China’s property prices are falling, with potentially far-reaching effects world-wide. And should investors think twice for buying into Chinese firms? Hong Kong’s outgoing securities regulator thinks so. WSJ’s Peter Stein and Andrew LaVallee discuss.
BEIJING — New-home prices plummeted by more than 20 percent year-on-year in the Chinese capital in May, and analysts said other cities will follow the trend in the second half of this year.
In Beijing, the average price of a newly constructed unit dropped to 23,467 yuan (US$3,400) a square meter, a month-on-month decrease of 7.19 percent, and 21.06 percent lower than the same period last year, according to SouFun.com, the largest property website in China.
Prices fell partly because more developers offered discounts to counter the cooling effect of the government’s tightening property policies.
For all your real estate needs, call or email:
John J. O’Dell Realtor®
Real estate broker
O’Dell Realty
(530) 263-1091 jodell@nevadacounty.com
Photo courtesy of http://www.wheretogetapassport.net/
By Judy J.Pinegar
Although it now houses the National Building Museum, and serves as one of the ballrooms for the Presidential Inaugural Ball, the beautiful brick building was originally designed to be the US Pension Bureau. Constructed between 1882 and 1887, it was designed by Montgomery Cunningham Meigs, who studied both architectural design and engineering at West Point. The exterior of the building is modeled closely on the sixteenth century Palazzo Farnese in Rome.
As Megs planned the new home for the Pension Bureau, he has several goals in mind. First he wanted it to be fireproof as it would house pension records and funds. He therefore employed brick, laid in a running bond with narrow joints tinted to match, giving the effect of a smooth continuous surface. Second, to honor the veterans who worked and visited the Pension Bureau, Meigs used a variety of military imagery on the building’s exterior in the form of a terra cotta frieze which is 1,200 feet long, 3 ft high and features Union infantry, cavalry, artillery, navy, quartermaster and medical units.
Entrance to National Building Museum Photo by John J. O'Dell
Meigs also wanted to produce a modern, healthful environment for the clerks at the Pension Bureau. His innovative plan included omitting doors between offices and the Great Hall. Fresh air would enter the offices through three missing bricks underneath the exterior windows, pass over the clerks at their desks, and enter the Great Hall. Slightly heated, the air would exit through openable clerestory windows above the fourth balcony. In 1885, Meigs determined that under prime conditions the volume of air in the Great Hall would turn over every 2 minutes. 1n 1886, Meigs reported that after one year in the new building, time lost to sickness had been reduced by 8,622 days!
The building was also designed with a document track around the inside perimeter of the Great Hall near the offices. Originally a basket capable of holding 125 pounds of documents would hang from this allowing easy movement of paperwork from office to office on each floor. In addition there was a dumbwaiter used to move paperwork vertically, among the four floors of the building.
The Building Museum - Interior photo by John O'Dell
And as a final touch Meigs made the arcaded columns inside the building be used to collect and store information of interest to “historians or antiquarians of the age when ruins of this building… shall be opened to the public. Collections of maps, reports, and records from the War Department and a copper facsimile of the Declaration of Independence were among the documents enclosed in the columns, which remain closed to this day. In 1995 the Museum employed an endoscope to explore inside a small hole one column, which had been damaged by vandals in the 1960s. The exploration revealed construction catalogs, journals and newspapers from 1883!
Judy J. Pinegar is a writer
She has written for many blog sites and magazines
It’s been a long, cool spring, but it’s bound to get hot one of these days. And when it does, human bodies will be heading for water bodies in droves.
There’s no question that swimming cools you off, provided the water temperature is lower than your body temperature—which it is, unless we’re talking about a hot tub or a hot spring. But is swimming the equivalent of a glass of lemonade: cools you off, but has no real health benefits? Or is it really good for you?
Well…it depends.
First, the pluses of swimming as exercise:
1. It uses all your major muscle groups.
2. It can provide a good workout for your heart and lungs.
3. It’s easy on your joints.
4. The buoyancy factor (you weigh about one-tenth as much in water as you do on land) makes it a good exercise for people who are pregnant, have injuries, or need to avoid high-impact types of exercise.
5. It’s appropriate for people of all ages and ability levels.
Now the minuses:
1. In order to count swimming as exercise, you’ll need to swim a good number of brisk laps (floating and splashing won’t do it), and some people find that monotonous.
2. Swimming puts no stress on your bones, and weight-bearing exercise is essential for maintaining bone mass and strength.
