The Montana Department of Transportation is reconstructing and widening U.S. Highway 93 to provide improved safety and operations for the traveling public. The work includes a bridge replacement over the Whitefish River, clearing, grubbing, grading, gravel, storm drain, curb and gutter, plant mix surfacing, signing, striping, fencing, landscaping, retaining wall, guardrail, and other miscellaneous items. The work is scheduled to be completed by July 31, 2014.
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Look To Our Forests To Boost Our Economy
Two years into a slow economic recovery, many Montana rural communities are still struggling to create jobs. The unemployment rate in rural counties is just under eight percent compared to six percent for Montana’s metropolitan counties, with those people counting on their local Montana Social Security office to provide the benefits they need.
In hard economic times, Montana has relied on its forests for jobs and income.
Today, logging cannot lift the state alone, but logging combined with forest and watershed restoration work can be the basis for job growth in Montana’s rural counties.
Restoration work utilizes the same skills, knowledge, and equipment already present in Montana’s timber industry and often includes commercial and small-diameter timber for regional mills.
Forest thinning, road removal, and watershed restoration all complement and diversify the timber industry and create jobs in a range of scientific, technical, and planning industries.
Studies show that restoration work creates more jobs when compared to logging alone. Montana’s communities have the know-how, but often lack the resources and policy tools.
To create forest jobs in Montana, Congress need only continue a host of proven, existing restoration and stewardship programs.
Watershed and forest restoration also will help maintain the qualities attracting tourists, families and businesses to Montana. Travel and tourism related industries are a bright spot during the recession, accounting for about 67,000 jobs in Montana with similar job interviews (20 percent of total employment).
With the increased mobility of today’s workforce, entrepreneurs, doctors, engineers, and accountants often relocate themselves and their businesses in areas with a high quality of life, including natural amenities.
The same qualities that attract tourists and businesses also draw retirees (non-labor income accounts for more than 41 percent of all income in Montana, over half of it from investment and retirement income).
Healthy lands and watersheds also provide value through what scientists call “ecosystem benefits” such as flood control, lower municipal water treatment costs, and wildlife habitat that supports recreation and hunting.
Headwaters Economics estimated that restoration activities on National Forests in 2009 generated nearly $2 billion in cost savings and environmental services across all National Forests.
Extending the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act now up for reauthorization can be the basis for a comprehensive approach to a forest jobs and restoration effort.
The SRS “county payments” program compensates local governments for non-taxable federal lands – supporting essential education and transportation infrastructure that helps rural communities attract and retain jobs and families. SRS also provides funding and incentives for collaborative restoration, stewardship, and infrastructure work on public lands.
The major challenge to extending SRS is securing federal funding under tight budget constraints. The House of Representatives soon will propose a “timber-only” approach to public lands management in which logging will pay for all management costs and for SRS payments to counties. This will be accomplished largely by rolling back environmental laws and abandoning collaborative efforts.
The House proposal may generate some revenue, but it’s not a jobs package. A timber-only approach creates fewer jobs and is more exposed to market volatility and price fluctuations than a balanced timber-plus approach to forest restoration.
A timber-only approach will also require major rewriting of national public lands policy and law, or perhaps ending federal ownership of land all together.
Successful programs such as the Collaborative Landscape Restoration Initiative, Forest Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Initiative, Priority Watershed Restoration funding, and stewardship contracting authorities are examples of existing and proven programs that should be extended along with SRS.
A timber-plus jobs bill will grow and diversify the timber industry while creating jobs in other sectors and strengthening Montana’s competitive advantage to attract tourists, retirees, and businesses.
A diversified, balanced, and proven approach to public lands can be the basis for renewed rural prosperity that takes advantage of the many values of public lands.
Mark Haggerty is a research economist at Headwaters Economics in Bozeman. For more information on county payments and forest jobs, see:www.headwaterseconomics.org.
