The National Association of Realtors says home sales should narrowly fluctuate narrowly with a gradual upturn. The national median existing-home price should ease by 1.3 percent to $219,100 in 2007 before rising 1.7 percent next year. The median new-home price will probably fall 2.3 percent to $240,800 this year, and then grow by 2.6 percent in 2008.

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is likely to increase to 6.6 percent in the third quarter and then hover at that level through 2008.

This reinforces the fact that buying a house, whether its an investment or a home to live in, is a long-term investment. Not unlike the stock market, price declines only really matter if you are forced to sell. The value of investment properties must be weighed against the prospects for other investments, but an owner occupant has a much better chance of benefitting from homeownership as a home for this purpose must primarily be weighed against a cost without prospects for profit--renting.

Worried about housing prices declining? An article about the Chicago condo market I read this morning (on a condo-promoting web site!) made me wonder just how far down the market would go. By afternoon it had reached my inbox that if you live in Pittsburgh there was little reason to fear price drops. According to PMI, the Pittsburgh market has the least risk of declining.

PMI Mortgage Insurance ranks the nation's 50 largest metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) according to the likelihood that home prices will be lower in two years. The ranking showed Texas, Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania MSAs constitute the lowest ranked group-those facing a less than 10 percent chance of lower prices.

Nine MSAs-West Palm Beach, FL, Oakland, Sacramento, and San Diego, CA, Boston and Cambridge, MA, Detroit and neighboring Warren, MI, and Cleveland, OH-saw slight year-over-year price declines.

Of course this only matters if you're trying to sell a house, and the authors point out in their press release that buying a house is a long-term investment. "If you already own, you need to take the long view and have realistic expectations about how much your property may appreciate. Building equity in a home is still a great way to build wealth over the long term."

If there could be a better choice for a show to be the first performed in the Garden Theater since closing as an x-rated movie venue, it may be possible conceive of what, but I can't imagine conceiving of how. Quantum Theater's performance of the Collected Works of Billy The Kid was superb. I also enjoyed being in the audience and seeing inside the Garden for the first time in my life (I am telling the truth!!). I had anticipated getting a bite to eat at Max's before the show, but it was getting late and if its busy in there it can be slow. So we drove to Giorgio's on Western Avenue and then back. I didn't park near the Garden, I drove back home-- just to experience for the first time walking out my front door and down to the Theater. I am used to walking downtown for a show, but today I had the opportunity to go directly West toward the bright lights. I had a friend visiting a few years ago who saw the lights down the street. I told him it was a porn theater and he said "I'll be back." He returned sooner than I thought and lamented, "it's closed. What kind of porn theater closes at nine?" We blamed it on Pittsburgh.

Just now I bit on the skin between my thumb and pointer finger and then reminded myself I had just returned from the Garden. I don't think I touched much of anything, except a plastic wine glass and the sink faucet. The sink faucet? Ugh. From the bathroom stall I heard someone say "I think this is one place it might be better not to wash your hands!" Yea, the Garden was pretty dirty. Cobwebs are in place, plaster is falling off the walls and the lights are dim as ever (as ever I imagined they were of course). The audience couldn't sit in the theater seats, to the relief of many--it wasn't built for plays anyway. A steeper seating area was built near the front and we all got to sit on folding chairs.

Sure, maybe they should have cleaned the place up first, renovated it and had a grand opening. There's something endearing about having the Garden Theater appear in the event listings almost immediately after ending its former life, however. Continuity, continuance. That's good--unusual even. I can always tell when you walk into a house that has continuity. There's a lot that's lost when you walk into a place that's been gutted and rebuilt. It just doesn't have that organic feel that one that's been lived in for fifty or a hundred or more years has. The Garden has been there for a long time, and tonight, there we were. You couldn't help but think about what had gone on in there.

It's kind of like looking at a photograph of Billy The Kid. There he is, or was, and there we were. There's some truth to every tale, but much of it is imagination. After such a long time waiting, it was wonderful tonight to walk down the street towards the lights and imagine.

On the way out I took a photo of the seats. "The good old days," someone joked.

Pittsburgh's 2002 base-year system for assessing property values has been thrown out. While the system was far from perfect, the decision is a blow to hundreds of thousands of homeowners and would-be purchasers who continue to have little idea what their taxes might be. The system may have been difficult to comprehend, but it was a system and thus provided some stability. Investments, markets and all things financial do not like instability. It has been said that companies can operate in an economically controlled environment such as the former Soviet Union or pre-1990 China, they just don't do so well when conditions are subject to change on a whim. That's not so unlike the tax system today in Allegheny County. Residents, potential residents and builders are unable to foresee for any period of time into the future what exactly their taxes will be. The system needs to be solidified as quickly as possible. Unfortunately for those desires its now the Pennsylvania State Government we're dealing with. Update: ONOROTO SAYS "No Reassessments."

BREAKING NEWS!!! Tax breaks designed to attract home builders to Downtown and 28 neighborhoods won City Council's OK yesterday.

In addition to Downtown, eligible neighborhoods for the tax break are: Allentown, Arlington, Beltzhoover, California-Kirkbride, East Allegheny, Elliott, Esplen, Fineview , Hays, Hazelwood, Homewood North, Homewood South, Homewood West, Knoxville, Larimer, Lincoln-Lemington/Belmar, Lower Lawrenceville, Manchester, Marshall-Shadeland, Mt. Oliver, Perry South/Perry Hilltop , Sheraden, Spring Garden, the Strip District, the Upper Hill District, Upper Lawrenceville, Uptown and the West End.