3. Swimming makes you hungry, so the calories you consume after a swim may exceed those you burned during the swim.
4. Unlike with other types of exercise, your body does not continue burning calories at an increased rate after your workout. This is because you don’t heat up as much exercising in water as on land; you lose body heat faster to water than to air because water is denser, so your body doesn’t have to work to cool you down post-workout.
5. Finally, if swimming is to be your workout of choice, you need convenient access to a pool. The “inconvenience factor” may become a convenient excuse not to exercise.
So if you like swimming, find that it meets your exercise needs, and is convenient and not too boring, go for it. But if you’ve been swimming for a while and wondering why you’re not seeing the results you expected, now you know why! You may want to explore some other type of exercise.
And if you’re heading for a natural water body, especially the fast-moving, snowmelt-fed rivers of Nevada County, remember that humans (and other land creatures) and cold, white water are a dangerous and often deadly combination. Especially when alcohol is involved.
Lisa J. Lehr is a writer, copywriter, and fitness fan living in Grass Valley. She can help you promote your business with a full range of online and offline marketing pieces. A member of Empire Toastmasters, she’s available to speak to your business or professional group. Visit her website www.justrightcopy.com for more information, opt in for a message series, and receive a free Marketing Guide.
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Lisa J. Lehr
I write words that make you money–just ask me how. www.justrightcopy.com
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LOS ANGELES – Attorney General Kamala D. Harris announced she has subpoenaed Lender Processing Services, Inc. (LPS), as part of her continuing probe into “robosigning” of mortgage documents and other illegal activities in the mortgage servicing industry, especially misconduct affecting borrowers facing, or in the midst of, foreclosure.
Robosigning is the practice of signing documents used by banks or mortgage servicing companies to foreclose on borrowers without verifying their accuracy – often thousands of different documents signed by a single individual per day. In many cases, the robosigners don’t even read or understand the document they are signing.
“California homeowners have been exposed to fraud and crime at every step of the mortgage process,” said Attorney General Harris. “Justice demands we come to their aid and a key step in that is to investigate robosigning and the potential for inaccurate or unjust foreclosures.”
Flamenco del Oro Nevada County’s Flamenco Music and Dance Troupe will be performing at The Holbrooke Hotel Restaurant featuring Gypsy Flamenco artist from Jerez de la Frontera, Spain KINA MENDEZ. Kina’s powerful and soothing voice will be accompanied by the rooted guitar works of Gopal Slavonic. Also performing will be percussionist Roger Aiton.
Singer and dancer KINA MENDEZ grew up in the Mendez clan of Gypsy artists from Jerez. She began singing under the influence of her aunt, legendary singer La Paquera de Jerez. Her professional career began when she joined Manuel Morao’s company. She later worked with Mario Maya and toured internationally with Salvador Tavora’s productions Carmen and Carmina Burana. Performing in festivals such as La Fiesta de las Bulerias and Las Fiestas de la Vendimia in Jerez de la Frontera, she has shared the stage with Agujetas, El Grilo, La Macanita and others. A featured artist at last year’s Festival de Jerez, her solo CD De Sevilla a Jerez was released 2008 in Madrid.
Gopal Slavonic has studied and played flamenco for 17 years and studied Flamenco guitar in Sevilla, Spain at La Fundacion Christina Heeren. He studied at the Foundation for two years where he received the opportunity to study with many great guitarists. Gopal has returned to Spain to study many times over the last decade. Gopal has worked with California Flamenco artists Mark Taylor, Cerro Negro, La Fibi, La Carola, Roberto Zamora, Pilar Moreno and recently released his second CD “Dos Orillas”.
When deciding which home improvements to make, many homeowners consider the amount of resale value the improvement may or may not make and compare that against the cost of the renovation. Homeowners concerned with making home improvements that will pay off when it’s time to sell the property, should consider the following tips.
The first improvement/repair homeowners should consider are those that impact the home’s basic structures and systems. Potential home buyers generally do not want to face expensive repairs, and if items such as the foundation, roof, air conditioning, water heater, or other basic structure need to be fixed, the property will be considered a fixer-upper and its market price will be discounted accordingly.
Some minor replacements will produce big results for minimal cost. Replacing and coordinating bathroom and kitchen hardware and fixtures are generally inexpensive, but tend to make a big difference. The same can be said for getting rid of any dated finishes, such as old wallpaper and brass light fixtures.
Homeowners who don’t know when or even if they will be able to sell their home are advised to choose home improvement projects carefully. Unless the home is located in an upscale neighborhood and the property already is immaculate, owners can skip expensive upgrades – such as remodeled bathrooms – and focus on the fundamentals.