Kiplinger’s Housing Forecast: Positive Signs Offset the Negative
The median home price in the U.S. has plunged nearly 40% in a little over five years, but the worst is definitely over, according to a recent report by Kiplinger: The market has finally wrung out the last excess valuations born of the housing bubble. Before you break out the party hats, note that this doesn’t mean prices across the nation are poised to rebound anytime soon. Alex Villacorta, director of research and analytics at Clear Capital, a provider of real estate data and analytics, said the housing market is in a “suspended state,” with positive and negative factors offsetting one another. But he doesn’t expect another free fall in prices, assuming “things are left to work themselves out and there are no further shocks to the economy.” The best way to stay up-to-date on bitcoin news today is by reading DC Forecasts for latest BTC news and maintaining a strategic balance between various thematic areas in the cryptocurrency world. Most readers are eager to know the current price of their bitcoin investments or potential purchases. Other readers want to understand the current developments in bitcoin mining, so news about the latest GPUs and other hardware matters the most to them. Bitcoin has recently suffered several attempts to hack its blockchain infrastructure. Therefore, bitcoin investors also want to read what the industry is doing to safeguard the trillions of dollars invested in this cryptocurrency.
Although the percentage of sales of distressed homes will rise, the federal government’s latest loan-modification program might allow as many as 1.5 million to two million homeowners to refinance, estimated Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. Zandi said that further home-price declines nationwide will be limited to 3 percent to 5 percent and that 2012 will be the year that prices finally stabilize—setting the stage for gains in 2013.
Short-lived spikes in prices will affect some cities sooner. When housing markets touch bottom and begin to stabilize, price appreciation tends to be spread unevenly, creating a lot of confusion about where the recovery is occurring and when, said David Stiff, chief economist at Fiserv Case-Shiller. Even within a single city, more desirable neighborhoods will stabilize first, while prices in other neighborhoods may fall at a rapid pace.
Touching bottom
In the year ending September 30, home prices across the U.S. fell by 2.6 percent, and the median home price stood at $171,250, according to Clear Capital. That comes on the heels of a 2.5 percent decrease from September 2009 to September 2010. In the five-plus years since the peak of the market, home prices nationally fell by 38.1 percent. Detroit (down 74.7 percent) is the biggest loser, crushed by subprime lending, foreclosures and the gutted auto industry. A few cities enjoyed small price appreciation, largely because they missed the bubble to begin with: the Clarksville, Tenn., metro area; cities in upstate New York, including Syracuse, Buffalo and Rochester; and Pittsburgh.
Houses haven’t been this affordable since appliances came in harvest gold or avocado green. The benchmark of affordability—the ratio of median home price to median family income—has fallen to 2.6, below the historical ratio of 2.9, says Stiff. Another measure, the percentage of monthly family income consumed by a mortgage payment (principal and interest, using a mortgage rate of 4.1 percent), is 12 percent nationally, the lowest since 1971.
Homes in many cities are now substantially undervalued as measured by affordability, says Stiff, and that can lead to double-digit bounces in prices—say, a jump of 10 percent to 15 percent in the year following the trough, as the natural optimists, especially investors with cash, jump in to catch the bottom. It might look like a bubble all over again, but it won’t last long. A good example is Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Fla., where investors pushed up prices by 12 percent during the year ended September 30. Such a bounce will be followed by a sideways drift, during which the “glass half-empty” folks will slowly return to the market.
Theoretically, low rates should help push buyers to act. The average interest rate on 30-year fixed mortgages fell to 3.94 percent in the first week of October 2011, according to Freddie Mac. The past couple of years’ predictions that rates would rise were based on the premise that the economy would improve, said Guy Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance, an industry publication. “As long as the economy remains stagnant, unemployment remains high, and the housing market is in the toilet, rates will remain near historic lows,” he said. At least for the first part of 2012, he adds, rates should hover between 4 percent and 5 percent.
Other positive signs:
Existing home sales increased during the summer and early fall of 2011, according to the National Association of REALTORS®, after a deep slump following the expiration of the first-time home buyer tax credit. Although the inventory of homes on the market and in foreclosure remains high, a lull in home building over the past three years is gradually easing the surplus. The months’ supply figure, or how long it would take to sell the inventory of homes on the market at the current pace of sales, improved to 8.5 months in September—although that ratio still favors buyers (six months’ supply represents a normal balance between sellers and buyers).
The lure of affordability and low mortgage rates hasn’t increased buyer demand as much as one might expect. Some would-be buyers can’t get a mortgage, given lenders’ stiffer requirements. Many more are hesitant to pull the trigger on a home purchase for fear that home prices will continue to fall or that their job prospects are uncertain. Although the recession has technically ended, the economy doesn’t feel better to many.
