US New Home Sales Soar to Highest Level in a Decade

US New Home Sales Soar to Highest Level in a Decade

US new home sales jumped nearly 19 percent last month to highest level in nearly a decade.

Oct. 25, 2017, at 11:28 a.m.

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US New Home Sales Soar to Highest Level in a Decade



This Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2017, photo shows a new home for sale in a housing development in Raeford, N.C. On Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2017, the Commerce Department reports on sales of new homes in September. (AP Photo/Swayne B. Hall)

The Associated Press https://www.usnews.com/dims4/USNEWS/...iatedpress.jpg
By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER, AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sales of new U.S. homes jumped last month to the highest level since October 2007, a sign that Americans — unable to find existing homes — are turning to new construction. Damage from last month's hurricanes may have also inflated the data.

New home sales leapt 18.9 percent in September to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 667,000, the most in a decade, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. Sales rose in all regions including the South, where they increased nearly 26 percent.

The government said it couldn't estimate what impact, if any, last month's hurricanes had on the data. But the measure of new home sales is based on contract signings, so the number was likely lifted by those looking to replace homes destroyed or damaged by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.

"This is yet another sign that, as we first saw with the initial jobless claims data, the recovery from Harvey was very fast and the disruption from Irma in Florida was far less than initially feared," said Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Amherst Pierpont Securities.


Still, sales of new homes also jumped outside hurricane-affected areas, including in the Northeast, where they rose 33 percent, and the Midwest, where they rose nearly 11 percent. Sales in West ticked up 3 percent.

A supply crunch of existing homes has frustrated many would-be buyers and hobbled the housing market this year. September's figures suggest that Americans are increasingly looking to new homes instead, which could encourage more construction.

Yet developers have struggled to keep up with demand. Many construction firms say they have difficulty finding the workers they need to start new projects.

Construction of single-family homes slipped nearly 5 percent last month. Still, thanks to large increases over the summer, single-family homebuilding remains 5.9 percent higher than a year ago. Builders also obtained more permits for new building last month. That suggests home building could accelerate in the coming months.

Developers are feeling optimistic. A survey by the National Association of Home Builders and Wells Fargo found that their outlook is the brightest it has been since May.

Homebuilders are increasingly focused on higher-priced housing, potentially freezing out potential buyers of more modest incomes. The average price of a new home rose to $385,200 in September, the highest on records dating back to 1963.

Last month, 19,000 homes were sold for $500,000 or higher, more than the 13,000 that were sold for $200,000 or less.

https://www.usnews.com/news/business...el-in-a-decade

Act fast, Southern California! Homes selling 23% faster

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Homes for sale. File photo)2 COMMENTSBy JONATHAN LANSNER | jlansner@scng.com | Orange County Register

PUBLISHED: October 25, 2017 at 7:00 am | UPDATED: October 25, 2017 at 9:13 am

Southern California’s house hunters must move 23 percent faster this year to find a residence to buy.

ReportsOnHousing found Southern California had 29,635 existing homes listed for sale on broker networks Oct. 19.

That’s down 5,906 or 17 percent vs. a year ago. Meanwhile, the four-county region had 13,645 new escrows in the previous 30 days — up 1,124 or 9 percent in a year.

By comparing inventory with the pace of new purchases, ReportsOnHousing shows the estimated “market time” a homeowner’s property went from listing to escrow was down by 20 days in a year to 65 days, or a 23 percent faster pace.

“The storyline for 2017 is that there simply have not been enough homes on the market, fueling the already hot demand,” said ReportsOnHousing’s Steve Thomas.

“Continued low rates have also stoked the fires of demand here in SoCal. Home values have been on the rise and will continue to march upward as long as the inventory shortage continues, which it will in 2018.”

The speed of selling was faster in all four Southern California counties vs. 2016.

Riverside County quickened the most. Its 7,847 listings, down 20 percent in a year, when compared with 3,610 escrows, up 38 percent, equaled a market time of 65 days. That’s down 47 days in a year.

San Bernardino County’s acceleration ranked second. Its 4,965 listings, down 14 percent, came as 2,124 escrows opened, up 6 percent. Market time fell 16 days in a year to 70 days.