Delinquent home owners are finding a wild-card in saving their home from foreclosure. In court, more home owners are successfully arguing that their mortgage companies can’t prove they own the loan and don’t have the right to foreclose on them.
The Wall Street Journal reports: “In some cases, borrowers are showing courts that banks failed to properly assign ownership of mortgages after they were pooled into mortgage-backed securities. In other cases, borrowers say that lenders backdated or fabricated documents to fix those errors.”
In a few cases, home owners have even had their foreclosures reversed as courts blame lenders’ sloppy paperwork.
Some argue that borrowers are using “arcane legal rules” to get free houses when not paying their bills. Banking industry lawyer Laurence E. Platt at K&L Gates in Washington says “the real assault on the legal system” are efforts by judges and local officials to not give lenders their rightful ownership and make foreclosures nearly impossible.
However, attorney Thomas Ice in Royal Palm Beach, Fla., argues that borrowers shouldn’t have to tolerate incomplete or falsified evidence by lenders.
Ah, spring! The weather is warming up, it’s green everywhere you look, and the animal shelter is bursting with puppies and kittens.
They’re so cute! Who doesn’t love warm, fuzzy puppies and kittens? It’s positively un-American not to love puppies and kittens!
The problem with puppies and kittens isn’t that they aren’t inherently delightful; it’s that we have way too many of them. While the Nevada County Animal Shelter is a remarkable example of a nearly-no-kill shelter, the national statistics on euthanasia are shocking and too depressing for me to quote here. Let’s just say that any joy a mommy cat or dog could possibly feel at the birth of her children would be completely obliterated if she could know the overwhelming odds that her children would soon end up dead.
What are the arguments in favor of letting your cat or dog have babies? Let’s see…
Foreclosure properties, especially those with the water and power turned off, may not qualify for standard financing, but would-be owner-occupants may qualify for a federally insured 203(k) loan.
Would-be owner-occupants who do not have enough money to purchase a foreclosure home using cash, may qualify for the federally insured 203(k) loan, which allows borrowers to roll projected rehab costs into the loan.
According to one real estate expert, most foreclosure properties are sold as is, and, oftentimes, heat, plumbing, and electric are turned off, making it unlikely a lender will lend money on the home.
To qualify for a 203(k) loan, buyers generally hire an independent consultant hired by the Federal Housing Administration to review contractor cost estimates and architectural plans for things like whether the work will bring the property up to minimum standards, while not going overboard on improvements.
Buyers should be aware that not all foreclosure properties are eligible. For instance, a partially built house that has never had a certificate of occupancy requires a construction loan of the kind that a commercial developer would use.
The interest rate on a 203(k) loan is approximately a quarter of a percentage point higher than on a standard FHA-insured loan, and a buyer also can expect to pay 1 or 2 points.
Also, as with other FHA-backed loans, down payments may be as low as 3.5 percent, and loan limits apply. Currently, most FHA loans are capped at $729,750.
Horse Show is part of the Mother Lode Fairs Horse Show Circuit
The 2011 Nevada County Fair Horse Show is scheduled for June 24 – 26 at the Nevada County Fairgrounds. As part of the Mother Lode Fairs Horse Show Circuit, the oldest circuit show in California, this is a great event for both participants and spectators.
This annual three-day event gives spectators an opportunity to observe participants work with their horses as they compete in Driving, English, Halter and Western Shows. The Driving Show begins at 10 am on Friday; the English Show at 8 am on Saturday; and the Halter Show, Western Performance and Trail Classes at 8 am on Sunday.
For participants, books and entry forms are available at the Fairgrounds Office or on-line at www.mlhscircuit.com or www.NevadaCountyFair.com. Entries close June 6, and post-entries will be accepted. There will be classes for all ages and high point classes for the Mother Lode Horse Show Circuit. Additionally, this will serve as the California State Fair qualifying show for Nevada County Juniors. Entries can also be made on-line.
For spectators, admission is free so you can enjoy the Horse Show at California’s Most Beautiful Fairgrounds. There will be food and beverages available for sale in the arena. Make it a day – see the Horse Show and enjoy a lunch or snack while watching the show!
Other dates on the Mother Lode Horse Show Circuit include shows at the El Dorado County Fairgrounds on June 18 and July 9 – 10, and at the Amador County Fairgrounds
July 27 – 31.
Call the Nevada County Fairgrounds at (530) 273-6217 or visit www.NevadaCountyFair.com for additional information.
