It’s a pretty stunning move: Officials with the National Association of Home Builders on Feb. 12 decided that the group’s political action committee will no longer make contributions to candidates for U.S. Congress.

The reason? Association officials say that Congress hasn’t done enough in the last six months to stabilize the struggling housing market. You can read a statement from the home builders association here.

I’ve to admit, when I read this I was surprised. Organizations like the National Association of Home Builders have active political action committees, ones that spread tons of money around to politicians.

Then I began thinking: What if all special-interest groups like the National Association of Home Builders stopped making donations to legislators? How would that change our political system?

Maybe I’m naive, but I think I’d like a world without lobbyists and political action committees.

Tags: Congress, national-association-of-home-builders, political action committee

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Has your home lost value in the past year? If national reports about the slumping residential real estate market are true, then your home’s value probably has dropped. But the odds are good that you don’t think it has.

Chris Isidore, senior writer with CNNMoney.com, wrote an interesting story, which you can read here, about an on the web survey showing that three out of four U.S. homeowners believe that their own home has not lost value in the last year.

It’s like how people say they hate Congress, but love their own Senators and Representatives.

The story reports that of the 1,619 homeowners surveyed, 36 percent stated they thought the value of their homes increased in value during the past year, while 41 percent said its value remained the same. Only 23 percent said their home lost value.

No wonder real estate agents have such a hard time convincing sellers to put their homes on the market for a reasonable price. The real estate market has changed, and homes are not selling for as much this year as they did just two years ago.

Unfortunately, it looks like, yes, homeowners are in denial about this depressing fact.

Tags: CNNMoney, home value, Zillow

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Sometimes real estate news is so surreal it makes you shake your head. The great clothes-line battle is a perfect example.

Time Magazine recently ran a story, which you can read here, on the battle over the right to dry. In other words, some residents in housing developments governed by homeowners associations want to dry their clothes the old-fashioned way, by hanging them on outside clotheslines to bask in the sun. It’s more environmentally responsible to eliminate the energy usage of a dryer.

Some homeowners associations, though, forbid homeowners from drying clothes outside. It’s too visually unpleasing, they state.

This is leading to a movement — though I’m not quite sure how large of a movement — to enact legislation protecting homeowners’ rights to dry their clothes on outdoor clotheslines.

The Time Magazine story quotes one homeowner who’s received at least one complaint about his clothesline from a neighbor. The owner has chosen to ignore the complaint. The president of the homeowners association is quoted as saying he isn’t taking any action, yet. But if he does receive more complaints, he states, he might have to.

Does this all sound ridiculous? Maybe just a bit. But if I was choosing sides, I’d side with the clothesline supporters. It’s simple to state your an environmentalist or “green,” but it’s harder to actually put those principles into practice. And if you can’t stand the sight of your neighbor’s clothesline, stay away from the window.

Tags: clotheslines, homeowners association, Time Magazine

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The country’s wealthiest people live in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. At least, that’s according to a story written by Matt Woolsey for Forbes.com. Woolsey compiled a list of the nation’s richest counties. You can read it, and its accompanying story, here.

Fairfax County, Va., Loudon County, Va., and Howard County, Md., all suburbs of Washington, D.C., top the list as the three wealthiest counties in the country, based on 2006 median household income.

In Fairfax County, the median household income comes in at $100,318 a year. In Loudoun County, that figure is $99,371. In Howard, the figure is $92,260.

This is another great list from Forbes, whose editors delight in publishing such snapshots of American wealth. Just be careful reading it:  You might get a tiny jealous.

Tags: Fairfax County, Forbes, Howard County, Loudoun County

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Green buiding — building homes and commercial buildings so as to have as little impact as possible on the environment — is more and more becoming part of the mainstream. Contractors are routinely relying on double-pane windows, Energy Star-rated appliances and paints with low-VOC counts. They’re hauling less waste to the dump every day, and relying more often on locally produced products when building their homes and retail centers.

But a new building in Oakland shows the true purpose of green construction: It’s not only good for the Earth, but for the residents inside the building, too.

You can read about Crossroads, which is perhaps the nation’s first green homeless shelter built from scratch, here, in a story by the New York Times’ Carol Pogash. Crossroads, which can home 125 residents, features a solar-paneled roof, nontoxic paint, desks and bureaus made from pressed wheat and hydronic heating systems.

The hero of this story is Wendy Jackson, executive director of the East Oakland Community Project. She spent 10 years raising money and drumming up support to build Crossroads, an $11-million facility. Her theory: Green building, and all its benefits, shouldn’t be out of reach to the homeless. They, too, deserved to live in a state-of-the-art, healthy building.

I only hope this is a new trend. Green building is growing in popularity not just because it’s a “hot” thing to do, but because it makes sense. Green-built homes are of high quality, and promote healthy living. Why shouldn’t the homeless deserve these same benefits?

