An ongoing shortage of available housing is proving to be a particularly problematic challenge for first-time home buyers, says a new report issued by the Washington-based Urban Land Institute. The report, Attainable Housing: Challenges, Perceptions and Solutions, notes that the ongoing pressure due to a lack of housing across the country is driving up prices for nearly all housing. Result: a traditional lower cost, entry-level product available for decades to first-time buyers is almost disappearing. Done in conjunction with Los Angeles-based Robert Charles Lesser & Company, the report notes that during the pre-Great Recession years, “the divergence between household incomes and home prices widened dramatically.” But that widening has only “accelerated in the years since the recovery.” The report additionally notes that the pace of residential construction has actually “rebounded since the economic downturn, but new housing starts still remain below long-term averages.” It adds that in many places around the country, “new housing construction is not keeping up with household growth and hosing demand.” This comes at a time when the multifamily supply is also smaller than usual. While multifamily permits have increased, those permits have “shifted dramatically from product intended for sale to product intended for rent.” “Multifamily for-sale housing historically represented about 20 to 25 percent of total multifamily permits, but it has represented 6 to 7 percent in the past eight years.” In response, the report recommends that developers and builders should begin to focus on the construction of smaller homes, and value housing, among other solutions. Such smaller homes are generally less than 1,800 square feet, with one and two bedrooms, one bathroom, and one-car garages. Value housing means a simplified version of traditional housing, with a scaled back emphasis on size, finishes, and structural options. Says the report: “It is important as ever for the industry to build all types of housing, and especially to find ways to build nonsubsidized housing for middle-class buyers.” Accelerated construction of such housing will ultimately “relieve current downward pressure on the market that has kept renters from becoming homeowners and that has made housing increasingly unaffordable for Americans at lower income levels.” By Garry Boulard
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Not quite three years after it announced plans to build a massive data center in Los Lunas, Facebook has revealed that it is purchasing some 456 acres near its current site. Whether that means that the Menlo Park, California-based online social networking service giant has plans to build additional facilities in Los Lunas is not known. But Facebook has been known to expand its other facilities. Late last year, the company announced it would be spending $750 million adding two new buildings to its Prineville, Oregon campus. The addition of those two structures will bring Facebook’s total Prineville facility space up to more than 3.2 million square feet. Facebook currently has 300 acres inside the 850-acre Huning Ranch Business Park in Los Lunas. Earlier this year it opened the first of a planned six buildings at the site. It is thought that those additional structures, contributing to a total Facebook Los Lunas facility footprint of 2.8 million square feet, will be completed sometime in 2023. In a statement to Albuquerque Business First, Facebook, in commenting on the new Los Lunas land acquisition, said, “we occasionally purchase available land in the event that our future business needs may require it.” But the company added: “We currently have no plans to build on this land.” Launched in early 2004, Facebook had some 5.5 million users within the year. Today it is the largest social networking service in the world, with 2.2 billion users. By Garry Boulard A university whose main campus is nearly 2,700 miles away has announced plans to carve out a new services office in Tucson, Arizona. Southern New Hampshire University is a private university based in Manchester, New Hampshire and known for its engineering, business, and arts and sciences. The school, ranked by US News & World Report as the number one most innovative school in the country, also has a large national online enrollment. As part of an effort to better serve those online students who live in the Western states, SNHU will build a new operations center in downtown Tucson. That facility will be designed to house the university’s admissions, financial aid, and information technology services. It will officially be called the Tucson SNHU Operations Center. If all goes as planned, the new facility, which is expected to be built out of an existing, but as of yet undisclosed downtown Tucson building, will be open for business sometime in early 2020. By Garry Boulard A bill designed to allow for more foreign investment in U.S. infrastructure improvement projects is now being reviewed on Capitol Hill. The Invest in America Act has been introduced by Connecticut Representative John Larson and Texas Representative Kenny Marchant. It calls for repealing the 1980s-era Foreign Investment in Real Property Tax Act. That earlier legislation imposed heavy capital gains taxes on any global investments in