Everybody needs a roof over their head – even local businesses. Jonathan Lansner, a veteran reporter at The Orange County Register, details how to cover the story of real estate locally and nationally.
Planning your post-holiday story lineup? Fresh-start, spruce-up topics are always popular at the start of a new year, and this blog will offer a number of angles in coming weeks. But I wanted to start off with a housing-related idea, because home remodeling lately has been a relatively bright spot in the construction sector, with [...]
The Detroit Free Press published a massive package Sunday on the Packard Plant, a former car plant that’s become a dangerous eyesore for the city. Reporter Jennifer Dixon and videographer Brian Kaufman spent three years (interspersed with other projects) reporting and photographing the site. Their Sunday package shows past and present images of the plant, [...]
Mortgage rates still hover at all-time lows, touching 3.31 percent last week for a conventional 30-year loan and as low as 2.65 percent for a 15-year deal. And as this Los Angeles Times article points out, home sales and new construction are gaining, as well — making now a good time to look at residential real [...]
With residential housing sales amid a “genuine recovery” according to National Association of Realtors’ economist Lawrence Yun last month, readers might have a taste for more stories about what’s working and what’s not in their local single-family home market. Monday’s existing home sales report from the National Association of Realtors showed sales of “used” homes [...]
Matt Assad of The Morning Call in Allentown, Pa., found more towns using Tax Incremental Financing to lure companies as the state decreases economic development funding. Because TIF projects exist in most states, this could be a trend elsewhere. “If there isn’t state money to get, we will see it more often,” Matt says. Matt’s [...]
Blake Ellis and Jordan Malter of CNNMoney traveled 2,000 miles to Kansas and North Dakota to get an on-the-ground look at the job migration created by oil drilling for their “America’s Biggest Boomtowns” series. Their stories and interviews introduce readers to workers who’ve trekked across the country for high-paying jobs, and business owners who’ve profited [...]
The biggest concern with investors buying huge stakes is what they plan to do with them, Catherine says. Her story says they plan to “become publicly traded real-estate investment trusts to attract smaller investors looking to grab a stake in real estate.” Catherine says the issue is an ongoing story because a sudden selling spree [...]
With restaurant earnings rather a mixed bag so far this season, and external factors like commodity prices affecting profit margins, it’s timely to take a look at what your area’s eateries (and the vendors and workers who depend on them) can expect in the fourth quarter of 2012 and beyond. As TheStreet.com reports, some publicly [...]
The Statesman Journal in Salem, Ore., pulled together a forward-looking, five-part series called “Home, Foreclosed Home” last month. The purpose, says Don Currie, local and business editor, was to look at the long-term effects of the housing collapse. “We wanted to focus on the long-lasting stench that stays behind when people think the problem has [...]
