Owner: The Qube Exchange URL:www.thequbeexchange.com Join Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 15:51:53 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: The Qube Exchange provides commentary and news updates on current residential real estate market conditions, online consumer resources, real estate news and home improvement information. The blog is affiliated with PropertyQube, a start-up focused on help Site statistics:Click here
States Demand MySpace Take Action Against Sex Offenders 2007-05-15 20:18:30
This week, 6 states' Attorneys Generals released a letter to MySpace
demanding the site take responsibility for sexual offenders who use the site. The AGs assert that MySpace has been working with a company called Sentinel Tech Holdings to identify known sex offenders on the social networking site, and that thousands of offenders are confirmed members. The 6 states want that list of the names.
The North Carolina Attorney General, Roy Cooper, called MySpace a "treasure trove of potential victims". Not only do these states want names, but they're also asking that MySpace to prove it's taken or is taking measures to protect their members from confirmed sex offenders. Cooper continues, "Sex offenders have no business being on this site, and we believe MySpace has a responsibility to get them off the site"
North Carolina and a handful of other states are also pushing for MySpace to require parental permission before kids are allowed to create profiles.
Is this really a Read more:States
, Action
, Sex Offenders
America’s high rise green buildings not as green as they should be 2007-05-15 15:38:48 High rise developers are increasingly going green. If you follow this blog, you’ve read about the Macallen Building we featured (thanks to the Boston Condo Guy). Developers are installing energy efficient windows, lasting fluorescent light bulbs, solar panels and green roof’s.
On NPR today, there was a segment on green building pointing out that no matter how green high rise buildings are, they are still produced with tons of steel increasingly imported from China because of the cost savings.
The problem is that producing a ton of Chinese steel causes a lot more carbon-dioxide pollution than a ton of America
n steel. This is happening as many believe the U.S will pass a law forcing steel manufacturers to pay a tax for the carbon dioxide they emit, giving developers even more of a reason to import from China for the greater cost savings.
Even though this is the case, American developers shouldn’t use the “we’re going to do something and China’s not
Yahoo Launches Green Campaign 2007-05-15 02:47:13 Today, Yahoo
launched a major campaign to extend corporate environmental responsibility to its customers. The company has committed to become "carbon neutral" by the end of this year. But today's announcement of an online campaign called Yahoo Green
challenges the company's customers to take action in their own lives. The site lets users walk through a virtual "Green House" to learn where and how they can save energy around their own houses.
After perusing energy-saving tips, users can then build their own plans to lower carbon emissions. Can this really make a difference? So far, Yahoo only has about 3,300 people pledged to lower emissions. But they've just launched. Who knows if even those people will honor their pledges? I think the key is that this campaign could at least make people think about the huge problem of global warming in terms of their own contributions. If Yahoo succeeds in doing this, it could make a big difference by making personal accountabi Read more:Campaign
What Drives the Fastest Growing Metropolitan Areas? 2007-05-15 01:10:49 Harvard Professor Edward Glaeser, who is an editorial writer for the New York Sun, just published an opinion article titled “Fight for Housing.” The article discusses the rise in in the sunbelt population. Over the past several years, cities like Houston, Dallas and Atlanta were among the 30 fastest growing metropolitan areas, growing by more than 800,000 people each. This compares to places like New York City growing at only 2.7%.
The question Mr. Glaeser is trying to answer is the following: “Does the rise of the Sunbelt reflect high levels of economic productivity, the glorious amenity of warmth, or, perhaps, just abundant new construction?”
Even though there are certain cities which attract large numbers, such as most cities in California, the migration to cities such as Dallas and Atlanta can’t be explained by the climate. “Their pleasant winters are offset by terrible summers. None of these cities have access to coastline or particularly beau Read more:Growing
, Metropolitan
Glass House Opens to Public 2007-05-14 19:38:53 Philip Johnson, a provocative American architect built his masterpiece, the GlassHouse
, on his property in New Canaan, CT in 1949. The structure is perched overlooking a pond on Johnson's estate, and demonstrates a minimalist appreciation of its beautiful surroundings. Johnson was also said to have designed the house as a tribute to modernism. The Glass House is now a National Trust Historic Site and will be open for public viewing next month. The Executive Director of the site, Christy MacLear, says she intends for the building to serve as a "call to action" for Modern Preservation across the country. The house's local surroundings in New Canaan, where modern relics designed by the Harvard Five (Johnson, Marcel Breuer, Landis Gores, John Johansen, and Eliot Noyes) are vulnerable to commercial and residential developments, badly need such a campaign to succeed.
