Pittsburgh Homes Daily

Worldwide ERC named Pittsburgh #1 on its 2008 list of Best Cities for Relocating Families in the Large Metro

The rest of the list can be found here. It’s interesting that six of the top ten could essentially be considered Midwest Cities (Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Columbus, Kansas City, Minneapolis, and Cincinnati. With three of the other four top ten cities in Texas, three of the top five cities in the mid-sized cities category coming from upstate New York, I am a bit curious of the criteria for the award - though there is much more diversity among the top of the small cities list.

The Pittsburgh Business Times coverage is here.

I am alive.

Not just alive in the physical sense that I am breathing - I figure most of you probably guessed that - but ALIVE - that I am enjoying the twists and turns of life and excited about the future.

It has been almost a year since I’ve written an article for Pittsburgh Homes Daily - and I have to say that there wasn’t a point in time during the last year where I stopped and thought, “Gee, I wish I were blogging right now.” That’s not to say that I wasn’t ever tempted to check my feed reader or my email, but for the most part I resisted. Only on very rare occasions did I wade through the monstrosity of spam that had accumulated (in both the feed and the email) - to pop my head out of the hole for a little while and take a look around before scurrying back underground.

Why did I stop? The best answer is personal and professional reasons. I’m now employed in Philadelphia - and to some extent - it was just necessary to put my brief time in Pittsburgh behind me. And with “the plan” changing, it wasn’t as clear why I was blogging. Oh yeah - and the 70+ hours a week I was working required some changes in my outside activities.

Why not let Pittsburgh Homes Daily go - to another blogger, or shut it down? I’ve thought alot about that recently. I received an email in March that *almost* had me respond and offer to let the individual run Pittsburgh Homes Daily. I’ve been thinking about my plans for Pittsburgh Homes Daily even more now that PHD is coming up on its second birthday - May 10th, 2006 was the first post.

Back in October 2006, I responded to a question from Zillow about why I am blogging - and after 9 months of reflection I have to provide the same answer as to why I am going to start blogging on Pittsburgh Homes Daily again. I miss the intellectual exercise of reading the news and other posts, and coming up with something valuable to say that will be semi-permanently recorded. I miss seeing positive change in Pittsburgh, even though a source that will remain unnamed here seem to think that the air quality is lacking. I miss involvement in the real estate community - and watching the online real estate space flourish. And I miss messing around online.

To some extent, this is my online diary, and for 9 months it’s been locked in a drawer. I think it’s time to find the key.

Housekeeping:

You’ll notice that I’ve changed the theme. I adopted Cutline a little over a year ago and it just seems like a good time for some new clothes. I’m not totally happy with it - so you’ll probably see a few changes over the next couple months as I settle in to a new theme. One that attempts to compensate me for the time involved but doesn’t interfere with the user experience.

At one time or another, I swapped links with a few of the people on my blogroll. I’ll be going through it, and unfortunately, some of you may get dropped. Hopefully, by now, you are established and don’t really need the link. And I’m sure that I’ll find a way to link back to you in other ways. I think I have always been a generous linker.

I’ll be wading through the comments soon and approving old ones. Also fixing the feed so that it points to the right location. And I’ll think about updating the list of blogs - after I’ve put some effort into building this thing back up.

As I said - I’m alive. For those who have stuck through the dry spell, who have helped along the way, and have influenced who I am today, THANK YOU! I hope you are all well - and I look forward to catching up soon.

I was wondering the other day whether it would be better for buyers and sellers if the real estate market were more like the stock market.

Real estate agents could act like brokers do on the stock exchange - they take a request for a purchase or sale and facilitate the transaction. If no one is willing to complete the transaction at the price sought, then they shop the deal to other brokers who may have a client interested in the house.

Marketmakers could provide liquidity to the market. Currently, bridge loans, contractors, flippers, We Buy Houses, and even some real estate brokerages offer assistance to some homeowners who face a lack of liquidity in what is probably their biggest asset. But these seem to me imperfect solutions to the problems of the real estate market. On the stock exchange, it would be the job of the specialist/marketmaker to step up to the plate and buy the stock even though there is not a buyer waiting in the wings.

One problem would be in the method of valuation of the home. That’s a serious problem. But at the same time, I can imagine a day in the not too distant future when an online home valuation company could put forth a reasonably accurate price that could be traded on subject to a “home inspection.”

Another problem that would require city/state cooperation is the problem of transfer and property taxes. There would at least need to be a waiver of transfer taxes for licensed real estate marketmakers for some portion of the transaction.

Don’t think that a stock market for residential homes would attract any investors willing to play the game? You may be right. But if they were able to buy a home at fair value minus 10% (which for the homeowner is probably a 6% realtor commission plus a couple of months of mortgage payments), and then sell the home at fair value in 1 to 4 months, on average, you might get enough investment companies to play the game.

