Categories: Regions

O.C. Great Park: if you build a little of it, they will come

Posted by: Peter Coy on October 29

Landscape architect Ken Smith has precisely the right idea for how to build Orange County Great Park, the ambitious urban park planned for the site of the El Toro...

Houston's High-Octane Housing Market

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on August 27

It’s nice to know some parts of the country are still seeing home prices climb—one of them is Houston, the energy capital of the U.S. The Houston Association of...

Bubble markets to rebound?

Posted by: Dean Foust on January 08

"Catch a falling knife." That's a term on Wall Street for those who try to time the market by buying heavily during a falling market on belief that there's an...

When Manhattan was even more crowded

Posted by: Peter Coy on January 08

If you think New York City is brimming over now, imagine what it was like a century ago. The population of New York County (i.e. Manhattan) in 1910 was 2,762,522,...

Case study of what's going on in Washington

Posted by: Dean Foust on November 21

This from the Northern Virginia Housing Bubble Fallout blog, shows the asking prices for a home in Woodbridge, which (if memory serves) is about 15-20 miles south of Washington D.C....

"In the year 2020..."

Posted by: Dean Foust on October 09

I remember I once wrote a profile of Robert Prechter, the apostle of the "Eliot Wave Theory," which believed that many things in life--including the stock market--ran in cycles, and...

The first shall be last ...

Posted by: Peter Coy on September 27

Just guessing here, but I'd say there's an excellent chance that Ocala, Fla., will not be ranked No. 1 in the nation again next year--as it was today--in the Milken...

Rocky Market Making You Queasy? Try Some Southern Comfort

Posted by: Maya Roney on September 19

In the wake of the Fed’s half-point rate cut, the financial markets sure are calmer, but the housing market still has a bumpy road ahead. Today, the Commerce Dept. announced...

Our "Washington DC Bubble" thread gets bigger, BIGGER...

Posted by: Dean Foust on August 20

I acknowledge up front that this blog posting will contribute absolutely nothing to the sum knowledge of the world. And I don't mean it to be as self-promotional as it...

Florida hurtling toward recession

Posted by: Dean Foust on July 23

Bob Ivry at Bloomberg has a pretty detailed report on the Florida condo scene, including a good line from Florida Gov. Charlie Crist--that the state bird should now be the...

Now Hear This: Peoria, Ariz., Is Bigger Than Peoria, Ill.

Posted by: Peter Coy on July 11

I just received a copy of a book called Boomburbs: The Rise of America's Accidental Cities. It was from Boomburbs that I learned that Peoria, Ariz. (a typical boomburb) now...

Manhattan: A World Unto Itself

Posted by: Peter Coy on July 10

BusinessWeek's headquarters are in this quaint little structure in midtown Manhattan. But just because I work here doesn't mean I understand the stupefyingly strong local housing market. Manhattan seems to...

Great analysis of suburban DC market

Posted by: Dean Foust on June 21

I don't have a problem with giving a shout out to a great web site, and given all the interest among readers here about the greater Washington DC market, would...

Atty Gen. Cuomo Investigates NYC Appraisers

Posted by: Peter Coy on June 06

Andrew Cuomo, the New York state attorney general, is investigating the possibility of corruption by some appraisers in New York City, according to this intriguing article in the New York...

Florida is doomed...

Posted by: Dean Foust on May 18

One of my favorite Wall Street economists, Jan Hatzius of Goldman Sachs, put out a report recently predicting that Florida -- not California or New York or DC -- would...

The Midwest: Hot or Not?

Posted by: Maya Roney on May 16

If you haven’t already, check out our list of the best affordable suburbs in the Midwest. Many of these towns have median home prices well-below the national median, and great...

Best Affordable Suburbs: Addendum

Posted by: Maya Roney on May 11

Back in November, I wrote my first-ever BusinessWeek.com article about the “Best Affordable Suburbs” in the country. Six months later, that story has 1,015 reader comments (and counting) commending, questioning...

Prices down around the country (except Portland, Charlotte and...what's going on in Seattle?)

Posted by: Dean Foust on April 25

Home prices declined in 17 of 20 key housing markets over the past year, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller(R) Home Price Indices (which is produced by Standard & Poor's, which--disclosure alert--is...

Attention, Joel Kotkin: Urban Residential Construction Is Booming

Posted by: Peter Coy on April 19

Joel Kotkin is one of the leading exponents of the idea that suburbs are good, sprawl isn't so bad, and the vast majority of Americans really want to get out...

San Antonio and Austin: Overvalued?