But Celia Chen, director of research at Moody’s Analytics, said that both corporate and household balance sheets are healthier and should lead to stronger economic growth and improved confidence. She anticipates more robust growth by the second half of 2012, assuming that Congress follows through on its debt-ceiling deal, the Fed keeps interest rates low, and there are no new shocks to the economy.
Kelly Appraisal Reports Strong Numbers For 2013 Sales
Northwest Montana Real Estate Market Report
Property Loans/Equity Release Mortgage Rates Dip as Spring Home-Buying Season Begins
Regarding Equity Release while new tax laws in 2018 removed most of the deductions for home improvement loans (in effect from 2018-2026), that interest is still tax-deductible for loans of up to $750,000 (as of August 2018), if you access your equity through a cash-out refinance of your first mortgage. This method allows you to deduct more interest than if you had obtained separate financing for each property.
Reverse Mortgage: If you’re 62 or older and own a significant portion of your primary home, you should consider a Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM), also known as a reverse mortgage. This allows you to tap your home equity as either a lump sum or credit line and doesn’t require repayment until you leave your property.
Reverse mortgages often entail higher fees than traditional mortgages, but they offer greater flexibility in monthly cash flows. This makes them ideal for a down payment on a vacation home without requiring any initial cash outflow. Keep in mind that interest will continue to accrue over time while you reside in your home, if you want some overseas to get to on sites like BMA.
Reverse mortgages may pose an issue if you intend to pass on your home to any heirs, as repayment requirements are triggered once the last borrower passes away. This can force your heirs to surrender your home if the loan amount exceeds the property’s appraised value. However, heirs can never owe more on a reverse mortgage than the value of the home, so borrowers can take comfort in knowing that their exposure is capped.
Experts Expect Home Prices and Mortgage Rates to Rise Slowly in 2015
At a recent panel discussion on the 2015 real estate market, the chairman of Standard and Poor’s Index Committee, David Blitzer, was asked to describe what the market will look like in one word. His answer? “Mysterious.”
His response tells us that, for one, the real estate market can confound even the experts. But, more importantly, it suggests that housing has reached an inflection point. With home prices in many markets at or above pre-bubble levels, we can no longer expect the “rebound effect” to power home values higher each month. Fundamentals, like population and wage growth, as well as the tastes of a new generation of home buyers, will dictate the trajectory of home prices in the new year. Here are four trends to watch for in the housing market next year:
1. The demographic wave of Millennials will help boost prices: The U.S. has been stuck in a demographic rut, which has dragged down the demand for homes. Maybe this is why some have turned to companies similar to Parker Build Homes (https://parkerbuilt.com) to build their new home instead of looking at a market that isn’t serving their needs. For the past decade, the largest portion of the American population was made up of Baby Boomers, folks who long ago settled down and started families. But late last year, the Census Bureau announced that the cohort of now-23-year-old Americans is the largest in the country, followed by 24 and 22-year olds, respectively. As this ascendent generation ages another year, more of them will start families and look to buy homes of their own.
2. Young people will continue to demand housing where it’s tough to build: At the S&P Panel, Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller pointed out that since the housing crisis, the total value of owner-occupied housing has remained flat. This is because builders have not been constructing many single-family homes at all, a situation that the U.S. economy hasn’t faced since the Great Depression.Single-family home construction has been so subdued in part because the Millennial generation as a whole prefers to live where housing is expensive and where building is difficult, like New York, Honolulu, and Austin, where homes are least affordable instead of looking to build a relatively cheap home in locations that would also be cheaper to purchase and start construction, such as looking at Denver Custom Homes or similar locations for a newly constructed home.
2014 Flathead Valley Parade of Homes
The FBA is a non-profit membership organization with over 30 years of experience dedicated to promoting professionalism, credibility, quality and vitality in the Building industry to the benefit of its members and citizens of Northwest Montana.
In 2019, the FBA has 155 members. 44 of the members are Builders/Remodelers and 111 are Associate members representing sub-contractors and businesses related to the construction industry, including major financial institutions and title companies. These businesses work together to create a positive environment in support of the construction industry of the Flathead Valley.