Reports indicate the tax breaks also apply to substantial improvements to existing properties. What that means exactly is what I'll be trying to find out.

Full Story in the Tribune-Review

Its Not Easy Being Green and Big At the same time “green” is the buzz of the real estate industry, the size of American homes is getting bigger. While many are choosing renewable materials, the square feet of space and the amount of materials it takes to construct a home has continued to increase.

This is the result of viewing the concept as “green” as buying one thing instead of another—using bamboo instead of oak. What’s lost on this monster home greening is the space that needs to be heated increases, the footprint of the home increases and likely the distance it takes to travel to and from the home increases. That may be buying green, without thinking green.

I was in a hotel watching one of those real estate shows on cable. There was a house somewhere that had been remodeled and expanded using renewable materials like cork, stone and raw wood. The agent was excited because its easy these days get green for something that looks like green.

It was clear this home was three times the size it had been when the well-intentioned couple started down the green road, and it was located on a large, wooded lot that might have required owning an SUV to access.

According to the National Association of Home Builders, the average home size in the United States was 2,330 square feet in 2004, up from 1,400 square feet in 1970. That means we’re heating and air conditioning more than twice the space we did during the oil crisis of the 1970s. We have more wiring to such electricity, more gas pipes, more heating ducts, more spaces to insulate with green insulation, more appliances, more floors to vacuum, more countertops to clean with green products.

Green is not just about what we buy, it’s about how we live. Green is about how far we live from our work and shopping, its about how often we walk or use mass transit, its about how much space our home occupies and about how much energy we use getting around. Sure, being green is about buying and building with renewable resources, but its also about re-use and restoration and about being conscious not only of what we buy and do, but how much we use.

This doesn't have much to do with City Home News, but rather concert halls and the great one we have in Pittsburgh. I've been to quite a few now and I always thought that no lobby anyway I've seen can match Heinz Hall. Tonight at the Tony Bennett concert he relayed that after touring halls around the world with Lena Horne, she took him by the hand and pulled him into one lobby--the Heinz Hall lobby and said it was the most beautiful in the world. I haven't seen them all, but I bet Tony and Lena have seen most. Enjoy it Pittsburgh, we have the best.

The Why of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh is the most livable city again, at least according to Places Rated. It's also been listed as number three in a list of cities of the future. I remember once a few years back being told by a fellow in the Bahamas that I was from the "future" when I told him I lived in San Francisco. Now San Francisco is only second most livable and doesn't even rank on the cities of the future list.

The rankings that place Pittsburgh at the top are actually pretty consistent. Pittsburgh has never ranked lower than 14 and been named "most-livable" twice. Just last year the Economist Intelligence Unit named Pittsburgh, tied with Cleveland, as the most livable.

So how do we explain the frequent response of "why" when local find out they have a visitor in their midst.

They know why, we don't.

I guess if Pittsburgh were a laundry detergent, the most popular would be the most sold. That's apparently not the case with cities though. It was only a few weeks ago the news came that some sixty thousand people voted with their feet and left Pittsburgh between 2000 and 2006. Had they stayed to see the rankings they might still be here. Despite last year's rankings, folks also left Cleveland.

Maybe they didn't know what they had.

While many are leaving, or dying, others are coming in. I see them all the time in the real estate industry. Folks from California, Maine, Florida, Maryland, New York and elsewhere, in numbers are looking at Pittsburgh. Just because the population numbers are going dowwn, doesn't mean tumbleweeds are going to be blowing along Grant Street. Its just that the number coming in isn't at a point where the tide will turn and result in a net increase yet.

Those coming in know the why of Pittsburgh. It's certainly got a look to it. Streets wind up and down green hillsides the sun rises over three rivers and shines on a cluster of steel and glass skyscrapers. Neighborhood streets and a downtown theater district bustle with activity. Housing is inexpensive and it has some of the best sports teams and cultural institutions in the world.

I stopped by a house on Troy Hill a friend (from Oregon) had bought. They were energetically tearing it apart. "This is great," my friend said. "Thanks." I told them Pittsburgh has a lot of neat stuff, like houses and infrastructure, it just needed more people with some energy.

They know what they have.

It's hard to keep that energy level when you've been here a few months or years, and that's our challenge. Sometimes folks who have been here for years look at the energetic newcomers and shake their heads. They know how it is and their quiet world is interrupted. Sometimes Pittsburghers ask "why" when they should be asking, "why not?"

Hey folks, we gotta believe, we gotta be welcoming, and we gotta change.

Each time I travel I am re-energized about Pittsburgh--I am reminded of the why of Pittsburgh. I'm writing this from Nashville, Tennessee. Its sunny here and the city has a lot of energy. There's no shortage of construction--the number of condos going up in downtown Nashville make the construction in downtown Pittsburgh look pale in comparison. Parts of the downtown are lively and there's a beautiful park along the Cumberland River. Still as I walked along Broadway (Nashville's Broadway), past the concert stage, Tootsie's Orchid Lounge and looked out at the General Jackson paddle boat on the Cumberland, I couldn't help but think experience lacked something compared to what I see leaving Heinz Hall and walk across the Roberto Clemente Bridge towards a late game at PNC Park. Even better are the nights when the symphony runs long and you can hear the boom of fireworks from inside Heinz Hall.

