The nation’s economic data has turned from a seemingly endless parade of bad news, to more of a mixed bag as of late, with some positive (or relatively positive) readings sprinkled in among the doom-and-gloom. The dichotomy is of course providing optimists and pessimists alike with plenty of grist for their respective mills. We’ll try to keep a clear-eyed view of things. April saw retail sales continue their slump as consumers kept their purse strings tight on non-essential purchases. According to a Commerce Department report, retail sales sagged 0.4 percent during the month; but for those apt to look on…

No, I’m not talking about the criminal kind, though some might consider the following story to be crazy. I’ve wanted to talk about this for a while. The tipping point probably occurred when my need to transport the compost bucket from my house to the office AND take the train collided and demanded resolution. I live about 40 miles from my downtown LA office. As often as possible, I take the train to Union Station, transfer to the subway, and emerge about a five-minute walk from the office. WHEN I don’t have to drive out of the transit zone for…

What’s everywhere, practically invisible and costs $15 billion each year?   Energy in New York City buildings! New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, along with Council Speaker Christine Quinn, recently announced plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from existing residential, commercial and government buildings. As MHN has reported, the proposed legislation is aimed at encouraging developers to meet tougher energy requirements any time they renovate, to conduct an energy audit every 10 years, and to make energy improvements that will pay for themselves within five years. (Click here to read MHN’s story.) According to the city, the energy improvements could…

Ah, it’s the last day of my (brief) “staycation.” I’m sure you can relate to the idea of having a huge list of things to do and only accomplishing a few of them. How does this happen? The simple answer is that those of us who plan to do things are in a select group—those always thinking ahead of the next thing(s) to accomplish, and laying out a plan for how they are to be done. It all sounds so easy on paper. If your universe is parallel to mine, what you have been experiencing lately is a scrambling from…

“An Army is a team. It lives, eats, sleeps, fights as a team. This individuality stuff is a bunch of bullshit.”–General George S. Patton, Jr. Sometimes you just have to wonder how these guys keep getting the top spot. Former Home Depot Chief Bob Nardelli was well known around the orange themed retailer as a guy with organizational prowess and discipline on his mind. What became known inside the company as the Orange Crush, (with apologies to Syracuse University) the military like precision (is that an oxymoron now?) that Nardelli attempted to instill in the troops, from cashiers to counter…

“The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable”– John Kenneth Galbraith, (1908-2006) Noted historian, economist and commentator. Presidents rise and fall with their public’s perception of economic progress. With the advent of personal computers, spreadsheet software and a few hours of instruction, the motivated executive can now construct a financial model and forecast that will ultimately provide the answer they need, with little regard for pesky things, like rules of logic, facts and an economic history that simultaneously flies in the face of reality while making the author of the worksheet look like a genius.  …

Earth Day is now Earth Week. News about climate change and the green movement—and what everyone is doing to advocate against one and promote the other—is everywhere this week. Last weekend, for example, The Tower Cos. held a “Recycling Day Festival@The Blairs,”—a 1,400-unit community in Silver Spring, Md.—collecting donations of clothing, electronics and furniture with participating sponsors. And Archstone is hosting a “Green Leasing Expo,” a four-day event in the West Region designed to encourage residents and prospects to conserve natural resources—and at the same time is offering a “Go Green and Get Green” savings of up to $500 in…

It is a balmy Southern California evening as I sit on the porch to write this post. The seasons are clearly changing as we slip further into spring, which definitely feels like the beginning of summer. The harbingers of change continue to abound for the housing industry, signaling the stirrings of a return to better health. Shaken and awakened as we are by the tumult of the last year, especially the last six months, all eyes are on the future: when the recovery finally takes hold in earnest, what will it look like for the multifamily industry? One thing is…

You don’t need to own or manage multi-housing units to see how effectively today’s high-efficiency conservation fixtures work. Even in a single-family unit, the results of retrofitting with high-efficiency products can be impressive. But when you begin to do math for the multiple units, the results can be downright awe-inspiring. If you are prone to green thinking at all, you can’t help but wonder what it would be like if everyone everywhere decided to conserve water. The beauty of water conservation is that it is really, really easy. And it can be very inexpensive, too. High efficiency toilets (HETs), of…

As concerned taxpayers around the nation take to the streets in “tea parties” to protest the federal government’s spending on financial rescue efforts, an eventual economic recovery still seems far away. But there are a few glimmers of hope on the horizon. Those aggrieved tea partiers can at least take some solace in the fact that the money they do have left after doling out to Uncle Sam will go a bit further these days. The Consumer Price Index fell in March by 0.1 percent and—more notably—registered its first annual decline since 1955, dropping 0.4 percent from March of 2008….