Read more:Public
What happens when a city suffers from overdevelopment? Build the city in the sky. 2007-05-14 16:29:38 Last night I watched Discovery Channel’s Extreme Engineering show on Tokyo and how the city is looking to bring skyscrapers and urban development to the next level. Right now, Tokyo is suffering from a major land crunch. How do architects propose to fix this…..Sky City.
Standing two thirds of a mile high and as big as 23 Disney Lands, Sky City will push engineering to the brink. Sky city will only house 30,000 residents with 100,000 workers. See the video below.
Tokyo is home to 12 million people! This mammoth structure, which would take up hundreds of city blocks, cost billions of dollars and take over ten years to build all to house 30,000 residents seems hardly worth it. The plans for this building are clearly all ego driven.
Read more:suffers
, Build
Break from the blog last week 2007-05-13 18:20:22 As you can see, we haven’t blogged in a while. My business partner and I have been incredibly busy but we are making some great progress with our start-up business. We apologize for the break in blogging last week. Thanks for your patience.
Read more:Break
Boston Condo Development Goes Green 2007-05-03 15:30:04 As you know, we have published a series of “Green
” articles over the past month with topics ranging from what “Green Building” is to the drivers of green building construction materials to a battle of the environment vs. Real Estate happening on Nantucket. Well it’s great to see a concept in action so today we are profiling a condo development in Boston
which is ahead of the curve in adopting these green living approaches. The Boston Condo
Guy gave us the tip. Thanks Boston Condo Guy for flagging this cool development!
The Macallen Building, located in South Boston, is a high end condo development and the first to feature a green roof. What is a green roof you ask? “Unlike conventional black rubber roofs, the green roof, planted with hardy native grasses, will not store solar energy and so contribute to the “heat island effect” that raises the ambient temperature in dense urban developments. The green roof also provides insulation and al Read more:Development
A Neighborhood Charges Forward After Katrina 2007-05-02 19:22:59 A few months after Hurricane Katrina
, a rebuilding commission informed former residents of the Broadmoor neighborhood in New Orleans that their homes could be razed to build parks if they didn't return enough residents. That's when the neighborhood decided to take their community back.
They organized a protest rally and a meeting to devise a plan to reclaim the neighborhood. The residents, many returning from Houston and Baton Rouge, had something to lose: the neighborhood had been designated historic and most of the 2,900 homes were Spanish colonials, bungalows, classical mansions, and double shot-gun houses built before the 1950s. So the residents executed a plan to save their homes:
1) They assembled in a double-wide trailer at a local church and created a database of the neighborhood's 7,000 residents. They went on to assign block captains to monitor the area.
2) The residents reached out to the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and got help from students i Read more:Neighborhood
, Forward
What Ever Happened to the Clooney-Pitt Development? 2007-05-02 18:09:13
It was all glamour when George Clooney
and Brad Pitt played Danny Ocean and Rusty Ryan robbing a Las Vegas hotel. Their announced collaboration on a real-life Vegas condo-hotel project, Las Ramblas, was equally glamorous. But the announcement was made back in 2005…
Since then, the project's developer, Related Las Vegas, has sold the 25-acre parcel of land for over $200 million to the W Hotel nearby. What went wrong?
According to an article in the Las Vegas Business Press, the problem may have been the developer, Related. Critics say the project, with 4,400 hotel and condo units in 11 high-rise towers and a 40,000 sq. ft. casino was just too big and costly, considering market conditions. The Vegas condo market was just beginning to cool…but apparently, Related didn't check the market reports. In fact, Related had led two other high-profile failed Vegas projects before Las Ramblas.
Related's headquarted in Miami and New York, where they company's established com Read more:Development
Agent Secrets: What they can't say 2007-05-17 21:30:16
Fair-housing laws force real estate agents to stay mum on a few topics: crime statistics, educational stats, environment and demographics. So next time you're viewing a house and wonder how good the schools are in the area, bring along your internet-enabled mobile and get ready to find the info yourself. The best agents will be savvy enough to point you to the good online resources. Here's a quick list:
• Education: GreatSchools , School Matters, Neighboroo
• Crime: National Alert Registry, Neighboroo, Trulia
• Environment: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Scorecard
I actually think agents should be able to speak on the above topics. Unless the Fair-Housing laws are intended to prevent the dissemination of incorrect information, in which case, I'm sure some agents might inadvertently communicate stale or even wrong data in order to make a sale. But a few bad apples shouldn't hold the more responsible agents back from providing valuable information. The only Read more:Agent
, Secrets
Developers have their eyes on Manhattan railyards 2007-05-17 16:20:23 Developers will soon have their chance to bid for space on the industrial far west side of Manhattan
. The challenges are daunting: building over the rail yard, one of the last building sites in Manhattan, while the trains are continuously running. It is estimated that developers will need to spend near $1b just to build platforms over the rail yards to support skyscrapers, and any project would take near a decade to complete.