Los Angeles County’s 11,608 listings, down 15 percent, came as 5,518 escrows opened, up 2 percent. Market time fell 12 days in a year to 63 days.

Orange County was the lone county with falling new escrows. Its 5,215 listings, down 18 percent, compared to 2,393 escrows, down 4 percent. Market time fell 11 days in a year to 65 days.

Home prices rose in September throughout Southern California, pushing the regionwide median to its bubble-era high of $505,000 for the first time in a decade, CoreLogic reported this week. Los Angeles County’s median hit an all-time high of $575,000 for a third straight month. The median price in Riverside County was $360,000; San Bernardino was $325,000.

A late-summer surge in home buying pushed Orange County housing prices to record highs. The median price of a home — or the price at the midpoint of all transactions — hit $710,000 last month, up 10.9 percent year over year, housing tracker CoreLogic reported Tuesday.

http://www.ocregister.com/2017/10/25...ing-23-faster/

Planning Commission approves up to 2,150 homes at Pier 70

28-acre site plan would transform Potrero Point

BY ADAM BRINKLOW AUG 25, 2017, 1:16PM PDT

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The Forest City plan for Pier 70, east of Dogpatch. Courtesy Forest City

The San Francisco Planning Commission unanimously approved a 28-acre mixed-use development at Pier 70 on Thursday that could create as many as 2,150 new homes and millions of square feet of commercial space east of Dogpatch.
But the precise specs of any eventual development at the pier remain ambiguous, as the city and developer Forest City weigh two different visions of the pier plan. One pushes more housing:

Development under the Maximum Residential Scenario on the 28-acre site would include a maximum of up to 3,410,830 square feet in new and renovated buildings (excluding square footage allocated to parking).

Under this scenario, there would be up to 2,150 residential units (up to approximately 710 studio/one-bedroom units and 1,440 two- or more bedroom units) [...] as well as approximately 1,095,650 square feet of commercial space and 445,180 square feet of of RALI [restaurant, arts, light industrial] space.

But the package also comes with a competing Maximum Commercial Scenario:

The Maximum Commercial Scenario would include [...] up to 1,100 residential units (up to approximately 365 studio/one-bedroom units and 735 two- or more bedroom units) [...] as well as approximately 2,024,050 square feet of commercial area, and 441,215 square feet of RALI space.

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In the latter arrangement, the Environmental Impact Report says that the project would provide only about 30 percent of the housing needed to meet the demand generated by the commercial element.

The Maximum Residential plan, on the other hand, accounts for 94 percent of its own housing needs. The question of which plan the city will go with—and which Forest City really wants—remains up in the air.

If given final approval, the phased construction would take some 11 years to complete. The developer promised at the Thursday hearing that phase one would include more than 900 new home no matter what.

The Board of Supervisors will consider the Pier 70 proposal next.

https://sf.curbed.com/2017/8/25/1620...ission-approve

FivePoint gets green light to build 5,500 homes as part of Newhall Ranch project

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Two villages, part of the overall $14 billion dollar Newhall Ranch project, will be built north of the Santa Clara River, south of Highway 126, and west of Interstate 5 Freeway near Magic Mountain. (File photo by David Crane/Los Angeles Daily News-SCNG) 1 COMMENT

By SUSAN ABRAM | sabram@scng.com | Daily News
PUBLISHED: July 19, 2017 at 12:45 pm | UPDATED: July 19, 2017 at 2:14 pm


After almost two decades of controversy, plans for two of five villages that make up the 21,500-unit Newhall Ranch development in the Santa Clarita Valley received approval Tuesday from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, clearing the way for the start of construction on what has been called the largest subdivision of its kind in the nation.

https://i2.wp.com/scng-dash.digitalf...2C9999px&ssl=1CEO of FivePoint Communities, Emile Haddad, leads a tour through new homes and answers questions during the unveiling of Pavilion Park.

The board’s 4-0 vote to certify plans for the Landmark and Mission villages means that barring any more legal wrangling, construction on 5,500 homes and apartments, as well as office space and elementary schools may start this fall, according to developers.

