App fatigue and the future of IoT
Doorbell. Lights. Security cams. Garage door. Home cloud. Everything entertainment. Neighborhood watch. I'm only getting started. Sure, there's Echo or other hubs—big promise, little action.
While I like the gamification of remembering the many parts...
ADA: emotional support animals rising
A dear friend had emergency brain surgery this week. During the ensuing chaos, one of his two cats went missing. Something as simple as listing the missing critter on Nextdoor turned into, well, a...
Amazon buys Ring doorbell for $1+ billion
It’s all part of the carefully-calculated Amazon home-invasion, right? Now Amazon, through its newly-acquired Ring smart doorbells, can monitor its packages on your doorstep. What will Alexa think?
A couple weeks ago I mentioned Amazon’s...
Forest City: Deal or no deal?
Forest City Residential Group (Forest City Realty Trust), no. 26 on NHMC’s top 50 apartment owners for 2017, would not confirm/deny rumors that the company is in talks with Toronto-based Brookfield Asset Management in...
When is the price of renewables prohibitive?
The annual worldwide investment in energy is more than $1.7 trillion: $650 billion in oil and gas, $300 billion in renewable electricity, and more than $300 billion in the automotive industry according to McKinsey.
As...
The energy struggle is real in New England
It’s been a particularly cold winter across the U.S., but none were more impacted than New England where they’ve turned to burning nearly two million barrels of oil to generate electricity—more than twice the...
Mental illness and us
Mental illness runs in my family. So does genius. While you may have heard me mention relatives who are inventors and creators, I’m certain you’ve never heard me mention the “other” relatives—homeless with multiple...
EPA: Incentivizing desired behavior
The EPA is now giving companies—such as power plant operators—the opportunity to escape tighter regulation under the Clean Air Act by taking steps to cut pollution.
Life sentence for polluters
The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) has...
Living in high cotton
It’s truly the year of urban transformation. Developers and investors are on the hunt for deals and markets that provide the potential for profitability—where value add means win-win for everyone, especially renters. Add Woodside Mill...
Will the love affair with apartments continue?
The apartment industry continued to lift the economy last month with a 19.7 percent surge in apartment construction according to government data released last week. The jump in construction is a reflection of a...
HUD’s EnVision Vision
The HUD budget is out. Self-actualization is in. The $41.24 billion spending plan focuses on housing three vulnerable populations: the homeless, the elderly, and the disabled. HUD is zeroing in on these groups with...
Living in Realsville
And so when I read a study that found that 80 percent of executives believe that their product/service/company stands out against the competition—while only 8 percent of their customers agree, I began to wonder...
Needed: 4.6 million new apartments by 2030
The National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC) has released the 2018 Consumer Housing Insights Survey, alongside an in-depth trends report, Disruption: How Demographics, Psychographics, and Technology are Bringing Multifamily to the Brink of a Design...
Help wanted
The labor market continues to tighten as unemployment wobbled near a 45-year low last week leaving unemployment at the lowest level since January 1973.
Last week also marked the 154th straight week that claims remained...
When buying a property goes very wrong
The only pre-demolition notice went to the former owner who lost the building to the city 18 years earlier in a tax sale. The city apparently forgot it sold the property to the Garretts,...