And with a central exchange for buyers, sellers, and their agents to hang out, there may be a bit more transparency in the state of the market.

This past week, I half-heartedly advocated that real estate agents should use Twitter as a means to communicate with clients. Today, I had the probably behind the times realization that a web-savvy client doesn’t need Twitter to check up on their Realtor.

As Realtors increase their online presence through blogging, Active Rain, and other tools, potential clients need to take the time to search for prospective agents online both to (a) ensure that they have a web presence; and (b) ensure that they like what they see.

Employers have searched Google for more information about job applicants for some time. Now, I hear that employers are even using Zillow to find out more about job applicants.

Home buyers and sellers need to adopt a similar practice. You can find out what your potential agent is doing in their free time. So go do it!

The Paris Hilton of the real estate industry is out there somewhere, shouting loudly for attention online. Embrace her (him) or avoid her (him). It’s your call.

All week, the news here in Pittsburgh has centered around the closing of Parkway East this weekend. Apparently, someone didn’t get the message. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette describes what could only be a truly amazing scene:

Parkway East construction today was held up briefly when a motorist drove past a barricade at an onramp, zigzagged around missing patches of concrete and finally smashed into a foot-deep gap in the road as astonished work crews stood by.

“grand but certainly not stuffy style”
“original decorative features remain intact”
“ornate tradesman-crafted exterior”
“impressive archways”
“ironwork from another era”

Aptly named - just too bad it is in Seattle.

Found via urbnlivn.com.

The link is here. It may be behind a premium content wall, but all I had to do was go to the home page and view an ad to get to it.

For whatever reason, I think there is a midwest curve on this survey. Cleveland is tied at #26. And Detroit, pretty universally cited as the worst real estate market in America at the moment, is right there at #41. But I still think it is great to see Pittsburgh mentioned right there with Seattle, Miami, and Washington DC. And who knows - maybe it will crack the top 10 one day.

Found via Pop City Media.

Allegheny County property taxes won’t change overnight, and there is still a lengthy fight ahead, but an Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge held today that the property tax system in the entire state of Pennsylvania is unconstitutional today (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article here). I’ve only made it through the first 7 or so pages of the opinion (the entire 90 some odd page pdf can be found here), but the basis of the decision was that Pennsylvania property taxes violated the Uniformity Clause of the Pennsylvania Constitution (essentially “All taxes shall be uniform, upon the same class of subjects …”). Property values have shifted so much since the last reassessment in some places that the effective tax rate on some properties is double that of others in the same jurisdiction.

I’ll have to read the decision in more depth, and I don’t expect that property taxes will change any time soon, but it should restart the debate about property taxes in Pennsylvania, and especially in Allegheny County. More excitement and information to come …

I guess I am going to have to do some research to learn more about the Pittsburgh tax abatements which just passed city council, unless someone stumbles upon this article that knows more than I do and can help me out. Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article here.

Let’s take a specific example:
Charlie Batch is doing wonderful things in Homestead and is working on converting an old building. Let’s make the assumption that Homestead is covered and he is planning on turning them into condos (I guess I just want to give Batch some kudos - since Homestead is not covered and he is actually turning them into loft-apartments). Does the tax abatement help him? Certainly it lowers the cost of the units for prospective purchasers. But I don’t know that it saves him any money. Does it? I guess if the units remain vacant. Any other way?

It clearly helps out developers of apartments, since the landlord will benefit from the tax breaks. But Pittsburgh has already lost one condo project to an apartment building because of historic tax credits favoring apartments. And at least in Batch’s case, the County is already tossing in $1.5 million for the project. Most of the big development projects downtown have similar public money.

I am just trying to figure out how and where this tax abatement will spur development. So, anyone know exactly what the measure that passed today said and where I can read a good account of it online? I checked Antirust, but the lengthy debate their focused on the inclusion of downtown and the vitality of the downtown market - and I didn’t see this angle of it addressed.

Last night, the Urban Design Associates and the Pittsburgh Penguins held a meeting to get input from residents on the development of the new Penguins arena. Architect Don Carter, President of Urban Design Associates, indicated to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that the doors are wide open for public participation.

Sounded nice.

Until I started thinking about my post yesterday on innovation. Where is the digg-like site that utilizes social voting to allow the best public ideas to rise to the top? Where is the blog that has an interactive discussion with residents about what is and is not possible, and has a candid discussion of what ideas they are considering next. Where is the Post-Gazette online poll asking its readers what they care about?

“More than 230 people ” participated in the process last night. So, statistically, 1 person’s voice represented about 1,000 city residents and 10,000 residents in the metropolitan area.

When I read “We’ve opened the door as wide as we can” I hear - We’ve opened the door as wide as we know how.