A few blocks from PNC Park and I'm in some of the best neighborhoods in most any city in the country. Row after row of Victorian and even civil-war era townhouses, brick and stone, a beautiful Art-Deco hospital, all surrounding a park bigger, even if less appreciated than Boston Commons. These are features the urban Nashville wannabees can't dream of having.

Just looking at data, all this may not have ever been seen by the folks who named our city most livable once again. Yet we're still #1!.

We don't always see what we have from inside. To us its just Pittsburgh. Its the tunnels and the bridges and the Steelers. Wake up! Pittsburgh really is a livable city, even the most livable city-- more than we could ever expect from a city of its size and cost is here and somehow it gains the recognition as most livable sometimes in spite of ourselves. They know the why of Pittsburgh. We need to rediscover it.

A little more on Allegheny CenterThe urban-renewal experienced by urban America from the 1950s onward is generally accepted today as failed policy. Where once urban streets were closed off to auto traffic and traffic loops and underground garages added, a new paradigm would bring back a street grid. Today “restoring the grid” is an often-heard catch phrase when taking about re-revitalizing urban areas.

Allegheny Center in Pittsburgh is one such place. In the 1960s, the “center” of a city once known as Allegheny was redeveloped. All but a few buildings were removed and replaced by apartment buildings, office towers and a retail mall. Allegheny Center was to be a city within a city.

The street grid was removed from Allegheny. Through-traffic was prohibited, instead directed onto a circle that swept around the center. The center then was a park-like space. Apartment residents and mall residents could access the mall, and keep their cars in lots on the outer-edges of the circle. Those who were not residents of Allegheny Center could access the retail mall either by walking into the park area or by parking in a garage located under the retail mall.

While Allegheny Center today is far from vacant, the city within a city is without retail. Most of that had closed by the early 1990s. By the turn of 21st Century talk began of opening the East-West axis in the center to vehicular traffic. More recently proposals to “restore the grid” have come forth. In the case of Allegheny Center, a full restoration of a grid would mean significant demolition of buildings that are occupied, generally attractive, in good repair and not a half-century old.


Original plans for the City of Allegheny show a checkerboard of sorts of squares placed some distance from the Allegheny River. The layout of Allegheny appeared to be a fresh breath of order in a chaotic landscape, especially when looking across the river to the chaotic street patterns of rival city Pittsburgh.

The center four squares of the thirty-six square grid were reserved for public use and included a park, a space that would come to be occupied by a neo-classical city hall. The idea of public use was strong and one of the squares seemed well-suited to Andrew Carnegie’s desire to construct the first public library in the United States. The fourth square would for many years be occupied by a market house.

In contrast to many of its eastern counterparts and cities along the Ohio River, Allegheny resembled a New England town, complete with a public square and public buildings at the center. It stood in contrast to the chaotic, commercial cities with irregular street grids and commerce and industry as their central focus.

In the 20th Century Allegheny grew to be more like neighboring Pittsburgh. More and more of the squares came to be occupied by commercial buildings and the density increased to the point to where any resemblance to a New England town was lost. Department stores, diners, theaters and other commercial enterprises served the needs of the growing city.

Today when nostalgic talk about “restoring the grid” is uttered, it’s the commercial Allegheny that’s referred to, not the spirit of the original city.

Yet as we see with retail development today, the places it occupies go in and out of fashion. Entering a department store our grandparents might have known is an anomaly. When city planners started looking at Allegheny in the 1950s, many of the stores had become vacant, underutilized and deteriorated. This is a normal process in the retail cycle. Likewise the mall that was to replace the commercial Allegheny Center existed for some decades before its time too had ended. We look at it today as a failure, yet the mall at Allegheny Center lasted longer than many of the strip mall businesses in our suburbs and longer than many of the businesses in our downtown—without the street grid. Its this portion of Allegheny Center that most needs attention rather than the entire complex.

That doesn’t in any way negate the value of the street grid. The parts of the Allegheny City Center grid designers wish to restore today are in fact still in place. The issue is not the grid exactly, but the facilitation of automobile traffic through the grid. Part of the grid is off limits after mall hours (the mall is now an office building) and that is indeed an impediment to the vitality of Allegheny City Center.

A testament to the value of such a grid design with central squares is the fact that remarkably, despite attempts of complete destruction by powerful forces, the central four “public” squares of Allegheny essentially exist today. More it should be added that the original plans for Allegheny did not provide for interior intersecting “streets”. Any sort of vehicle it appears would have had to go around the central four squares in a diamond pattern.

The original Carnegie Library building is still there. While the city hall was demolished when Allegheny was annexed by Pittsburgh, a planetarium was built in its place and now is occupied by the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum. The square that was home to Diamond Park is still a park space, although the current design aesthetics are less than appealing to those with classical sensibilities. Sadly the space formerly occupied by the Market House is now partially occupied by an apartment building, but there is ample green space around the building to preserve some sense of it as a public space. The center of the space is a crossroads for pedestrians visiting the center, from apartment dwellers to visitors to the Children’s Museum, the adjoining New Hazlett Theater and the various office buildings.

