Free Republic

Among other things... If you illegally enter someone’s house, refuse to leave, and hand them a list of 13 demands, a few things will happen. If you aren’t immediately shot for breaking and entering, you’ll be told to get the hell out. Then, your demands will be mocked, ridiculed, and refused. Finally, the police will be called and you’ll be forcibly removed. You won’t be coddled, indulged, or comforted. You’ll be jettisoned with extreme prejudice. On the other hand, if you illegally enter the United States, you’ll find an army of liberals who are willing to forgive your initial crime,...

Americans refinancing their mortgages are taking cash out in the process at levels not seen since the financial crisis. Nearly half of borrowers who refinanced their homes in the first quarter chose the cash-out option, according to data released this week by Freddie Mac. That is the highest level since the fourth quarter of 2008. The cash-out level is still well below the almost 90% peak hit in the run-up to the housing meltdown. But it is up sharply from the post-crisis nadir of 12% in the second quarter of 2012. In a cash-out refi, a borrower refinances an existing...

Cairo, Ill., has a population of fewer than 3,000 people. A plan to demolish two public housing developments would force many residents to leave and cut the school enrollment in half. ___ The authorities announced last month that the cost of fixing the developments was out of reach, and that replacing them altogether would cost almost 10 times as much. For hundreds of residents, the decision may mean not only leaving these crumbling buildings, but also moving from Cairo altogether. “For sure they needed to fix this place up a long time ago,” said Nena Ellis, 38, a mother of...

Ald. Arena's Section 8 development means more crime, lower property values in Jefferson Park, says expert Crime Glenn Minnis James Bovard warns residents of Jefferson Park that they need look no further than the opposite side of the city to see what a proposed low-income, subsidized housing complex could mean for their neighborhood. The plan, backed by 45th Ward Alderman John Arena, would nearly double the amount of subsidized housing in the neighborhood. “It could be the Chatham aftermath all over again,” Bovard, a noted libertarian author and lecturer, told the Chicago City Wire. Chatham is a South Side neighborhood...

Home Capital Group Inc. said Wednesday its subsidiary has seen deposits drop by nearly $600 million in recent weeks and it is seeking a $2 billion credit line to mitigate the impact, which it expects to accelerate. ... As part of the agreement, Home Trust would be required to pay a non-refundable commitment fee of $100 million and make an initial draw of $1 billion. The interest rate on outstanding balances would be 10 per cent, and the standby fee on undrawn funds would be 2.5 per cent, Home Capital added. Gloyn said this translates to an effective interest rate...

Low-income Americans will no longer be passed over when the federal government pays the bill for construction projects, HUD Secretary Ben Carson said Thursday. Carson said using a rule that has been ignored for much of the past 50 years is part of his different approach to running the Department of Housing and Urban Development. “It’s not how many people we can get into public housing,” Carson said during an interview with Newsmax TV. “It’s how many people we can get out of it.”

Foreign-born residents will have a "significant impact" on the housing market according to "Housing in America: Immigrants and Housing Demand," released by the Urban Land Institute's Terwilliger Center for Housing. The report also notes that if the current levels aren't sustained, the industry could suffer. "Immigrants have helped stabilize and strengthen the housing market throughout the recovery," says Stockton Williams, executive director of the Terwilliger Center. "Immigrants' housing purchasing power and preferences are significant economic assets for metropolitan regions across the country. This suggests the potential for much more growth attributable to foreign-born residents in the years ahead." Immigrants in...

Back in December we looked at one of the final “midnight regulations” handed down from the Obama administration which sought to ban smoking tobacco products in government housing units. That was a complicated case to be sure, but Susan Shapiro brings up an even stranger story at the Washington Post this week. Shapiro is a former smoker herself (who is to be congratulated for having kicked the habit fifteen years ago) and lives in a privately owned co-op which is considering banning smokers and even giving the boot to people who already own a unit there if they smoke. The...

Tesla Inc.’s “gigafactory” has a big new neighbor: Google. Google last week bought land stretching across 1,210 acres at a private industrial park east of Reno, Nev., for $29.1 million, according to people familiar with the deal and documents filed late Friday in Storey County, Nev. The Alphabet Inc. GOOGL -0.15% unit aims eventually to build a data center at the 107,000-acre Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, according to these people. Google, which made the deal through a subsidiary called Silver Slate LLC—created in Delaware in August—has no immediate plans to build, according to a person close to the company. The...

Alright all knowing FRiends. I have one of those neighbors, you know the ones, that keep their junk in their back yard. Normally I'd be ok with it but I moved to a subdivision with an HOA and guidelines in the bylaws regarding maintenance of the property including the back yard. I'm forced to look at 7 foot tree stumps that they had a stop order on due to cutting them down illegally, commercial stoves from his food truck, chain link fencing just laying around and even a fence he decided to move in about 7 feet from his property...