Tags: Crossroads, green-building, homeless, Oakland, Oakland Community Project

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When considering a move to a new city, homeowners have to consider a host of factors: Will my family like our new metropolis? Are the schools good? Are there enough parks and recreational facilities? Is the crime rate low?

And, of course, how far will my salary stretch in my new city?

Fortunately, CNNMoney.com has a tool that lets you take your current salary and location and compare it with another. It’s a fascinating tool to explore, and you can check it out here.

The tool is simple: Plug in your current salary and location. Then plug in the city you’re considering moving, too. You might be surprised at what comes up. For instance, when I plugged in a salary of $100,000 in Chicago and a new destination city of St. Cloud, Minn., here’s what came up: Someone making $100,000 in Chicago was comparable to someone earning slightly more than $88,622 in St. Cloud. That’s because housing costs, on average, slightly more than 28 percent less in St. Cloud than it does in Chicago. Groceries cost about 9 percent less, utilites more than 5 percent less and transportation more than 9.7 percent less.

Of course, the salaries can go the other way, too. That same person making $100,000 in Chicago would have to make $150,000 in San Francisco — one of the most expensive cities in the country — to enjoy the same standard of living. That’s because everything is more costly in San Francisco: Housing is about 114 percent higher, groceries about 30 percent, utilities more than 18 percent and healthcare more than 14 percent.

The salary-comparison tool is a fun one to use even if you’re not planning to move anytime soon. And if you’re dead set against ever moving again, the tool may provide you with just one more reason to stay put.

Tags: Chicago, CNNMoney.com, Minnesota, salary comparison, San-Francisco

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Everything’s huge in Texas? Not quite.

Just ask Brad Kittel.

Kittel builds and sells a line of tiny houses, usually measuring about 200 square feet. He’s the owner of Tiny Texas Houses in Luling, Texas. His small houses are fully functional, coming with indoor plumbing, electricity, a small shower and a loft for sleeping.

You can read about Tiny Texas Houses in this column, written by John Moritz in the Miami Herald. There are plenty of photos there of Kittel’s little houses.

Kittel makes his homes out of salvaged wood and building materials. According to Mortiz’s column, people use them for backyard hideaways, artist lofts and workshops.

Tags: Kittel, Moritz, Texas, Little Texas Houses

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The Iowa Supreme Court in late January ruled that homeowners can sue builders for poor workmanship even if they aren’t the original owners of the home.

Robert and Beverly Speight, of Clive, Iowa, purchased their home in 2000. The house was originally built for a different owner in 1995. Shortly after moving in, the Speights noticed water damage and mold at their home. A building inspector determined that the damage was caused by a roof and rain gutters that weren’t built properly.

The Speights in 2003 filed a lawsuit against the builder, Walters Development Company. You can read the full story here.

No one knows yet what the results of the lawsuit will be. There’s no guarantee that the Speights will win their case. But the fact that the couple is able to bring the case to court is a victory for homeowners.

Tags: homebuilding, Iowa Supreme Court, new homes

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You can tell how bad the real estate market is by how creative homesellers get.

According to recent story by Jennifer Levitz in the Wall Street Journal’s RealEstateJournal.com, the market must be pretty awful.

Levitz wrote a story about people who instead of selling their homes, swap them. You can read the story here. What happens is that homesellers who can’t sell their properties find other sellers in the same situation. The owners then swap their homes, buying each other’s properties.

One site that grants owners to do this is OnlineHouseTrading.com. The site asks owners to list what specifics about the home they are trying to sell and about the residence they’d like to buy. It then matches prospective owners. GoSwap.org works in much the same way.

This is a creative way to help owners move their homes. It’s hard to imagine too many owners willing to go this route, though. For a swap to work, owners have to be willing to compromise, have to be willing to buy a home that’s less than their ideal. But maybe if you’ve had your house on the market for a long enough time, a swap doesn’t sound so bad right now.

Tags: GoSwap.org, home swap, OnlineHouseTrading.com, RealEstateJournal.com

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I’ve written before about how the National Association of Realtors isn’t necessarily to be trusted to give an accurate picture of the nation’s housing slump. This isn’t a surprise: The association exists to serve real estate agents. Its main goal is to make sure that agents sell more homes.

It makes sense, then, that the association would try to make even the worst news more palatable to the homebuying public.

Here’s what I mean. Check out this story on Realtor.org, the National Association of Realtor’s site designed specifically for real estate agents. You’ll notice that the headline mentions the unavoidable truth that housing sales declined in 2007 across the country. But it also prominently mentions that 2007 saw the fifth-most home sales in history.

That second fact is undeniably true. But the real important news is that the sales of existing homes fell 12.8 percent from 2006 to 2007.

That’s the real news for people trying to sell now. The fifth-highest year for sales? That doesn’t mean much when 2007 was so much worse than 2006 and 2005.

Tags: 2007 housing sales, bad year for real estate, National-Association-of-Realtors

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