Free Republic

Years before skyscrapers, when New York City’s tallest building was still the 281-foot spire of Wall Street’s historic Trinity Church, state lawmakers passed the Scaffold Law, which made property owners and contractors liable for most “gravity-related” injuries to workers on construction sites. … Some New York government agencies and contractors say the cost of the insurance, which can often be double that of other states, is hitting a crisis point that could soon suspend work on bridges, schools and the recovery from Superstorm Sandy.“It increases the cost of doing business and decreases what we are capable of doing in New...

Housing starts fell 9.91% in June. 1 unit starts, however, only fell 0.84%. It was multi-family starts that dragged down the overall number. sdata 1 unit starts have fallen to 1982 levels. hs1unit0717 The same for 1 unit building permits. 1unitperm Multifamily starts fell 26% and fell back to September 2012 levels. mfstarts0717 Where were you in ’82?

According to the US Census Bureau, privately-owned housing starts in May were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 914,000. This is 6.8 percent above the revised April estimate of 856,000 and is 28.6 percent above the May 2012 rate of 711,000. Single-family housing starts in May were at a rate of 599,000; this is 0.3 percent above the revised April figure of 597,000. The May rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 306,000. While this is good news, the print of 6.8% was far below the expectation of 11.4%. Privately-owned housing units authorized by building...

Despite rumors of a building freeze in Judea and Samaria in the past months, construction in Jewish communities in the region grew sharply during the first three months of 2013. Construction was up 176% during the period, as compared to a year earlier. According to Channel Two, building in pre-1967 Israel actually slowed during the period compared to a year earlier, while growing sharply in the lands liberated by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War. Construction in areas within the 1948 armistice borders fell 8.9%, Channel Two said. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, January 2012 saw a...

An official in the White House reacted angrily on Wednesday, after Channel 10 News reported that Israel had approved tenders for the construction of 300 new homes in Jerusalem and plans to build more housing units beyond the “Green Line”. The report explained that the tenders in question, for construction in Jerusalem’s Ramot neighborhood, were published last November, right after the Palestinian Authority’s unilateral move at the United Nations which got it upgraded to the status of a non-member observer state, and before U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry began his latest push for the renewal of peace talks. Channel...

Question for you all, since you're always knowledgeable about these things. I want to put a ceiling fan in a room. The room is on one of the ends or "wings" of the house, has an HVAC "out" register in the near-middle of the ceiling, and is always always always scorching hot or freezing cold. I know this is caused by a lack of cross ventilation where the cold/hot air would be exchanged for hot/cold. The attic goes across the top of the main part of the house, then sort of squishes down to a lower roof where you can't...

While we await The Fed’s FOMC rate decision at 2pm (as if it will change!), we had some good news and bad news today. First, the good news. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) released their weekly mortgage applications indices this morning. Applications rose 1.8% from the previous week. Unfortunately, mortgage purchase applications fell 1.37% while refinancing applications rose 2.80% and is at its highest level since the week ending January 18, 2013. The HARP share of refinance applications increased from 32 percent last week to 34 percent this week, the highest level since MBA began tracking HARP applications in February...

Q1 Real GDP was released by the BEA this morning. It was a mixture of disappointment and good news (for retailers). Real GDP grew by 2.5% (annualized), but analysts were expecting 3.0%. So, this was a swing and a miss. According to the BEA, “The acceleration in real GDP in the first quarter primarily reflected an upturn in private inventory investment, an acceleration in PCE, an upturn in exports, and a smaller decrease in federal government spending that were partly offset by an upturn in imports and a deceleration in nonresidential fixed investment.” Personal consumption expenditures rose 3.2% in Q1,...

Residential construction shot up significantly in March as homebuilders broke ground on the most multi-family homes in seven years, a report from the Commerce Department showed Tuesday. Housing starts rose 7 percent from upwardly revised levels reported in February to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of about 1.04 million units, according to the Commerce Department, almost 47 percent higher than levels reported in March 2012. Construction activity significantly outpaced projections from economists polled by Bloomberg, which put starts closer to 930,000. Starts reported in March also inched toward what economists consider a more normal level of about 1.5 million annual...

he USA is experiencing an investor-related housing recovery via foreclosure sales, flipping and investors. But as foreclosure discounts normalize, will the housing market continue to recover? Probably not if the deleveraging occurs in the housing market. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) released this morning, mortgage applications fell -3.76% from the previous week. Purchase applications fell -5.15% (NSA) while refinancing applications fell -3.27%. Tight credit still prevails along with negative equity and a glue-like employment recovery. The share of applications that are for refinancing fell slightly to 76.9%. The only product that actually grew was government Adjusted Rate Mortgages...

