Penetrating The Web: Acquiring Useful Sites

Throughout this week I spent many hours in the blogosphere searching for interesting and relevant real estate sites that would potentially bring useful insight to my readers. With so much information on the subject of real estate encompassing areas of: residential, commercial and industrial development it is difficult to separate the great websites from the good, but by using Webby awards and IMSA criteria I feel that I accomplished what I set out to do. This week's ten linkrolls are situated to the right and I hope that my readers find the sites extremely interesting and valuable.

To start evaluating these sites let's take a look at Appraisal Institute. This website has very helpful information on current issues and reforms taking place in the real estate market. In addition to that, they make it very easy to navigate through the site and it is aesthetically pleasing. One thing they could try would be to incorporate some more interactive qualities, but besides that it is a very educational site. Next is a website called Building which is not very appealing to the eye, but is a great site for information on development occurring around the world. They are up to date on projects and issues involving the entire real estate market. The website is very easy to navigate through but could definitely be enhanced by some interactive and visual qualities. This is a great site if you are interested in keeping up on real estate in a global perspective. Third is a site called CCIM which is an amazing site for finding any commercial real estate listing in the world. In addition to that it gives great links to gain knowledge on commercial real estate. The great layout on the home page makes it extremely easy to navigate through. The only thing I would recommend is to add some interactive parts which would help the site draw more attention to itself. Besides that, it is a great site for finding everything you need to know about commercial real estate. Moving on we go to Commercial Real Estate Direct which is a very informative site on transactions and stories involving commercial real estate properties in the United States. The site is very easy to navigate through, but is lacking in the areas of: visual appeal and interactiveness. Other than that it is a site I recommend if you want to stay informed regarding the top commercial real estate deals happening in the United States. Equally interesting is GlobeSt which is a domain for national and international real estate. This site is one of my favorites when it comes to staying on top of transactions and potential deals. They have a great layout with a decent amount of interactiveness compared to other sites. They have done a very nice job with the website, once again this site could also use some more visuals. Next is a website called Land which is not one of my favorites, but for a developer it is very helpful. This site lists all lands and commercial properties for sale and for lease in the United States. The site has very simple structure and once again does not have very much to look at. It lacks all interactiveness, but survives a purpose and is a great site if you are searching for land to develop or for properties to take over. In the same field is NAIOP which is a site based around industrial and office properties listed in the United States. This site gives exceptional news on available properties and what is happening in the field. The layout is sufficient but once again lacks any visuals and interactiveness. I would recommend this site if you are interested in being informed of industrial and office properties that are or will become available. Next is one of the most interesting sites that I went to called NAREIT. This site represents the publicly traded real estate firms and what transactions they are working on (to the right is a picture of what an index for the stocks would look like). It is extremely interesting and lets you see another side of the real estate market where people can invest in the bigger real estate companies. They have made the site very easy to search and navigate through, but like most of the real estate sites it also lacks in visuals and interactiveness. I highly recommend this site and it adds a little something unique to my linkroll. Another intriguing site is RISMedia, which is a news source for all real estate. It has great coverage and is always up to date. The site is very easy to navigate through because of the layout, although it does lack visuals and interactiveness which is a common occurrence with real estate sites. This is a great site to check daily because it is always updating and I would recommend that people take a look at it. Finally, there is a website called THE REAL ESTATE MEDIA NETWORK which is an exceptional site. It is actually the website for a real estate magazine. They make it very easy to navigate through and it has decent visual appearance. It is very interactive by allowing you to click on a digital issue of the magazine, as well as being very informative on everything happening in the real estate market. I would also highly recommend this site to anyone interested in real estate. In contrast to the majority of other real estate sites it does not really lack anything and is one of the best sites in the linkroll.

Redeveloping Bayview-Hunter Point: To Keep or Get Rid of Affordable Housing?

Currently there is some noise being made about the redevelopment project of Bayview-Hunters Point in San Francisco, which is a state owned development area of affordable housing. The area is not flourishing and many of the buildings occupied by tenants are falling apart. This has resulted in the San Francisco Housing Authority to come up with a redevelopment plan called SF Hope. To be able to fund the whole project, the government has elected to go ahead with both private and state funded development. Unfortunately, this has created controversy on how much of this new project should be for market-rate homes versus affordable housing. Although this project will not be able to succeed without the private development taking a large portion of the plan, it is necessary for the builders to be willing to address the issue of enough affordable housing, because it is in the best interest of the community and they still stand to make a large amount of money.

Right now one of the private companies, John Stewart Co. has pledged to build 267 public housing units along with 90 affordable housing rental units, as well as more than 300 market rate homes. These homes would be priced between $600,000 and $800,000. The ground breaking of this project has been scheduled for next year. Another private company Lennar Corp. is seeking to remake part of the area with new homes, industrial and commercial space, 400 acres of parkland, shops and a new 49ers stadium. Lennar Corp. has also made a pledge to the lower income community and said "25 percent of the project's housing 8,000 to 10,000 housing units would be priced below market rates". They have also offered to completely rebuild the Alice Griffith public housing development (which is pictured here to the right).

The issue at hand is that many people believe that half of the new homes being built should be rented or sold at below the market rate to keep it affordable. These people rallying for affordable housing have gained enough support with the backing of Chris Daly who is the Supervisor of District 6 to bring this issue to San Francisco's June Ballot. The developers feel that if passed this will kill the whole project and ruin the redevelopment plan of Hunters Point. Daly is making the claim that "If we don't set aside a significant percentage of that land to be affordable for everyday San Franciscans, then lets be honest with ourselves, 20 years from now everyday San Franciscans aren't going to live here". What he is referring to is a need to keep the housing affordable to people earning 30 to 80 percent of the city's median income, which is equivalent to $64,267 for a family of four. I believe that this is a true assessment of the situation and the government needs to realize it is the best interest of the citizens. His other argument is that these companies are going to make hundreds of millions on this redevelopment if it goes through and that they can afford to help out the people by creating more affordable housing for the average citizen.

