to “don’t stop.”
The study, which was supported largely by local corporations, did call for some changes, though: more government spending on education, less restriction on immigration and fewer regulations on business. It did not say what local regulations were particularly burdensome.
CoreLogic Reports 273,000 Residential Properties Regained Equity in Q3 2014 - CoreLogic released new analysis showing nearly 273,000 U.S. homes returned to positive equity in Q3 2014, bringing the total number of mortgaged residential properties with equity to approximately 44.6 million, or 90 percent of all mortgaged properties. Nationwide, borrower equity increased year over year by approximately $800 billion in Q3 2014.
How California Bested Texas - Texas has a significant presence in five of the fifty advanced industries. That makes it the twelfth most diverse state—less diverse than California, which is involved in fourteen advanced industries, but more so than New York, the third-most-populous state.
Google's new bus is for the people - The electric-powered Mountain View Community Shuttle is Google's gift to a hometown still grappling with the weight of being the corporate hub for a global Internet giant. The two-year pilot program also helps the company sustain its do-gooder image amid rising anxiety over the Bay Area's real estate prices and economic inequality, both frequently blamed on the meteoric incomes of tech workers.
15 Ideas to Try in Your Garden This Year - These gardening stories were tops among Houzz readers in 2014. Some of my faves were: designing a garden for native bees, farming your parking strip, garden for the monarchs.