Its not so important to "revive" the Allegheny City Center of any specific time period. While the retail portion needs work, it is important to recognize, however that the original Center of Allegheny for a large part is intact. It just needs some refining and reaching for its aesthetic roots.

Pittsburgh is a triumph of the better than average place. Excelling at all of the nine categories once again put Pittsburgh at the top of the Places Rated Almanac. It's the first time any city has been at the top twice, the first being 1985. Pittsburgh's worst ranking since 1981 has been 14th. The guide is traditionally published every four years. The last edition, however was eight years ago. San Francisco ranked number two and Philadelphia five.
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I'd like to briefly respond to the Mayor's new efforts aimed at keeping young people in Pittsburgh. In its recent report the census bureau didn't mention young people leaving as a reason for our continued population loss since 2000. The Mayor is not the first person to see the bank robber and shoot the teller, however. For years we've been talking about ways to keep Pittsburghers from leaving when what we're missing compared to other cities is in-migration. Healthy young people move around and healthy cities have a constant flow of in and out migration. If you want to keep young Pittsburgher's here, you need a committee of one: a Fidel Castro-style dictator. If you want a healthy, living city we need to look outside ourselves and find ways to encourage in-migration as well as out-migration.

Finding Downtown Without Your Car A few years back my friend and I were walking around Pittsburgh’s Northside and I was describing everything that had been demolished. At that time the future of some late 19th Century buildings known as the Garden Theater block was even less certain than it is now. “It’s all that’s left of downtown (the earlier name for the Northside).” I said. It would seem a light went off in my friends mind. “That’s what’s wrong with the Northside,” he exclaimed, “It lost its downtown.”

A small theater once known as Carnegie Hall was the location for a lecture turned April revival about the future of the old center of Allegheny City. The theater, built by Andrew Carnegie, was almost filled—a large crowd for something as mundane as an urban planning lecture. Clearly there is a certain passion out there for the topic, and a yearning for the old days when Allegheny really had a center.

Throughout the presentation dramatic graphics showed original plan maps, the old days, urban renewal in the 1960s and present day Allegheny Center. Allegheny started with a grid centered by a public square and surrounded by a public commons. It would seem a plan that would produce a beautiful city, one with more form and grace than the neighboring city of Pittsburgh.

Not to be outdone, Pittsburgh would eliminate any competition when forcing not only annexation but eventually urban renewal on Allegheny. Today the result is a half-empty, uninspiring office mall, a quiet center, an unattractive and ignored public square and a wall that seems as much an attempt to keep Alleghenians in as to keep Pittsburghers out.

The presentation by architect Doug Suisman aimed to enliven Allegheny and remove the barriers that block the path that leads from Allegheny to Pittsburgh.

An idea that has been floating around for some time, Suisman reinforced the idea and modern popular notion of restoring the street grid and again creating the thirty-six original squares of Allegheny, bringing cars and foot traffic back into the center. Further, Suisman suggested cutting the wall—or in practical terms, removing a section of Allegheny Center Mall to allow Federal Street to connect from North to South. He also proposed adding infill buildings to bring back the density in Allegheny, rebuilding a market house and converting an abandoned library (Carnegie’s first) into “Allegheny Hall,” as well as restoring the name of Allegheny and street names.

Many of these ideas seem to have merit, and undoing urban-renewal projects is certainly the established paradigm these days. It’s also a paradigm I’m much more at home in than one of creating urban suburban atmospheres with plenty of parking.

Still, the ideas seemed to stem from a desire to restore the lost downtown as a separate, proud city in a nineteenth century context than a realization of what Allegheny is today.

First, today the idea of a “downtown” Allegheny is not nearly as important as a “center.” Second, the original “center” was a public square in days before streets were filled with automobiles, trucks and traffic. Restoring the center then need not include bringing automobile traffic into the center. Moreover, the original concept of the streets Suisman noted as being “four streets named Diamond,” are not unlike the traffic circle that surrounds the present-day Allegheny Center. So, instead of bringing traffic into the public square Suisman wants to restore, reinforce the notion of a “public” square where people can interact rather than drive through.

The notion of removing a section from Allegheny Center Mall is a good one. When walking from downtown there is no apparent way into the center of Allegheny and no direct physical way when the mall is closed. Again, the need is to have pedestrian access unrestricted and inviting. I question the need to invite and encourage vehicular traffic into the park-like setting.

Susiman noted that a good city is built block by block, lot by lot and has a diversity of interests. That’s entirely true, but present day Allegheny Center has no more potential for that than it does of again being a separate city. There far fewer owners of Allegheny Center today than there were squares in the original plan. Unless you raze everything and start from scratch as they did in the 1960s, there isn’t a way to restore that effect of having a multitude of stakeholders.


Restoring public transit service to the center of Allegheny was also a proposal. The photos all showed streetcar lines. Bringing streetcars into Allegheny Center would be an ideal. A historic streetcar line running on Federal from downtown or east-west on Ohio Street would indeed enliven the center, and all of the neighborhoods it traverses for that matter, but we don’t need to restore vehicular traffic to accomplish that.

Allegheny is not what it was in 1906 and attempts to restore it to that might not be any more successful at restoring it than renewal projects were at renewing it. In some ways in its present park-like atmosphere is more like Allegheny in the 1830s. Restoring Diamond Park, pedestrian access, some retail including a market house, the name Allegheny and even public transit are all laudable goals. Yet modern adaptations to it should recognize Allegheny for what it is now as much as any other time period. Adaptations need not necessarily include the 20th Century adaptation known as the motor car.