Posted by: Peter Coy on April 19

Texas never had the big housing price run-up of the East and West Coasts. Even the biggest bubble believers have generally acknowledged that Texas was considerably less frothy than,...

Snake Eyes for Vegas Realtors

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on April 10

Yesterday the Las Vegas Review-Journal ran an interesting story about the glut of Realtors in Nevada. The number of licensed agents in the state more than doubled over the past...

How many unsold homes in Fla? THIS many...

Posted by: Dean Foust on March 27

This report from the CBS 4 web site provides a snapshot on Florida's housing market. This factoid says it all: "At the current sales pace, it would take nearly three...

The ultimate irony

Posted by: Dean Foust on March 21

Where in the US can you buy a home for less than the price of a new car? You're probably thinking somewhere in Montana or South Dakota, or perhaps the...

The Exurbs of New York, L.A., and Miami

Posted by: Peter Coy on March 02

You may have heard that prices are holding up pretty well in New York City, L.A., and Miami. That's true for the cities themselves (leaving aside Miami's overbuilt condo market)....

This, Too, Is Miami

Posted by: Peter Coy on January 29

As Super Bowl Sunday in Miami's Dolphin Stadium approaches, labor activists and low-income housing advocates are trying to call attention to the other Miami, where poor people are being hemmed...

L.A. Builds Up and (Possibly) Underground

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on January 22

Los Angeles' energetic mayor Antonio Villaraigosa trotted out a telling statistic at an event inuagurating the city's newest office tower, 2000 Avenue of the Stars, last week. Villaraigosa said...

People are still betting in Vegas

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on January 12

The Las Vegas Strip is still reeling them in, despite a real estate slump elsewhere in the city. MGM reports that its massive $7 billion CityCenter mixed use project has...

Fuzzy Realtor Numbers?

Posted by: Peter Coy on January 05

Dear Readers, I posted an item yesterday questioning the precision of MLS data in Phoenix, Tucson, and Las Vegas, but several people are questioning my questions, so I pulled the...

'Creative Shrinkage' in Youngstown

Posted by: Peter Coy on December 11

The population of Youngstown, Ohio, has fallen by more than half from its glory days as a steel city. Lots of buildings are empty. Instead of trying to grow, Youngstown...

Building A New New Orleans

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on November 17

The Big Easy has never been known for speed. The city so devastated by Hurricane Katrina is only slowly recovering. But city leaders want to make sure what comes next...

Which Bounces Back Faster? Phoenix or San Francisco?

Posted by: Peter Coy on October 27

I wrote an article for the current issue of BusinessWeek called Boom! Bust! Boom? Here's a link. My main finding is that around 40% of the major markets where there...

How to get rich in Florida real estate (hint: it involves time travel)

Posted by: Peter Coy on September 28

In his stage act, Steve Martin used to promise people a foolproof plan for how to become a millionaire. "First," he would say, "get a million dollars ...." In that...

Harlem Is Hot Again

Posted by: Peter Coy on September 18

Harlem is hot again, says this article in a recent issue of The New York Sun. Things were already looking up back in 2001, when Bill Clinton put his post-presidential...

Washington DC in trouble

Posted by: Dean Foust on August 16

As readers of the blog may now, I lived in Washington DC (about two miles from the Mount Vernon estate to be precise) for about nine years before transferring to...

Soft in San Diego

Posted by: Peter Coy on June 14

Check out this story from the San Diego Union-Tribune saying that the median price of new homes in the area dropped from $495,500 in April to $424,000 in May. Mathematically...

Hurricane-Damaged Gulf: Will the Poor Be Forgotten?

Posted by: Peter Coy on June 08

There's lots of rebuilding going on in Katrina-damaged parts of Mississippi, but very little of it is low-income housing. And that's a big problem, says a study issued today by...

High Cost of Smart Growth

Posted by: Peter Coy on May 30

Are restrictive zoning laws making housing unaffordable? There's a strong argument that the high cost of housing in markets like New York, Boston, and San Francisco is at least partly...

Katrina Has Been Very Good to Brokers in N.O.

Posted by: Peter Coy on May 12

Check out this amazing Associated Press story about how the real estate business is thriving in New Orleans. Turns out that this is nothing unusual--brokers always do well in the...

An Index of Sprawl (Pittsburgh Is Worst)

Posted by: Peter Coy on May 11

You could argue that sprawl is a phony issue. After all, people have to live somewhere. And why should those ensconced in suburban and rural splendor be allowed to close...