U.S. property. According to Larson and Marchant, what is known as the FIRPTA bill had the unintended consequence of discouraging state and local government from partnering with global investors on any number of infrastructure projects, including the rebuilding and upgrading of aging buildings, bridges, tunnels, airports, and roads. The new legislation has won the support of a number of industry groups, including the American Institute of Architects, which argues that the bill would “put the U.S. on equal footing in the competition for investment dollars.” In a statement, Robert Ivy, the chief executive officer of the AIA, said the Invest in America Act will “result in meaningful jobs not only for architects but other professions in design and construction as well as manufacturing and service industries.” The authors of the legislation estimate that, if passed, the bill could easily attract as much as $125 billion in global investment. Said Marchant in a statement: the legislation will “remove barriers in our tax code that discourage investments in real estate. By providing parity to real estate assets under the law, foreign investors will be able to create more opportunities and more prosperity for American families.” By Garry Boulard A new Santa Fe museum dedicated to and celebrating contemporary art has been approved for a $4 million appropriation in state funding. The Vladem Contemporary museum at 404 Montezuma Street is going up both inside and adjacent to the former Halpin State Archives Building within the larger Santa Fe Railyard. The appropriation will fund the facility’s planning, design, and construction. The museum is named in honor of Santa Fe philanthropists Robert and Ellen Vladem, who earlier contributed $4 million to get the project going. The Vladem Contemporary art museum is one of more than a dozen cultural affairs facility funding projects passed by the New Mexico State Legislature this spring and subsequently approved by Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham. Other appropriations winning approval include $1.3 million for improvements to the Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum in Dona Ana County; and $1.1 million for facility upgrade work at the Museum of Natural History and Science in Albuquerque. The Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe is slated to get $1.2 million for exhibition construction and gallery renovations; while just over $1 million will go for facility, theater, and exhibit improvements to the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque. Smaller projects making it through the legislative process include $900,000 for improvements to the New Mexico Museum of Space History in Alamogordo; and $800,000 for site and facility improvements at the Taylor-Mesilla Historic property in Mesilla. In signing the legislation, Lujan Grisham remarked that “sound investment of public funds is essential for the State’s economic growth, protection of New Mexico’s natural resources, and the quality of life of New Mexico communities.” By Garry Boulard Residents in El Paso have begun voting on an initiative that will determine whether or not development can take place on some 1,100 acres near the Franklin Mountains State Park. The land in question is inside what is known as Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone Number Twelve. The creation of that zoned district was approved last July by members of the El Paso City Council, allowing for any tax revenues inside the district to be used for the building of sewer, storm water drainage, and other infrastructure. It has been reported that up to $1.3 billion in tax revenue could be secured by the zone. The reinvestment zone would also make it possible for the construction of what could eventually be more than 9,400 houses and up to 829,000 square feet of commercial space. The land in question includes the Lost Dog Trail Park, an open space often enjoyed by bikers, hikers, and nature lovers in the city. The initiative has been spirited by opponents of any development in the area, primarily a group known as Save Lost Dog, meaning that a yes vote on the question would prohibit both private construction as well as public roadways. Early voting on the question is scheduled to take place until April 30, with the actual election day set for May 4. By Garry Boulard The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration may be able to soon expand its worksite inspections and reports with the hiring of a new team of agents. Alexander Acosta, director of the Department of Labor, has announced that OSHA has hired 76 new inspectors within the last year. Those agents are now in the process of being trained. That training process could last as long as three years before the agents are actually allowed to do their own on-site inspections. According to agency numbers, in the last two years OSHA has undertaken roughly 32,000 on-site workplace inspections, correcting, in the process, some 135,000 identified worksite hazards. Among the actions undertaken by the agency so far this year was a fine of just under $529,000 to the T.D. Fraley & Sons contracting company in Springfield, Virginia for a series of scaffolding violations. The Crown Roofing company of Sarasota, Florida has been hit with fines totaling more