Green Living and Historic Preservation When thinking of green building old houses aren’t what always first comes to mind. “Green building” may instead conjure up images of solar panels, strange-looking storage tanks and grassy substances growing on the roof.

One of the primary principles of green building, however is recycling. This not only applies to materials, but also applies to whole buildings. Reusing a building is by its nature a “green” process.

Sure, old buildings can have drafty doors and windows, less than adequate insulation and old mechanics that may make it operate at less than maximum efficiency, at least less efficiently than a comparable new home built in a green-friendly manner.

Take the house I live in for example. It was built in 1859 of solid brick construction. The walls are made of two layers of bricks with plaster on the inside walls. That means there is no space in between the walls to insulate. One solution could be to build out the interior walls and insulate there, but to someone who wants to maintain the original or existing look and feel of the house that’s not an attractive option.

That doesn’t mean the house isn’t “green,” however as living green is as much a matter of process as it is about meeting specific criteria.

Brick has exceptional "thermal mass” which means it has the ability to store heat and then slowly release it. An insulated wood frame house is more like a blanket that keeps the heat in. During the summer months a brick home stays cool (until it’s fully heated by the sun) and during the winter, brick walls store your home's heat and radiate it back.

Materials aren’t the only green thinking consideration, however, another is size. Your homes bricks aren’t the only thing that stores energy. Think of your entire home as stored energy. All the energy that went into making the bricks, the stairs, the foundation, the roof of your house is still there. Choosing an existing home means that you are choosing not to expend more energy building another home.

Another consideration is size. A smaller less efficient home may take less energy to operate than a larger more efficient home. Beyond heating, remember to consider the energy it takes to maintain a large lawn or even the energy it takes to travel to and from a home that’s far from amenities and employment.

There’s still more that we miss when thinking only about the insulation properties of external materials. A brick row house may also use less energy than a comparable sized detached home because at least two of the walls are attached to other walls—they never touch the cold on the outside. The fewer walls exposed, the more efficient the home is. From this point of view, a condo in a high-rise is more suited to saving energy.

Returning to the idea of historic preservation and whether it’s compatible with green building, we can use the example of changing windows. I imagine the consensus out there is that double-paned windows are a must for buying a home. Most home inspectors will note if a home contains original or single-paned windows and suggest that they be replaced.

Many people who like old homes enjoy original features including windows. I was familiar with a 1830s farm house in the small town of Poland, Ohio that in the late 1990s still had all its original windows. More, they had been sanded and painted so that they were in perfect operating condition—someone had put a tremendous amount of energy into preserving them down to the original wavy glass that has a slightly distorted quality to it.

Unfortunately the home was sold and a new owner replaced all the windows with new double-paned ones. This may have been recommended by a home inspector and even viewed as a “green” adaptation. While it’s true the replacement windows were more efficient than the original ones, it’s also true that reuse is a green –principle and simply adding storm windows or magnetic interior storms would have arguably been the preferred “green” option.

In short, when thinking green it’s important to think beyond energy efficiency and using new, renewable products made of recycled materials. It’s important to think about reusing existing homes as well as materials. It’s important to think about the amount of space you occupy, both on the inside and outside of the house. It’s important to think about where your home is in relation to the places you frequently travel and important to think about how much of your house is exposed to the weather outside.

Historic preservation and green building do go together and living green is primarily a product of thinking green.

Unthawing Pittsburgh’s Potential: Two stories about two different parts of the continent caught my eye recently. The first was about an Alaska town that offered free land to anyone willing to submit a $500 deposit and build a 1,000 square foot house within two years. There were no shortage of takers, in fact folks from Oregon, Idaho, Florida, Wisconsin and Washington were camping out in frigid temperatures for a chance to build a warm house on the cold tundra.

The second story was about a place with slightly worse prospects: Detroit. The headline about that city said cars there are now more expensive than houses. That’s not the entire story, however, while a foreclosed Detroit bungalow recently sold at auction for less than $2,000, a new condo in a downtown high-rise fetched seven figures through traditional channels. More, the long vacant and deteriorating Cadillac Hotel in downtown Detroit is being restored with the upper floors being converted into condos.

I recall reading an interview with Robert Toll, the luxury homebuilder as his company moved into the arena of developing downtown. He wasn’t sure the downtown craze would spread that far, from New York and Philadelphia into urban Detroit. Apparently he underestimated America’s new urban condo craze.

In Pittsburgh downtown condos are also coming into their own. Traditional urban neighborhoods like the Southside Flats, Mexican War Streets, Lawrenceville and Deutschtown are also holding their own, but its not hard to find the bargains mentioned in the Detroit article around here. In fact, the article mentioned in the first paragraph that homes in Motown could be had for $26,000 or less. My thoughts: Why is this news? They’ve been available here for quite some time.

Pittsburgh has had more houses than people for many years now and while people tend to cluster in certain areas keeping those values up, they don’t want to be in other places where you tend to find the $25,000 or less houses. From my general observation urban homebuyers now want to be where they can have the benefit of a walk-able neighborhood with a healthy mix of retail and residential. Urban suburbs that require you to drive everywhere are less popular.

