New privacy laws will affect California apartment owners
California has passed a consumer privacy law that will compel significant changes on companies that deal in personal data. Silicon Valley internet companies, tech companies, and many other stakeholders were involved in the negotiation...
Compound word for the day: self-awareness
Northern California, the startup cradle of the world, is replete with superhumans. If you doubt me, just ask them. To live here is to live in an alternative universe where luxury white buses line...
Test your start-up idea
If start-ups had a motherland, it would be the U.S. with 45,360 new businesses in 2017 (second place is India with 5,384). Northern California would be the startup cradle according to the Kauffman Index...
Facebook launches print magazine
Airbnb, Uber, and now Facebook: Think of print as a cat with nine lives. It’s now collided with human behavior and the freshest face on the block taking his/her turn at reinventing the status...
Yardi Matrix releases multifamily housing outlook
Last Friday, Yardi Matrix released a report forecasting positive performance for the U.S. multifamily housing market for the rest of this year. However, good as it may be, performance is expected to slow from...
ResMan goes for growth
Let's say you are a property manager running multifamily properties. You need a property management software package to support your business. You don't like the options available so you roll your own. You find...
JCHS releases State of Housing 2018
The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS) released the latest version of its report, “The state of the nation’s housing.” This annual report has been produced since 1988 and examines the conditions in...
Land use policy and the inner ring
In a paper titled “Upscaling the Neighborhood” presented at the meeting “Land, Labor, and the Rule of Law” at the Hoover Institution, Notre Dame Law School professor Nicole Stelle Garnett discussed land use policy...
HUD launches the Detroit EnVision Center
HUD secretary, Dr. Ben Carson, has made his department's measure of success the number of those who progress beyond needing assistance rather than the number of people who are being assisted. He has proposed...
Freddie Mac talks housing market fundamentals
Recently Steve Guggenmos, Aaron Dunn and Sara Hoffman of Freddie Mac Multifamily recorded a podcast discussing multifamily housing market fundamentals.
Reaching the top
Hoffman reported that market watchers expect that the rate of new supply to the...
Construction material prices up in May
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its Producer Price Index for May last week. It showed that overall prices for processed goods for intermediate demand were up 1.5 percent in May and they...
Census releases housing construction data for May, 2018
The Census Bureau, in conjunction with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), released its monthly new residential construction report for May, 2018. The strength in multifamily housing starts was the brightest part of...
Philadelphia passes tax to fund affordable housing
Thursday, the Philadelphia city council voted to create a new construction impact tax. The measure passed by a 9 to 8 vote. Before it becomes law, it must be signed by the mayor who...
NDC issues report on America’s housing shortage
A group called the New Democrat Coalition issued a report this week on the nation’s housing shortage titled “Missing Millions of Homes.” The report seeks to identify the problems with supplying housing in America...
Construction job churn continues but so does growth
The Job Openings and Labor Turnover (JOLT) report for April was released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics this week. Its data on construction employment shows continued churning in that segment of the construction...