The biggest conflict in this debate is related to the inclusion of public benefits like affordable housing and public parks. Communities are pushing for these while developers insist any public benefits would increase costs by approximately $100 million.
Developers should not be pushing back but welcoming the opportunity to include public benefits. It has been proven again and again that public benefits increase the attractiveness, usefulness and demand of the land and most important to developers, revenue. In Boston, a similiar debate took place in the financia Read more:Developers
Clinton-Obama Alliance? 2007-05-16 18:58:48 Off-topic article but we couldn’t resist commenting on the current race for the White House. Hope you enjoy the article and let us know what you think?
The Democratic Party may have learned something from the embarrassing losses in the 2000 and 2004 to G.W. The party's front-runners, Hillary Clinton
and Barak Obama
, seem to be in lock-step on all issues in order to control the Democratic conversation. But why form an alliance with your biggest threat? Classic co-opetition: the two have a high incentive to cooperate with one another in order to secure their political careers. Obviously, this partnership could lead to a (but risky) party ticket - Clinton has the experience and credibility Obama lacks while Obama has the likeability Clinton lacks. An alliance makes sense in every scenario:
If another Dem gets the party nomination, the Clinton/Obama scenarios remain unchanged regardless of the existence of an alliance. But if the alliance actually exists, Clinton and Obama Read more:Alliance
Clinton’s Foundation Spearheading Building Makeovers 2007-05-16 16:08:55
Former president Clinton
’s foundation is spearheading plans to renovate city owned buildings with green technology in 16 different cities throughout the world. The announcement came at an International Climate Summit being hosted this week in NYC. The motivation behind this summit is the concept that major cities are overwhelmingly responsible for polluting our planet yet at the same time, cover less than 1% of the Earth’s surface.
Under the plan, buildings fitted with green technology will have reduced energy use levels of 20-50%, reducing heat trapping carbon emissions. The foundation has partnered with several major banks (Citigroup, UBS AG, JP Morgan) to allow these building renovations to take place.
“The program assumes that cities already have money in their budgets set aside for building operations and will pay back loans, plus interest, through the energy savings that the projects achieve over several years.”
We think more leaders and influential peo Read more:Foundation
, Building
Speed Dating - for Your Dream Home 2007-05-16 05:10:00 The Independent explores a hot home-viewing trend in the UK. Imagine a group of about 50-80 prospective buyers all viewing a house at once. The group, led by an agent armed with a schedule of destinations, visits a number of properties together. This may sound like home viewing caravans, or traveling open houses, here…but wait, there's another interesting feature. The speed-viewing process in the UK progresses into an action-like process.
The agent begins collecting offers over the phone, starting at the "guide price". They call each potential buyer to see if they want to make an offer, and then keep raising the price until they're left with the highest offer and all the other buyers have been priced out. The process makes buyers nervous, jumpy, and competitive…driving prices way above the "guide", or asking price.
Source
Read more:Speed
, Dating
, Dream
Therapy for Apartment Dwellers 2007-05-15 23:00:48
How do you cope with the fact that you live in a cramped apartment with a room-mate and endure the inevitable-and-always-original, "You're throwing away your money and not building equity" comments?
Well, you can start with some Apartment Therapy
. The blog covers design and decorating ideas to help you make the most of your apartment experience. The site is also regional, so you can see the varying tastes and trends in NY, LA, San Fran, and Chicago.
Beautiful, fun…therapy. Enjoy!
PropertyQube Update - A Next Generation Real Estate Social Network 2007-05-20 23:51:48 So it’s mid May, and my business partner and I have been working (often day and night) to get PropertyQube up and running for about two months. It has been an incredible and exciting ride. We’ve hit a few bumps along the way and redirected our product a few times, but we finally arrived at a business model which we think will have tremendous impact on the industry.
PropertyQube is a next generation real estate social network. Our offering will focus on the number one thing that drives the industry, relationships. The best part, our service will be free.