Every year, employment drops by almost 3 million during January. While the drop was worse than 2012, it is on par with the drops in 2010 and 2011. Of course, the Census Bureau whips out the old X-12 ARIMA smoothing models (maybe even the new and improved X-13!) and produces this much more palatable chart. Phew! That is much better for the media (and economy cheerleaders like Mark Zandi) to tout. Thanks to the ARIMA smoothing model, employment INCREASED by +157.000! As my students know, I like the raw, unsmoothed numbers. All the smoothed numbers tell you is … over...

Housing starts climbed above the lowest points since 1960. That shows you how dreadful the housing market has been since peaking (locally) in September 2005. One-unit starts rose 8.07% in December while multiple unit starts (aka, apartments) rose 20.28%. As we already know, homebuilder confidence remain flat even though starts are improving, particularly apartment starts. Meanwhile, the number of Americans filing first-time claims for unemployment insurance payments fell more than forecast last week to the lowest level in five years, pointing to further improvement in the labor market. Applications for jobless benefits decreased by 37,000 to 335,000 in the week...

Open source house design community WikiHouse demonstrated their construction system at Milan Design Week, providing a visual update on the project. Their goal is to make it possible for anyone to download and print a timber structure using a CNC milling machine, and then fit the pieces together to build an affordable house ready for cladding, wiring, insulation and plumbing...

FREEPORT, Ill.—Titan International Inc. has laid off about 60 workers at its plant in Freeport because of slumping demand for construction tires. The cuts are the last in a series of layoffs that began shortly before the November election at the company's three U.S. tire plants, according to Titan CEO Maurice Taylor Jr. All the cutbacks are part of the firm's construction tire segment. Quincy, Ill.-headquartered Titan's tire factories in Bryan, Ohio, and Des Moines, Iowa, also experienced layoffs during the past two months, about 90 between the two facilities, Taylor said...

For the second day in a row, the Obama adminstration criticized Israel on Tuesday for its decision to build new housing units in the northern Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo, often wrongly described by anti-Israeli media as an "illegal settlement in east Jerusalem". “We are deeply disappointed that Israel insists on continuing this pattern of provocative action,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters. “These repeated announcements and plans of new construction run counter to the cause of peace. "Israel’s leaders continually say that they support a path towards a two-state solution, yet these actions only put that goal further...

If you wanted to know all about the Big Bang, you'd ring up Carl Sagan, right ? And if you wanted to know about desert warfare, the man to call would be Norman Schwarzkopf, no question about it. But who would you call if you wanted the top expert on American usage, to tell you the meaning of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution ? That was the question I asked A.C. Brocki, editorial coordinator of the Los Angeles Unified School District and formerly senior editor at Houghton Mifflin Publishers -- who himself had been recommended to me...

The first U.S. multi-family condo built of used shipping containers is slated to break ground in Detroit early next year. Strong, durable and portable, shipping containers stack easily and link together like Legos. About 25 million of these 20-by-40 feet multicolored boxes move through U.S. container ports a year, hauling children’s toys, flat-screen TVs, computers, car parts, sneakers and sweaters. But so much travel takes its toll, and eventually the containers wear out and are retired. That’s when architects and designers, especially those with a “green” bent, step in to turn these cast-off boxes into student housing in Amsterdam, artists’...

Some architects believe that in order to build the sustainable cities of the future, we need to look back to the log cabin era and build “skyscrapers” out of wood. Just over a century ago, the architects and engineers who invented the skyscraper set us on the path to becoming an urban world. Tall buildings of concrete and steel helped make urban density—and the increased sustainability that comes with it—possible. But the buildings themselves come at a heavy, and often hidden, environmental price. Concrete and steel are some of the most energy-intensive materials on the planet. The manufacture and transport...

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – The FDNY is at a high-rise under construction in Midtown where a crane has collapsed. The call came in around 2:30 p.m. Monday at the building on West 57th Street. The top of the crane, about 75-stories up, could be seen dangling down from the luxury building. WATCH LIVE: CBS 2 | LISTEN NOW: 1010 WINS | WCBS 880 All residents of buildings on West 57th Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues have been ordered to move to lower floors. All others have been told to avoid the area. There is no falling debris, but the...

It's the eight-legged discovery of the millennium! An endangered species of spider not seen in more than three decades unexpectedly appeared in Northwest San Antonio two weeks ago. Biologists and science buffs, rejoice. There's just one downside if you're an area commuter: The spider, no bigger than a dime, showed up in the middle of a $15.1 million highway underpass project on Texas 151 at Loop 1604. And in this particular case of nature vs. man-made road, the arachnid wins. The highway project is on hold indefinitely. SNIP . . . No other spiders have been spotted in the hole...