The NewHall community is being developed by Aliso Viejo-based FivePoint Communities.

FivePoint Chairman and CEO Emile Haddad, who dubbed the Newhall Ranch development “Net Zero Newhall,” said Tuesday the board’s vote removes a large hurdle from starting construction. He said the years of debates about the project as well as it winding through the courts has made it a better development, one that he said the community will be proud of.

“This was the last hurdle,” he said. “We are very close to the day when we can put the shovel into the ground.”

The two villages, part of the overall $13 billion dollar Newhall Ranch project, will be built north of the Santa Clara River, south of Highway 126, and west of Interstate 5 Freeway near Magic Mountain and are expected to:

• Contain more than 620 single-family lots
• Add 60,000 permanent jobs
• Generate more than $800 million a year in state and local taxes
• Include an elementary school, a fire station and a park-and-ride lot

Once completed, 10 percent of the 21,500 homes will be available as affordable housing, developers have said.

Supervisor Sheila Kuehl chose to abstain from voting on the plans, saying that while there were many good elements that came with the development, she could neither approve nor disapprove it. Construction would compromise air quality, she said, adding that the water contracts appeared to look good on paper, but remain questionable.

“I’m really concerned about siting this big project on open space and agricultural land,” Kuehl said. “That’s my major concern. We have limited open land and limited agricultural space and I have been pushing development on lands that are already compromised.”

For at least two decades, activists in the Santa Clarita Valley have tried to fight off the Newhall Ranch development. They’ve filed lawsuits claiming that the master planned community would threaten everything from native plants to endangered fish, pollute the air, destroy the Santa Clara River, encroach on traffic, and tap into the area’s fragile water sources. But while lawsuits and even the Great Recession succeeded in delaying the project, developers persisted and modified the plans along the way.

Those changes included adding electric car chargers in garages and two bridges that would go over the Santa Clara River to protect the endangered unarmored threespine stickleback, a native fish protected under state and federal law.

Developers with the Newhall Land and Farming Co., now called FivePoint Holdings, proposed modifications, including the car chargers and bridges. In addition, every home would have solar panels.

In June, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife approved those changes, clearing the way for the Landmark and Mission villages to move closer to being built. The agency had originally approved the projects in 2010, and the Board of Supervisors certified the plans in 2012. But in 2015, the California Supreme Court identified two issues in need of further review by the state wildlife agency: the greenhouse gas emissions produced by the developments and protection of the fish.

Lynne Plambeck, president of the Santa Clarita Organization for Planning and the Environment, told the board that she and other groups were disappointed with the public hearing process on FivePoint’s latest changes. In addition, she said it was unclear if the water tables could support so many residents.

“There’s some serious water issues,” she told the board. “Our water tables would have dropped 80 feet.”

In addition, she and others said the elementary school would be built close to the Chiquita Canyon Landfill, which will operate for another 30 years. The Board of Supervisors approved its extension last month.

Darrell Park, who ran against now-Supervisor Kathryn Barger for the set in last fall’s election, called the development a scam.

“The pollution will still be there,” he said. “The traffic will still be there. It’s a joke. And it will be seen as a joke.”

FivePoint Chairman and CEO Emile Haddad, who dubbed the Newhall Ranch development “Net Zero Newhall,” said Tuesday the Board’s vote removes a large hurdle from starting construction. He said the years of debates about the project as well as it winding through the courts has made it a better developjment, one that he said the community will be proud of.
“This was the last hurdle,” he said. “We are very close to the day when we can put the shovel into the ground.”

http://www.ocregister.com/2017/07/19...-of-new-homes/

U.S. Needs 4.6 MILLION New Apartments by 2030

Central Texas home sales decline 4.3% in September


MyStatesman.com-Oct 17, 2017

This Sacramento housing development is offering $300,000 homes with no down payment

BY TONY BIZJAK
tbizjak@sacbee.com
OCTOBER 26, 2017 4:00 AM

The Mill at Broadway, central Sacramento’s largest infill housing development, has begun offering mortgage loans with no down payments, hoping to entice more young first-time buyers who don’t want to pay high rents, but don’t have cash for upfront payments on a house, its developer said.