Today we are announcing an invitational launch period starting in mid June. You can sign up to become a member at Propertyqube.com. Throughout the invitational period, we will be asking for your feedback on our offering along with any ideas you have on new functionality. We encourage you to become part of this invitational launch as you will have the ability to help shape our product. Please note, membership will be limite Read more:Update
, Generation
, Estate
, Social
, Real Estate
Dubai’s forward thinkers at it again with “The Lighthouse” 2007-05-20 21:22:31 Another Dubai
skyscraper makes headlines. This time the focus is on height and efficiency. The Lighthouse
, which will likely be built in Dubai’s International Financial Center, will be 400 meters tall and will be a low carbon commercial building which aims to reduce its total energy consumption by up to 65% and water consumption by up to 40%. The Lighthouse will generate active energy through three integrated 29m diameter wind turbines.
Here are the concept design pictures.
Source
Read more:ldquo
, rdquo
PropertyQube and Sellsius Meet-Up! 2007-05-24 09:40:58 Last night we had the pleasure of meeting the Sellsius guys at Fiddlesticks in the West Village. We spoke with Rudy and Joe about our new product slated for launch next month, along with their experience in blogging and the real estate industry. We had a great time and you can see a little clip over at the Sellsius blog.
Thanks Rudy and Joe for a fun time!
Did 9/11 Trigger the Housing Boom and Bust? 2007-05-23 23:32:26 NPR's All Things Considered did an interview on May 10th with the National Association of Realtors former Chief Economist, David Lereah. Robert Siegel put Lereah on the spot for his 2005 book, Are You Missing the Real Estate Boom, in which Lereah predicted that housing prices would continue climbing through the end of the decade.
Lereah’s reply? Blame 9/11. According to Lereah, from 1992 until 2001, the housing market was experiencing healthy expansion. After 9/11, people became weary of the stock market and invested in real estate as a "safe haven". This is what mutated the healthy expansion into a boom. But this booming market, as we know, began to attract speculators and lenders that ignored the fundamentals. Thus, the bust.
9/11 was devasting, but not many credit the event with overheating the housing market. What about the international housing market? Many European countries experienced an even bigger boom than the United States. Does that mean they were ev Read more:Housing
Going Green….What Can You Do? 2007-05-23 10:44:08 We are constantly searching for industry leaders who bring the idea of green living down to something we can all take action on. One such leader, Yahoo. As you have read in a previous post on The Qube Exchange, Yahoo just launched a Green
Campaign where users can walk through a virtual "Green House" to learn where and how they can save energy around their own houses.
Another leader&hellip
;.TreeHugger. TreeHugger is by far the most comprehensive consumer resource we have found out there. Not only is their site inviting and fun to browse, but they have several “Get Informed” sections ranging from transportation, to science and technology, to food and health, to fashion and beauty. There are also several ways to get involved on TreeHugger.
But what do we like the most? Their “How to Go Green” guides. You can choose one of 23 different guides, and in each guide, TreeHugger contains 7 sections showing you effective ways to go greener. Two topics we like include Read more:Going
, Going Green
The World's Most Expensive Property Markets 2007-05-22 18:56:06 Citi Private Bank and Knight Frank have released their 2007 Annual Wealth Report, and in it, they use property benchmarks to rank the world's prime property markets. London, takes the title of Most Expensive, just barely edging out Monaco. New York comes in third, with Hong Kong and Tokyo rounding out the Top 5.
Not many surprises there, though. What's more interesting are the cities making moves towards the Top 10. The report calls out St. Petersburg and Moscow in Russia, Dehli and Mumbai in India, and Guangzhou and Beijing in China as the cities with the most price growth and therefore, the most potential for a higher status in the near future: "We forecast that within 10 years, Moscow will view with London for the most expensive city in the world".
Who falls? New York. The report forecasts New York City slipping to four behind Hong Kong.
Source: Overseas Property Mall
Read more:World
, Markets
When does policing a community go too far? 2007-05-22 11:25:33 Last week, we posted an article about MySpace and how 6 states' Attorneys Generals released a letter to MySpace demanding the site take responsibility for sexual offenders.
Well MySpace has agreed to give state authorities details about registered sex offenders known to have been users. The decision, announced yesterday, resolves last week’s standoff as originally News Corp. refused to turn over the data because law enforcement officials hadn’t followed the required legal process.
What do rulings like this mean for web 2.0 community
sites? Sites like Myspace, Digg, Friendster are all run by the community. The community dictates what should and shouldn’t be done in their playground. As we saw a couple of weeks ago with Digg, anytime you get in the way of a community, you are taking the risk that they will retaliate. You can read a brief post on this titled “The Community Conundrum” at Fred Wilson’s blog, a partner at Union Square Ventures.