In any case, I’d venture that most any affordable house in Pittsburgh has more going for it than a like one in Detroit or some icy Alaska land.

This hasn’t brought us to Alaska yet, but we’re getting warm.

If Pittsburgh is filled with not only vacant lots, but vacant lots with vacant houses on them, many of which are owned by the city and never reach the icy temperatures of that rocky shrubgrass is Alaska, why wouldn’t homesteaders take Pittsburgh up on such an offer? It could be a boon to the population and the tax base, not to mention the public relations value.

Of course these things are always complicated, but if its news that Detroit has affordable housing and people are flocking to Alaska in hopes of obtaining a frozen rock or two, I’ve got to think Pittsburgh has a lot more work to do getting the word out.

Ask about accessing my password-protected agent notes.

FINANCING YOUR PURCHASE OR RENOVATION: For those interested in obtaining financing for purchase of a home or remodeling, I have recently come across two interesting funding sources.

The first is http://www.prosper.com which allows you to borrow money from other people rather than banks. When you enter your information into the web site, it gives you a credit rating and a debt-income ratio. You can post the amount you'd like to borrow and the interest rate you'd like to pay and lenders (regular people who want to lend money, not banks) can bid for your loan. these loans cxan be used for purchase or repairs or pretty much anything.

The second is a HUD loan I was not aware of that allows you to borrow small amounts for renovation. You have to live in the home you are remodeling. This is called the Streamlined 203(k) Limited Repair Program. A link is available from the resources page of http://www.dunnrealtor.com

For more links and financial programs, visit http://www.dunnrealtor.com and click on RESOURCES.

(p.s. no warranties are made or implied by Eric Miller or Dunn Real Estate Services)

Existing-home sales in most states were down from year-ago levels in the fourth quarter. In the fourth-quarter, metro area single-family home prices, examining changes in 149 metropolitan statistical areas, (2) show 71 areas had price gains from a year earlier, including 14 metros with double-digit annual increases, and 73 areas had price declines; five were unchanged.

The national median existing single-family home price was $219,300 in the fourth quarter, down 2.7 percent from a year earlier when the median price was $225,300. The median is a typical market price where half of the homes sold for more and half sold for less. For all of 2006, the median price rose 1.4 percent to $222,000.

A new comparison of annual single-family home prices in metropolitan areas shows that typical sellers experienced healthy gains on the value of their home over the last five years in almost all 131 available areas, even in areas with recent price declines.

The biggest total sales increase was in Indiana, where existing-home sales rose 13.7 percent from the fourth quarter of 2005. In Arkansas the fourth-quarter resale pace rose 11.1 percent from a year earlier, while Texas experienced the third strongest gain, up 6.2 percent.

Over the last five years, metro areas with the largest single-family price gains include the California areas of Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, up 155.3 percent, and Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, up 142.3 percent, followed by the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Miami Beach area of Florida, up 135.4 percent.

In the fourth quarter, the largest single-family home price increase was in the Atlantic City, N.J., area, where the median price of $339,800 was 25.9 percent higher than a year ago. Next was the Salt Lake City area, at $223,600, up 22.7 percent from the fourth quarter of 2005. The Trenton-Ewing area of New Jersey, with a fourth quarter median price of $289,000, increased 18.9 percent in the last year.

Median fourth-quarter metro area single-family prices ranged from a very affordable $78,400 in Elmira, N.Y., to nearly 10 times that amount in the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara area of California where the median price was $760,000. The second most expensive area was San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, at $733,400, followed by the Anaheim-Santa Ana-Irvine area (Orange Co., Calif.), at $690,700.

In addition to Elmira, N.Y., other affordable markets include the Youngstown-Warren-Boardman area of Ohio and Pennsylvania, with a fourth-quarter median price of $80,000, and Decatur, Ill., at $89,200.

In the condo sector, metro area condominium and cooperative prices – covering changes in 58 markets – show the national median existing condo price was $220,900 in the fourth quarter, down 2.1 percent from the same period in 2005. Thirty-one metros showed annual increases in the median condo price, including seven areas with double-digit gains; 27 metros had price declines.

The strongest condo price gains were in the Austin-Round Rock area of Texas, where the fourth quarter price of $160,000 rose 16.5 percent from a year ago, followed by the Newark-Union area of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, where the median condo price of $352,600 rose 16.4 percent from the fourth quarter of 2005, and Springfield, Mass., at $160,400, an increase of 14.6 percent.

Metro area median existing condo prices in the fourth quarter ranged from $102,600 in Wichita, Kan., to $580,300 in the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont area. The second most expensive reported condo market was Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, at $402,000, followed by the San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos area of California at $358,200.

Other affordable condo markets include Bismarck, N.D., at $103,500, and Greensboro-High Point, N.C., at $119,100.

Regionally, the Northeast saw an existing-home sales pace of 1.04 million units in the fourth quarter, which was 6.6 percent below a year ago. The median Northeastern resale single-family home price was $274,600 in the fourth quarter, which is 2.5 percent below the same period in 2005.

After the Atlantic City and Trenton-Ewing areas, the strongest price increase in the Northeast was in Pittsfield, Mass., with a median price of $220,600, up 4.7 percent from the fourth quarter of last year, followed by the Albany-Schenectady-Troy area of New York with a median price of $198,700, up 4.1 percent.