The densely packed project – expected to eventually have 800 to 1,000 homes – occupies the former site of a lumber mill just south of Broadway near Interstate 5. Since it opened 20 months ago, The Mill has sold 175 units, mainly to young singles, said developer Kevin Smith of Ranch Capital, a Southern California-based investment company.

The next batch of housing under construction includes some detached residences, some two-unit buildings, and some six-story buildings, each with one flat per story. Those will include elevators for older buyers “who are not as enamored with stairs,” Smith said.

The new housing will be priced from the high $200,000s to the low $600,000s, he said.

While the prices are billed as affordable by Sacramento’s recently escalating real estate standards, the typical down payment requirements and closing costs make homebuying impossible for many, especially members of the millennial generation, Smith said.

“There are a number of qualified people who may have just graduated and gotten their first state job, and have some student debt, so they don’t have a big nest egg to put down, and they are not from a family where Grandma and Grandpa can write a check for down payment,” Smith said.

Smith said his goal is to sell to people who have “reasonable financial circumstances” which will enable them to make monthly mortgage payments, even if they don’t have money to put down.

The Mill at Broadway is one of several infill projects underway in the neighborhoods surrounding downtown, along with McKinley Village in East Sacramento, Crocker Village in Curtis Park, The Creamery in Alkali Flat, and the Bridge District in West Sacramento. There are also a variety of tightly packed urban housing projects going up along R and Q streets in midtown.

Smith said his development team has discovered a high number of buyers at The Mill have pets.

The project team plans to build a dog park as part of a larger public park on-site, as well as an urban farm and a public market building with retail. Smith said the construction dates for those will be announced soon.

The no down payment loan, part of a Federal Housing Administration program, is available only for loan amounts of $424,100 or less, said Nick Peters, of the Mill project developers lending partner, Finance of America. The program involves a first and second mortgage.

The second mortgage is forgiven for most buyers if the owner stays in the home for at least three years.

Peters said the program allows more people to buy homes, but he said his company prefers to get buyers to put at least 3.5 percent cash down, and get into a more conventional loan that has lower rates, below 5 percent, than the no-down payment loan, where the blended rate is slightly above 6 percent.

Sacramento City Councilman Steve Hansen, who has been pushing for more housing in the central city, called the no-down payment program an “entry point” for some people, in the right circumstances, to achieve more housing stability instead of paying rents.

The Mill is offering virtual online tours of the new home plans.

Tony Bizjak: 916-321-1059, @TonyBizjak

http://www.sacbee.com/news/business/...180940966.html

Will the 21,500-home Newhall Ranch project be California’s greenest development?

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A view of the Mission Village site in the 21,500-home Newhall Ranch project along Highway 126 freeway in north Los Angeles County. Orange County developer FivePoint Communities says the project will help combat global warming by eliminating 100 percent of its greenhouse gas emissions through a combination of on-site and off-site mitigation measures like solar power generation and encouraging use of zero-emission vehicles. ( Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)1 COMMENT

By JEFF COLLINS | JeffCollins@scng.com | Orange County Register
PUBLISHED: December 3, 2017 at 8:00 am | UPDATED: December 3, 2017 at 8:57 am

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Two villages, part of the overall $12 billion Newhall Ranch project, will be built along the Santa Clara River, south of Highway 126, and west of Interstate 5 near Magic Mountain. (File photo by David Crane/Los Angeles Daily News-SCNG)


On sprawling farmland and chaparral-covered foothills cradling Magic Mountain, earthmovers are carving out what some developers and environmentalists see as a new benchmark in the fight against climate change.

After 20 years of battles over traffic, water and endangered wildlife, brush clearing and construction of roads and infrastructure is underway on 21,500-home Newhall Ranch, which is being marketed as one of the world’s first large-scale planned communities that will add no new greenhouse gases to the environment.

Builders selected to construct different neighborhoods are expected to start buying land parcels and pouring foundations in late 2019. By 2020, the first residents could be moving into homes using solar power and equipped with individual charging stations for electric vehicles.