The Donald's in, Ivana's out

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on February 10

You may have read about condominium cancellations in the otherwise white-hot Las Vegas high-rise market. Casualties include a well-publicized building promoted by Ivana Trump, ex-wife of The Donald. A new...

What makes LA run?

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on January 04

All politics is local, as Tip O'Neil famously said. And so of course is all real estate. That thought was driven home to me recently by a research report that...

Rethinking the City of Angels

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on December 14

To the rest of the country, Los Angeles is La La Land, a souless, superficial city, dominated by Hollywood and not much else. But the nation's second-largest metropolis is wrestling...

Boston bubble bursting...

Posted by: Dean Foust on December 13

So much attention has been paid on the softness in California housing, and here at BusinessWeek, two of my colleagues have an article in the current issue talking about the...

Real-time indicator local housing prices (Part II)

Posted by: Dean Foust on December 03

Ben Engebreth, the creator of the site that provides "real time" data on seller asking prices, HousingTracker, which I mentioned in a posting a couple of days ago, writes in...

Real-time indicator of local housing prices?

Posted by: Dean Foust on December 01

Props to "Wes" on our active "Washington DC bubble" thread for pointing out a neat web site, HousingTracker, that attempts to provide a real-time indicator of housing price trends in...

A blog that tracks listing volumes

Posted by: Peter Coy on November 30

What do you call a blog that tracks the number of listings by market? A backlog blog? A B(ack)LOG? In any case, check it out here....

Sam Zell's favorite markets

Posted by: Amey Stone on November 21

Last week I heard famed real estate investor Sam Zell speak at an investment conference. Much of the discussion was about his investments in single family housing in Mexico and...

New York--A City With a Core

Posted by: Peter Coy on November 11

In 1991, journalist and author Joel Garreau wrote a book entitled "Edge City: Life on the New Frontier." It explained the emergence of new pockets of development on the outskirts...

Reality hits Washington DC market

Posted by: Dean Foust on November 11

Several months ago I related my shock, as a former Washington DC resident, on seeing how home prices had soared into the stratosphere upon a visit back to my old...

New York's Condo Sales Slow

Posted by: Amey Stone on November 10

A new report from Condo-Sales.com shows a dramatic drop in the volume of Manhattan condo sales, but no drop in prices. There were only 386 condo sales in October compared...

Florida housing in trouble?

Posted by: Dean Foust on November 01

Despite the fact that he doesn't work for one of the name-brand Wall Street investment houses--or maybe because he doesn't--Dick Bove, an analyst at Punk Ziegel & Co., is one...

Cooling in California

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on October 27

The latest data from real estate researcher DataQuick shows an increase in foreclosures in California, the first year-over-year increase in more than three years. Lending institutions sent default notices...

Boston housing...on the rise????

Posted by: Dean Foust on October 26

The Bay State Realtors picked a curious time -- given that interest rates are rising, and many housing markets are starting to soften -- to issue a report predicting that...

Deer Valley Real Estate Market

Posted by: Amey Stone on October 25

What is the most up-and-coming ski resort for today's glitterati? It may be Deer Valley, Utah, which was just named North America's top ski resort by Ski Magazine. It's noted...

What the Federal Reserve Is Seeing

Posted by: Peter Coy on October 20

Here's what the Federal Reserve had to say yesterday about the housing market in its Beige Book summary of economic conditions: Residential real estate activity remained generally strong, but reports...

Washington DC bubble...

Posted by: Dean Foust on October 18

A brief note just to point new readers of this blog of a fascinating debate that raging over whether there's a housing bubble in the Washington DC market. There are...

Who's Right? Me or Frank Williams?

Posted by: Peter Coy on October 14

I was on CNBC last night talking about my story in the new issue on areas of the country that would be hurt the most if housing goes into a...

Stuck in the Middle

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on September 16

Although much media attention has deservedly focused on New Orleans' poorest residents, the city's African-American middle class could take an even harder hit in Katrina's wake. Keith Butler, a financial...

Lower Manhattan's Market

Posted by: Amey Stone on September 16

Visit the barren landscape of Ground Zero and it’s hardly surprising that the neighborhood that once included the World Trade Centers hasn’t returned to its pre-9/11 vibrancy. Neither has the...

Architects in Exile

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on September 15

Allen Eskew is among a small group of New Orleans architects who have been wrestling for years with how to create hurricane-resistant homes in coastal communities. He sees Katrina as...

Up in the Air in New Orleans

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on September 14

Sean Cummings, a real estate developer and hotel operator in New Orleans, says the future of his storm-ravaged city is up in the air, not uncertain, mind you, literally, up...