Another argument against the current position of the redevelopment is stated by Ms. Fleming a 60 year old grandmother who has lived there since she was nine, "They're finding all kinds of reasons to put us out of here". At one of the buildings 110 of the 267 units are already boarded up and the city is putting pressure on the remaining families to be evicted. This is arising from circumstances such as being late on rent or according to the evicted tenants the city is trying to find other reasons to have them removed. The issue is that the city and developers say they will be creating the subsidized units along with the market-rate homes, but the people who are now living in this affordable housing feel that they will never get a chance to move back into them after the redevelopment (a concept of what the projected area will look like pictured to the left). Currently most of the tenants in one of the buildings are paying the Housing Authority between $100 to $400 a month. These are people that can barely afford that and according to the Housing Authority this apartment complex owes $200,000 in back rent. Truly, the community does not believe that they are going to have no place to live once this project is underway as well as when the affordable housing is done, if it is not brought up to half of the total of what is built.

In my opinion, this is a very interesting situation. I feel for these people and their situation, as well as the private developer who tries to gain the largest profits possible. This is not the best neighborhood and the redevelopment is necessary, but this ballot should still be passed. If it is not, all they are doing is getting rid of the minorities in that area and making it more difficult to live in an already over priced area. The profit margin will still be high enough with 50% of the housing being priced at market-rate and by keeping the other at an affordable range it only helps maintain the community as a strong and well rounded place. It seems like the city has good intentions but at the same time they need to make sure that they do more to help out the average citizen. With the median family only making around $64,000 a year in San Francisco how can they expect these families to afford $600,000 to $800,000 homes. In addition to that the current tenants can barely make the $100 to $400 a month rent payment. San Fransisco is trying to take the most lucrative deal possible to help themselves since there is a lack of payment from the current tenants. Hopefully this ballot will be passed which would tremendously help the current tenants once the redevelopment has taken place.

The Exploration of The Web: Finding Quality Sites

This week in the blogosphere I decided to not just bring up issues relating to real estate development, but rather bring quality real estate development sites to my viewers attention. It is difficult to narrow down to ten enlightening websites, but by using Webby awards and IMSA criteria, I truly believe these are sites that must be looked at in this field. Although this was initially intended to be for my viewers, it also made me aware of very professional websites. The ten websites that I will be addressing in this blog are situated in the linkroll to the left. I hope that you find my interpretations of the websites useful and that it will stimulate enough interest to want to go view the sites.

To begin the evaluations let's start with the American Planning Association. This is a very educational site on planning issues that are happening throughout the United States with regard to development (to the right is a picture of potential green urban development). The structure of the site is laid out nicely and has great functionality between links. This is a site I would recommend that people take a look at but it could use some improvement in the area of interactiveness, which it is currently lacking. Next the BOMA is a great site that takes a look at development on a local level as well as the international level. It is extremely informative on issues of sustainability and how to approach new developments. Once again this site lacks in interactive ability, but makes up for it with its context and well designed structure. I would say that this is a good site to look to for information, but not one of my favorites out of the ten. Third is a site called Cyburbia which is not very visually pleasing but does have a nice structure and is easily navigable. The information is interesting but somewhat on a smaller level of urban planning. It lacks all interactiveness which would make it much more interesting to visit. Once again I would put it on a level of an interesting site but not quite as good as some of the others in the linkroll. Moving on to the FIABCI, this site is a tremendous site to look at real estate development on an international level. It has great visual appearance and decent interactiveness. The information is interesting and easy to navigate through. I would say that it meets all of the criteria very well and I would rate it towards the top of the list for sites to use. Equally interesting is LUPIN, a California land use government website. Given that we're in California the site gives all the information you need to know on zoning and laws for development. It has great structure and is extremely easy to navigate through while using the links. Although, it does not have any real interactiveness and lacks visual appearance, but I would recommend this site for anyone who would like to stay updated with California planning and development laws and guidelines. Next is my favorite site of all the development website Planetizen. This is an extremely enriching and educational site on all issues of planning and development happening around the world. It is one of the most updated sites and has great structure, which makes it easy to scroll through. It does lack visual appearance and interactiveness which I have found most of these sites do. I highly recommend this site and it is my favorite. The next site I would like to talk about is Project for Public Places. This site is more visually pleasing than others and is broken up nicely so it is easy to navigate though. Structure wise it is great and talks about cases all over the United States. Like the other sites it does lack in interactiveness but has very interesting case studies. This is definitely a must visit site. Another interesting urban design site is Resource for Urban Design Information. This is a great site for looking at urban design of areas and building on an international level. It has sufficient structure and is easy to navigate through. The information is very relevant, but lacks the visual and interactive aspects. I think it is an interesting site, but could use some improvements to make it more visually appealing. I would place it toward the middle or bottom of the ten linkroll. Next is a site called Urban Future and it is one of my favorites in the aspect of information. It has a good break down of information by state and issues. The structure is perfect and makes it very easy to navigate through. I would definitely recommend the site but once again as with many of the other development sites, it lacks the visual appeal and interactiveness. Last is the Urban Land Institute. They did a decent job of trying to make it visually appealing but like the others it lacks the interactiveness. It has great structure which makes it easy to navigate through. The information is on a local level as well as international aspect, which makes their issues and stories very interesting. Overall it is a great site and I would rank it towards the top ten of the linkroll.