Total existing-home sales in the South were at an annual rate of 2.49 million units in the fourth quarter, down 8.5 percent from the fourth quarter of 2005. After the gains in Arkansas and Texas, the next strongest increase in the South was in Kentucky, up 5.6 percent from a year ago, while Mississippi rose 2.0 percent.

The median existing single-family home price in the South was $181,700 in the fourth quarter, which is 3.7 percent below a year earlier. The strongest increase in the South was in the Beaumont-Port Arthur area of Texas, where the median price of $120,000 was 15.1 percent above the fourth quarter of 2005. Next was Raleigh-Cary, N.C., at $226,300, up 14.5 percent from a year ago, followed by the Cumberland area of Maryland and West Virginia, with a 14.4 percent gain to $98,000.

In the Midwest, total existing-home sales declined 8.6 percent to a 1.43 million-unit annual level in the fourth quarter compared with a year earlier. The median existing single-family home price in the Midwest was $161,800, down 4.2 percent from the fourth quarter of 2005.

The strongest metro price increase in the Midwest was in the Davenport-Moline-Rock Island area of Iowa and Illinois, where the median price of $116,400 was 6.6 percent higher than a year ago. Next was Dayton, Ohio, at $119,500, up 5.9 percent from the fourth quarter of 2005, and Rockford, Ill., at $121,500, up 5.7 percent in the last year.

In the West, the existing-home sales pace of 1.28 million units was 17.8 percent lower than the fourth quarter of 2005. The best performance in the region was in Alaska where existing-home sales rose 0.4 percent from a year earlier.

The median existing single-family home price in the West slipped 0.4 percent to $355,100 during the fourth quarter. After Salt Lake City, the strongest increase in the West was in the Salem, Ore., area, at $223,100, up 14.9 percent from fourth quarter of 2005, followed by Farmington, N.M., at $183,000, up 14.0 percent, and Spokane, Wash., at $189,200, up 12.2 percent from a year ago.

Source: NAR

An article from Bankrate.com has some advice quite a few folks moving to Pittsburgh have taken. If you live in a high-priced market, especially one with dropping prices, get out! Take your equity and run.

"Extra equity is an added benefit to the American dream. You can manage this equity in one of several ways. You can sit on it and hope that the real estate market in your area doesn't tank. You can tap your equity and use it -- generally not a good strategy since you have to pay it back. Or you can cash it out and move to an area where the housing dollar buys more for the buck."

Many who have cashed out ended up with enough equity to pay cash for their new home. A mortgage-free lifestyle is great for those who wanted to have more travel time, create artwork or even start a business.

"A low or nonexistent mortgage also provides lifestyle benefits such as the ability to pursue a hobby, travel or simply the luxury of working less and playing more. Two-income families with children may consider having one parent stay at home."

Pittsburgh isn't the only place where you can buy a home for less, but when my friend asked me the other day what would be my favorite city to live in the U.S., I hesitated responding with New York. "What if you factor in cost?" Then I'd have to answer that what Pittsburgh offers is pretty close to the top. I suppose factoring in cost, that's why I am here.

It’s a curious name, the Shrinking Cities Institute. Kent State University near Akron recently founded this initiative which is expected to address the problems of the minority number of big cities which continue to shrink rather than grow.

As you might have heard, Pittsburgh falls into this category.

A commentary by the Rand Institute’s Barry Balmat and Peter A. Morrison that appeared in the Post-Gazette in 2004 observed that Pittsburgh's population declined nearly 10 percent during the 1990s, in sharp contrast to the 13 percent nationwide population increase. Since 2000, the city's population loss has continued unabated.

That’s just the facts, not the commentary, however. The juice of the story is that it’s not necessarily a bad thing.

We’ll get to the why of that in a bit, but first a little on the thought about what to do with shrinking cities.

Pittsburgh has its problems, and those problems are exemplified in our neighbor, Youngstown, Ohio. Like Pittsburgh over the past half-century Youngstown has been presented with dramatic population loss. Unlike Pittsburgh which had somewhat of a diversified economy, when the steel industry left, the economy left with it. When officials released the Youngstown 2010 Plan (the last plan updated a 1951 plan in 1974) it didn’t cover the usual growth management, rather covering “managing decline.”

Finally, someone says it. The emperor has no clothes. It’s time to “begin drawing the map of a smaller city.”

The movement now barely known as “Shrinking Cities,” started in Germany. It wasn’t the slow decline of the steel industry there, rather the removal of a certain long-standing wall that left many East German cities virtually vacant. It gave Youngstown an idea American cities never had on their own. Why not shrink?

What does that mean exactly? A web page on a “Shrinking Cities” conference at Cleveland State University offered some insight. Shrinking a city could include the demolition or dismantling of under-utilized housing and other building stock, the removal of redundant streets, and downsizing of municipal infrastructure to correspond to declining population.” In Detroit, Saint Louis and other shrinking cities that may mean cutting off services to underutilized areas and giving people there incentives to move out then returning them to nature. In Youngstown that means considering relaxing zoning rules to allow small horse farms or apple orchards and offering incentives for people to move out of abandoned areas.

Is Shrinking something for Pittsburgh to think about? I don’t know the complete answer to that, but I could point out many streets where there are houses you can’t give away. I’ve spent several afternoons on the phone looking for someone to take a free house and have not yet been successful at finding a taker. Do we need so much space for so few people? Can we encourage “clusters” of nice urban areas and leave unused space for wildlife or even farms and orchards?