Orange County-based mega-developer FivePoint Communities, which has brought thousands of new homes to the master-planned community of Irvine and owns Newhall Ranch, says it will reach its so-called “net zero” goal for greenhouse gases through a combination of high-tech solutions on-site and far-flung projects across the region, the state and around the globe that will compensate for carbon emissions that can’t be eliminated within the development.

Among other things, the company plans to offer subsidies to Newhall Ranch residents, schools and bus services for buying zero-emission vehicles; install 3,000 electric vehicle charging stations elsewhere in Southern California; and fund worldwide forest conservation projects and environmentally clean cook stoves for rural Africans.

In all, the net-zero efforts, pursued by FivePoint after a state Supreme Court setback, will cost about $200 million over the 15-to-20-year build out of the development, or about 2 percent of the development’s $12 billion price tag, the company says.

FivePoint CEO Emile Haddad said he expects the re-conceived project to be profitable, while meeting the region’s need for more housing and providing a model for combating global warming.

“You kind of look at your role as a leadership role, and you go, ‘I might have part of the answer,’ ” he said.

The development has won the backing of some environmental groups, but continues to draw criticism from others concerned about traffic and urban sprawl.

Lynne Plambeck, president of Santa Clarita Organization for Planning and the Environment, or SCOPE, one of two environmental groups still fighting in court to block Newhall Ranch development, argues the project won’t eliminate all its greenhouse gas effects because the development’s impacts haven’t been fully assessed.

“A lot of this is a PR hype,” she said.

The “Neto Zero Newhall” plan is advancing as California seeks to meet ambitious, self-imposed goals to combat global warming. The state is committed to reducing carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, and then cutting them another 40 percent by 2030.

Builders are facing a separate state mandate to have all new homes produce as much energy as they consume by 2020.

Newhall Ranch will go beyond those requirements, according to FivePoint. Industry leaders say there are few developments so large attempting to be so green.

“There have been various builders … who do net-zero homes,” said Bob Yoder, Southern California division president for Shea Homes. “But not a net-zero project.”

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Getting to zero

Newhall Ranch’s developers say they chose to turn a legal setback into an opportunity.

On the drawing boards for almost three decades, the proposed 15,000-acre development lies 37 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles, along the Santa Susana Mountains between the 5 freeway and the Ventura County line.

Plans call for homes, businesses, parks, schools and fire stations in nine “villages.” A third of the land is being set aside as permanent open space, and on-site sewage reclamation plants will generate recycled water for irrigation.

See also:
Working toward a ‘net zero’ community
Newhall Ranch by the numbers

The first 5,500 homes won county approval in July, and the graders, earthmovers and scrapers went to work in October.

It’s a dramatic turnaround from two years ago, when the California Supreme Court ruled FivePoint’s 120,000-page environmental impact report failed to adequately address greenhouse gases and protect a tiny endangered fish — the unarmored threespine stickleback.

FivePoint had a lot at stake. With initial home prices ranging from $350,000 to $1 million, the development could be worth billions in gross revenue.

In the year following the high court ruling, FivePoint executives crafted their response, studying ways to protect the endangered fish and curb the project’s greenhouse gas production.

In the midst of the meetings, FivePoint executives recalled, Haddad asked, “What can we do to go to zero?”

EV-ready garages

FivePoint decided to put an electric vehicle charger in every garage and hook every home up to solar panels, either on their roofs or using small neighborhood power grids. The company said selected neighborhood builders will be required to construct net-zero homes, leaving some design details to the home builders.

Two thousand electric-vehicle charging stations throughout the site were added to the plan, along with the program to subsidize electric vehicles for residents, schools and transit services.

But such on-site efforts will eliminate only 53 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, FivePoint’s analysis shows.
The remaining emissions produced by the project would be offset by reduction programs elsewhere, including retrofitting homes and buildings in low-income Los Angeles County neighborhoods, and installing additional electric vehicle charging stations in Los Angeles and nearby counties, according to FivePoint. Among other things, the company plans to fund methane capture programs on California dairy farms.

FivePoint already has distributed 10,000 clean-burning stoves in Zambia and plans to pay for tens of thousands more in Africa, said company spokesman Steve Churm.