I guess
Shrinking of the McMansions in favor of cottages 2007-05-25 10:12:23 There once was a time when every homeowner wanted a 4,000 sq ft home on a couple of acres, with 3 bathrooms, 5 bedrooms and a masterful gourmet kitchen.
Perhaps similar to this:
or this!
A little extreme but you get the picture.
Well more and more people are saying forget the upkeep and the hefty price, in favor
of tiny cottages. Architects are reporting less demand for increases in the square footage and volume of homes and cite a reversal of the decades of expanding home sizes.
What’s driving this McMansion reversal? Could it be the huge baby boomer population looking to downgrade their empty nest? Could it be high property taxes? These reasons can definitely be a small driver of the trend but most of it can be attributed to style. Small cottages less than half of the McMansion size ranging from 550 to 940 square feet are a popular trend these days (AKA “Use It All Living Spaces”).
Another driver which may have sparked this trend is Hurricane Katrina. Right af Read more:Shrinking
What’s your PropertyLife? 2007-05-24 17:26:16 Everyone has one: from the college rental to the first condo purchase, all the way to your dream retirement beach cottage.
My PropertyLife: I’ve been renting for too long. Why? My friends call it “analysis paralysis”, or a general fear of the financials, risk, and commitment. When I am cured of this, I’ll buy a fixer-upper condo in Manhattan that meets two requirements: character and structural integrity. I can’t wait.
-Nicole Rufuku
My PropertyLife:I bought a condo when I was 23 years old and sold it two years later. I got out at the right time, but the whole experience did a number on my sleeping patterns. My agent did a great job guiding me through this. I’ll recommend him in my propertyqube network.
-Dave Bethoney
What’s your PropertyLife?
Time-Shares: Can Real Estate’s Ugly Step Child Play Nice? 2007-05-30 11:27:47
If you’re like me, you spend most summer days thinking about vacation. Recently, I finally gave in to my vacation dreaming by researching that ugly step-child of the real estate world - the time share. I know what you’re thinking, “Time share? Ugh!”. Listen buddy, I know a scam when I see one and I’m not biting, even if they do throw in a free toaster.
But wait, time shares might not be such a bad idea after all, if (and that’s a big if) you do a lot of traveling and you do your homework. Over four million households owned stakes in time-shares in 2005, according to the American Resort Development Association. Most people have a basic understanding of how time shares work, but haven’t figured out how they can make them work for them. Time-Shares can provide an affordable upgrade to a condo (versus a standard hotel room) anywhere in the world, for life. In some cases you can even leave a time share to your children.
But beware: you may not get a substantial financial Read more:Estate
Madonna Advertises Tokyo Development 2007-05-29 09:47:03 Check out the commercial Madonna
shot for Brillia Mare Ariake. The development’s “Just Perfect” campaign is a tad over the top…the Queen of Pop breathlessly alludes to the development as being “beyond race, gender, religion, culture, and tomorrow”.
Read more:Tokyo
, Development
Agents Go Green 2007-05-28 08:58:25
According to an article in the Real Estate Journal, some real estate agents are going green in order to differentiate themselves from the crowd.
Over 1,000 agents have taken a $395 class to earn “EcoBroker” designation, which they display on business cards and websites. Many other regional initiatives are taking hold. The article even features Moss Real Estate Group, “New York’s first green brokerage”.
The green craze may just seem like a trend to some, but many agents consider this a long term investment. People have started thinking (or at least aspiring to) of “green living” as a practical lifestyle. Savvy agents are taking note and adapting.
Source: Real Estate Journal
Read more:Green
Talks about demolishing the Bayside Expo Center surface 2007-06-01 17:16:01 An article published by the Boston Globe reported that there are talks about demolishing the Bayside
Expo center in favor of a $1b waterfront residential, retail and office development. The Bayside Expo center is apparently under some pressure with the newly built Boston Convention Center
, which is less than four miles away.
Here are additional details on the development:
Preliminarily, they said the development could have roughly 1,000 new housing units facing the bay, a commercial section with a grocery store, dozens of shops and expansions of the existing office building and hotel on the end of the site closest to the JFK-UMass Red Line station. Connecting the two would be a “main street” with green space, sidewalks and both water and street access.
“We wanted to see whether we are just out on Mars with this, does it resonate with anyone out there or should we just stop right here.”
Source
Read more:surface
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