In Pittsburgh the downtown population is increasing even while the city and region continues to shrink (we’re apparently the only shrinking region these days—in other places only the cities shrink). That means people are moving around inside the region and the underutilized areas are continuing to depopulate. It would be an attractive option in my view to start returning some of these areas to nature.

What Shrinking Cities should not mean, however is a “suburbanization” of the city by tearing down every other house. That’s no more sustainable than a suburb or under-populated city. Cleveland had the right idea when it started to concentrate development in nodes like the Euclid Avenue district. Youngstown has gone a step further with a comprehensive plan for the nodes and the spaces in between with the goal of improving the sustainability and quality of life.

Back to the Rand Institute commentary mentioned at the beginning. Pittsburgh shrinking leads optimists to project a shortage of as many as 125,000 workers in metropolitan Pittsburgh as early as 2008. “What's noteworthy is that Pittsburgh's unfolding demographic future does contain opportunities.” Could that mean we will need the empty houses?

If we start eliminating homes there will be fewer and any economist will tell you smaller supply means more demand and higher prices. On the other hand, The Housing Alliance of Pennsylvania estimates there are approximately 18,000 vacant properties and land in the City of Pittsburgh, about 11.5% of the total housing units. If we start now to reclaim some of the land by “shrinking,” it would take quite some time to get to a small portion of the 18,000 houses.

Shrinking isn’t necessarily a solution, but could prove to be a practical and attractive component in preparing Pittsburgh for a new era as a smaller city.

Changing demographics and preferences may come to favor North City housing in the coming years. Smaller household size, rising gas prices and highway congestion may all add up to an increased popularity of urban housing that’s in close proximity to what the city has to offer. Along with these trends is another emerging factor, more and more workers can go where they want independent of employment.

A recent survey by a group called CEOs for Cities found that two-thirds of highly mobile 25- to 34-year-olds with college degrees say that they will decide where they live first then look for a job.

Two-thirds of them choose place before job, and this preference was true across all life stages and genders (male, female, single, married, with children, without children). Women place greater emphasis on the location decision than do men, although a majority of men also say they choose place before job.

That’s not only important in terms of attracting people, but also in attracting companies who often base location decisions on where employees want to live. More, technology advances allow workers to stay connected from almost anywhere and employees are less loyal to companies, allowing them to move.

It’s critically important now that we build and work to meet these trends. A city’s best chance to attract these workers, the report said, is to focus on the most mobile of the group, those 25 to 34 years old.

Are our neighborhoods prepared to meet this demand? In some ways the answer is clearly yes. In others, there’s work to do.

For one segment of the population, we won’t have to do anything. It’s not hard to find people out there in other cities who want to live in Pittsburgh, if only they had a job. As employment becomes more mobile, it’s logical a portion will gravitate to Pittsburgh. The survey indicated young adults have a strong inclination to live downtown or close to downtown. That in itself would seem to favor our neighborhoods, especially Deutschtown, the Mexican War Streets and Allegheny West.

More, these young, mobile workers want a place that feels welcoming, offers professional opportunities, has reasonable commute times, access to excellent schools, is a great place to raise children, is a place people are proud to say they live in were among attributes young people looked for in a city.

On most of these counts I think we do fairly well. However, I was discussing the topic of “Pittsburgh Pride” with my marketing guru of a sister. She mentioned research that suggests the image of the city fluctuates significantly with the performance of sports teams. This is of course good when the Steelers are winning, however I’m not alone in recounting the times a Pittsburgh visitor has been asked “why?” as the first question from a local. I’ve lived in a number of cities and I’m here to say a large segment of Pittsburgh has no idea what it has: a beautiful, affordable metropolitan city with world-class architecture, art and culture art and as icing, great sports teams. If we don’t know why, we should have left a long time ago!

Self-image not the only area I see as needing improvement, however.
Te study also found that basic quality of life issues safe, clean streets and neighborhoods, can afford to buy a home, lots of parks and green space) ranked highest among attributes that young people looked for in a city. We don’t do bad on crime or green space, but general maintenance and cleaning could probably be improved. I recently created and posted a video on YouTube.com (search for newcolonist) of a walk up some of our city steps and walkways. The weeds were enough to scare off any visitor or potential resident. If we don’t care, why would anyone else? If a neighborhood looks nice, it is nice in a visitors mind.

Lifestyle attributes are also important to this demographic. “They prefer places where they can connect with others and have meaningful social interactions; that are interesting and diverse; and are environmentally responsible,” the survey found.

The most diverse parts of our city are the college areas of Shadyside and Oakland.

We may have an instinctual reaction that tells us college students are not interested in the Northside. We fail to realize the potential of significant transportation links to not only Oakland, but South Side, the Strip and Bloomfield.

The 500 and the 54c buses provide direct links to the Pitt Campus and a short walk
downtown can allow access many more routes.

Finally, and perhaps the most critical factor, “knowledge of city attributes is limited.” Young adults rely most heavily on personal stories from friends and family to form their perceptions about a place. They also use the Internet and personal visits to shape their opinions.

The internet presence of our neighborhoods is limited at best, leaving out perhaps the most important tool we have to attract the attention of this demographic segment. We can build all we want, but unless we tell them what’s here and why it’s great, they’ll never know.