While 86 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 see owning a house as more affordable than renting —and 68 percent view their first house as a "stepping stone" to a dream home — just one in five think they can make a down payment, according to a new report released Wednesday by Bank of America. (The bank, it should be noted, made an unusually low $960 million in consumer mortgage banking income last year.) Millennials, the generation that last year, for the first time in the modern era, became more likely to live with their parents...

LOS ANGELES - A Los Angeles man says he’s found a solution to the city’s housing crisis in the most unlikeliest of places. T.K. Devine wants to help solve L.A.’s homeless problem with portable toilets. “Folks who are living it rough and living on the streets and are trying to make a better life for themselves, they need consistency,” Devine told CBS Los Angeles. “They need a good night’s rest.” The 35-year-old founder of Porta-Home is converting portable toilets into portable homes out of a downtown Los Angeles warehouse, including one built for himself....The system rests on a trailer that...

Building a house completely by hand can be both time-consuming and expensive. A number of home-builders have chosen to automate part of the construction process (i.e. by printing the home's parts) instead. A new Ukrainian homebuilding startup called Passivdom uses a 3D-printing robot that can print parts for tiny houses. The machine can print the walls, roof, and floor of Passivdom's 380-square-foot model in about eight hours. The windows, doors, plumbing, and electrical systems are then added by a human worker. When complete, the homes are completely autonomous and mobile, meaning they don't need to connect to external electrical and...

Larry Elder reads from a 2006 article in The American Spectator entitled, "Race to the Top" (http://tinyurl.com/gn88j7m). In the article we find out some interesting sides to the new Senate Minority Leader. And I am sure this info will become much more public now that the words of Sen. Schumer (D-NY) are in the troposphere.

New York has a problem: buying an apartment here is way too expensive. Mayor de Blasio has grouchily ambled along with a solution: make apartments even more expensive. That makes no sense. But it’s the principle of the mayor’s proposed “mansion tax.” Last week, de Blasio went up to Albany to push his idea: forcing home buyers to pay a “paltry” 2.5 percent tax on the value of purchases above $2 million. The tax would raise $336 million a year. That would be enough to subsidize 25,000 poorer elderly folks’ rent by a little more than $1,000 a month, as...

With housing affordability a huge concern for many Sydney residents, one organisation is offering low- to middle-income earners the opportunity to live more cheaply in smaller spaces. Evolve Housing's initiative has already seen single people and couples making the switch to one-bedroom, one-bathroom places that are close to work but do not hurt the hip pocket. But can people actually live in a tiny apartment? The ABC took a tour inside one to see what it would be like.

CINCINNATI - U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, will highlight in downtown Cincinnati this morning key infrastruture projects, such as the Brent Spence Bridge, as he outlines a framework to rebuild and repair the country’s infrastructure which will create millions of construction jobs. The northern Ohio Senator will be joined by Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley, Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority President and CEO Laura Brunner, and OKI Regional Council of Governments Deputy Executive DirectorRobert Koehler. President Donald Trump previously promised $1 trillion of investment in American infrastructure during his campaign. Brown joined Senate colleagues to release a roadmap for making...

Ben Carson is now officially confirmed as secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, following the Senate vote Thursday morning. The approval locks in one of the few remaining cabinet members left to be approved. The Senate floor voted the day before on the motion to invoke cloture on the nomination of Carson, passing the vote 62-37. The significant majority vote gave Carson a likely green light to be confirmed on Thursday. Despite a controversial start to his nomination, it turned out to be all bark and no bite as his hearing went fairly smooth. The former neurosurgeon...

One unresolved issue from the financial crisis is the future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two firms that stand behind much of America’s housing market. Fannie and Freddie purchase mortgages, bundle them into securities and sell them on to investors with a guarantee. When America’s housing market collapsed a decade ago, the government had to bail them out. Its treatment of the firms since then has created a titanic legal struggle. Shareholders have cried foul. On February 21st, a federal appeals court upheld a ruling in the government’s favour. At issue is the Obama administration’s decision in 2012...

NEW ORLEANS — At 75, Deacon John Moore considers himself one of the lucky ones: The scion of three generations of music-making Creoles, he’s been able to sustain himself with his guitar, raise a family, buy a house. Most other musicians here, he says, aren’t so fortunate. He’s tooling around the streets of Treme — one of the nation’s oldest black neighborhoods and the birthplace of jazz — in his ancient Volvo, pointing out all the gentrified houses, the ones with the jacked up rents. Everybody wants to live here now, he said. New Orleans is enjoying a renaissance 12...