To make sure the combined measures are adequate, FivePoint has hired Climate Action Reserve, a carbon offset registry, to track the program’s effectiveness.

“We can quantify what kind of greenhouse gases have been mitigated or reduced over time,” said Matt Carpenter, FivePoint’s vice president of environmental resources.

‘A catchy phrase’

FivePoint says Newhall Ranch is creating “a new paradigm for responsible development.”

But Plambeck, a long-time Newhall Ranch foe, characterizes it differently.

“This ‘Net-Zero Newhall,’ it’s really quite a catchy phrase,” she said. But installing electric vehicle chargers in homes doesn’t guarantee residents will drive EV’s, she said.

“It’s still urban sprawl. There’s still a lot of traffic,” she said.

“When you have people standing in traffic, it adds to greenhouse gas.”

She also questions whether there are adequate water supplies on the site for 60,000 new residents, as the developer claims.

FivePoint’s Haddad said those arguments already have been refuted in court.

“Every one of these issues has been taken through the court system for the last 14 years, and the Supreme Court itself has said all of these claims are wrong,” he said.

Plambeck said new evidence has surfaced about water supplies and circumstances have changed since the high court ruling two years ago.

“There are some really big issues here,” she said. “This is not resolved.”

Some environmentalists also question the validity of using carbon offsets to justify “greenfield” development outside existing urban boundaries. For example, the practice doesn’t fully address unhealthful air pollution in local communities, said Nicole Capretz, executive director of the San Diego-based Climate Action Campaign.

“In lieu of identifying direct emission reductions, people are looking for an escape value to buy their way out of compliance, and that sets a dangerous precedent,” Capretz said. “It continues sprawl development housing projects. We would much prefer to see them maximize what we develop in the urban footprint.”

Haddad said FivePoint already is doing the most it can on-site with today’s technology to reduce greenhouse gases.

“Our goal was to get to net zero,” he said. “To get to net zero, we had to go to the other incremental mitigation (off-site).”

He argued further that Newhall Ranch is “not in the middle of nowhere.” It’s next to Santa Clarita, the third-largest city in Los Angeles County, he said.

The Newhall Ranch plan has drawn support from some environmentalist groups, among them original litigants who were part of the suit that reached the state Supreme Court, and have since settled with FivePoint.

“We are cautiously optimistic about this approach,” said John Buse, senior counsel for the Center for Biological Diversity, one of four groups that joined a legal settlement with FivePoint in September after more than a decade of litigation.

“It can be a model for other large-scale master-planned developments,” he said. “There are uncertainties in its implementation. And we’d prefer that a larger proportion of greenhouse gas emissions reductions be achieved on site, rather than with off-site offsets. But through the settlement, we’ve been able to address some of these concerns.”

Climate Resolve, a Los Angeles environmental nonprofit, is partnering with FivePoint to install “cool roofs” and solar power systems on homes elsewhere in Los Angeles County.

Climate Action Reserve’s independent verification of results was key to his group’s participation, said Executive Director Jonathan Parfrey.

“That was one of the terms of our agreement with FivePoint, so no one could ever accuse us of greenwashing their project,” Parfrey said. “They’re doing it right. They are following the right protocols. They’re using the right methodologies. They’re doing it by the book. There’s no shading of what they’re doing, and that’s why we aligned ourselves with them.”

Added costs

Building industry insiders laud the project’s goals, but question whether Net Zero Newhall will be a practical model for other builders.

“If Newhall can put solar on every roof and can put an energy station in every garage, why can’t everyone?” asked Kathleen O’Prey Truman, an attorney who represents developers facing environmental litigation. “The answer is the cost.”

FivePoint estimates the net-zero programs will add about $15,000 in building costs per home.

“Many builders would love to be more environmentally conscious, but consumers … aren’t willing to pay for it,” said home building research analyst Alex Barron of El Paso-based Housing Research Center.

Haddad said his company, at least initially, may have to absorb some of the added costs. But he added, “I look at it as the right thing to do.”

http://www.ocregister.com/2017/12/03...limate-change/