than $265,000 for a series of violations, several of which pertained to allowing crews to work without fall protection. Secretary Acosta has told the House Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services that even though employment has increased substantially across the country in the last two years, the numbers and rate of both fatal and nonfatal injuries has actually declined. At the same time OSHA’s penalty fees have been upped to $13,260 this year for both serious and other-than-serious worksite violations. That same amount could be assessed for companies per day for a failure to abate any violations, with a fee of nearly $133,000 for a company engaged in willful or repeated violations. Signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1971, OSHA operates under the purview of the Department of Labor. By Garry Boulard Work could begin later this year on a $743 million wind farm in eastern Colorado, 15 miles to the north of the town of Cheyenne Wells. What is being called the Cheyenne Ridge Wind Project will go up on roughly 100,000 acres along the line between Cheyenne and Kit Carson counties. The Trade Wind Energy company, based in Lenexa, Kansas, had originally entered into a build and transfer agreement with Xcel Energy to complete the project. But Xcel, which has offices in Minneapolis, has now taken over getting the wind farm built due to concerns that the facility might miss getting federal production tax credits. The deadline for those credits is December 31, 2020. Xcel has submitted papers to the Public Utilities Commission of Colorado in the hope of getting the project approved. Analysts say that once that happens, work on the wind farm will proceed quickly. With annual revenues in excess of $11 billion, Xcel in recent years has been working to expand its wind power profile. The company, which provides energy for homes and businesses in Colorado and New Mexico, has set a goal of producing totally carbon-free electricity by the year 2050. By Garry Boulard Work could begin sometime this summer on the construction of a new 12-screen luxury theater in Northglenn, Colorado. The project will belong to the Harkins Theater company. Based in Scottsdale, Arizona, that company currently has 34 theaters up and running in Arizona, California, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Texas. The new Northglenn 55,000 square-foot movie house, adding to the three theaters that Harkins already has in metro Denver, will go up at the intersection of Interstate 25 and 104th Avenue. The theater will be located on the north end section of the Northglenn Marketplace in an area of rapid suburban residential and commercial growth. In a statement, Dan Harkins, owner and executive chairman of Harkins Theater, said the Northglenn facility will “include our latest and greatest amenities and programs that we are thrilled to share with a new community of movie-lovers.” Although when work will officially begin on the project has not yet been announced, the new theater is expected to be open for business sometime in the fall of 2020. With roots reaching back to 1933, Harkins is the fifth largest movie chain outfit in the U.S. and the single largest family-owned and operated theater company in the country. Last year Harkins announced it was launching a $150 million effort to renovate and update its theater properties, adding larger screens, in-lobby bars, and leather reclining seats. By Garry Boulard Despite fears of a coming economic downturn, the nation’s construction industry in the last year continued to add jobs. According to a report just issued by the Associated General Contractors, new construction jobs between March of 2018 and March of this year were recorded in 38 states. Those numbers were originally compiled by the federal Department of Labor and then analyzed by the Washington-based AGC. According to those numbers, the big Texas construction industry saw the greatest gains last year with more than 28,300 new jobs. The Lone State was followed by California with 24,500 additional construction jobs; and Florida at 24,100. That the nation’s three largest states would also lead the country in job gains might not be a total surprise, but the state coming in fourth on the list might: Arizona, the nation’s 14th largest state, which added more than 16,800 new construction jobs in the last year. In terms of a percentage gain, three states in the West were in the top five, with Nevada showing a 14.2 percent gain, Wyoming a 11.6 percent increase, and Arizona posting a 10.8 percent jump over the previous twelve month period from March of 2017 to March of 2018. The states recording the largest number of job losses in the last year were scattered across the map: Louisiana shed nearly 8,000 construction jobs, followed by Illinois at 4,700 jobs, and South Carolina, off by 4,400 jobs. Overall, said AGC chief economist Ken Simonson, the new job numbers show the continued vibrancy of the national construction industry. But, in a statement, Simonson added that job opportunities posted in February of this year show that “contractors would add even more workers if they could.” “There is no sign of a let-up in the demand for construction workers,” Simonson added. By Garry Boulard |
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