COMMERCIAL LOANS SHOULD BE EASIER TO COME BY

PERHAPS COMMERCIAL LOANS WILL BE EASIER TO COME BY

The Federal Reserve authorized longer- term loans for investors buying securities backed by commercial mortgages in a $1 trillion emergency credit program, taking a step the industry said was needed to avert defaults.

Beginning in June, the Fed will offer five-year loans at higher interest rates than the three-year loans previously approved for the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, the central bank in a statement from Washington. The Fed will also accept securities backed by loans designed to help small businesses buy insurance.

Get all the details @

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601068&sid=asH8tMd6ss4c

FIGURE OUT HOW TO MAKE BUILDINGS NET ZERO BY 2025

FIGURE OUT HOW TO MAKE BUILDINGS NET ZERO BY 2025

By Jodi Summers

The DOE has taken a number of steps to encourage energy efficiency in the design of new buildings. EnergyPlus is an energy modeling tool, which is augmented by OpenStudio, a plug-in for the Google SketchUp 3-D drawing program that allows SketchUp to work seamlessly with the EnergyPlus program.

Both are available on the EnergyPlus page of DOE’s Building Technologies Program Web site.

http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/energyplus/

That site also features a selection of benchmark models for 16 types of building in 16 locations to help designers understand the energy use of similar new buildings- http://www1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/commercial_initiative/new_construction.html

EnergyPlus models heating, cooling, lighting, ventilating, and other energy flows as well as water in buildings. EnergyPlus includes many innovative simulation capabilities such as time steps of less than an hour, modular systems and plant integrated with heat balance-based zone simulation, multizone air flow, thermal comfort, water use, natural ventilation, and photovoltaic systems.

FORMER LOS ANGELES INDUSTRIAL BROWNFIELD BEING TURNED INTO L.A. CLEANTECH CORRIDOR

By Jodi Summers

First Los Angeles was known for its weather. Then we became known for our traffic. Our next claim to fame will be Los Angeles’ emergence as a model for sustainable industrial development in North America.

“We will make clean tech as synonymous with LA as motion pictures,” noted Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said. “We will make LA the capital of green technology … and transform the city into a laboratory for green development.”

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Los Angeles’ great green project, the CleanTech Corridor is a 20-acre Center site at Santa Fe Avenue and 15th Street is located within the greater Los Angeles Downtown area. The site is a prime industrial-zoned parcel uniquely positioned to provide jobs for those living in nearby loft and residential developments or for those commuting via local and regional public transit.

City Says

City boasts that the Los Angeles CleanTech Corridor offers an aggregation of clean technology and green-focused companies near the Los Angeles River. The firms sought for the Center include both established firms and emerging companies engaged in the assembly, manufacture or development of products in clean energy generation, sustainable building materials and furnishings, clean water technology, reduced emissions vehicle technology, manufactured products using recycled or organic materials and similar CleanTech initiatives.

Incentives for moving your green business to Los Angeles, according to the city include, “Support and advantages not otherwise available at other development sites. Tenants will have access to a wide variety of city, state and federal financial incentives. The site is located within the Central Industrial Redevelopment Project Area, the Eastside State Enterprise Zone and the Los Angeles Federal Empowerment Zone. Incentives include City Department of Water and Power energy programs and rebates, significant employment and investment tax credits, permit expediting assistance, workforce recruitment and training and other programs. In addition, occupants may qualify for favorable ground-lease terms, New Market Tax credits, infrastructure grants and low interest CRA/LA loans.”

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Advantages for locating in Los Angeles

• A growing pool of high-tech, skilled workers engaged in technology jobs within Los Angeles County – numbering nearly 226,000 – the fourth largest source of jobs in the County

• The largest manufacturing employment base in the country with 470,000 jobs

• The largest number of Ph.Ds granted in any region of the country

• World-class research facilities at UCLA, USC and the California Institute of Technology, with a combined 42 Nobel Laureates and opportunities for collaboration in technology development

• Four of the nation’s top ten engineering firms

City-offered incentives include

• The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s $5 billion projected investment in achieving 20 percent of customers’ power from renewable sources by 2010 and 35% by 2030

• The Port of Los Angeles’ $15 million Technology Advancement Program as part of the 2006 Clean Air Action Plan targeted at investing in clean technology related to improving air quality and meeting clean energy goals

• $46 million set aside by The Los Angeles City Employees’ Retirement System (LACERS) funds in 2005 for CleanTech investments over a ten-year period

If you’re interested, let us know. It will be great to have you here.

For more information visit www.CleantechLA.org.

http://www.ioe.ucla.edu/news/article.asp?parentid=3347

http://www.today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/la-to-become-the-capital-of-green-88893.aspx

http://cleantechlosangeles.org/

CHINA’S INDUSTRIAL PROPERTY MARKETS ARE ABOUT TO EXPLODE!

CHINA’S INDUSTRIAL PROPERTY MARKETS ARE ABOUT TO EXPLODE!

By Jodi Summers

China’s secondary and tertiary markets are beginning to play a greater and greater role in the country’s real estate market, and analysts are speculating that China’s property market could quadruple in size by 2020.

The information comes courtesy of a report from at Jones Lang LaSalle titled China40: The Rising Urban Stars report.

“China’s Tier II and Tier III cities are dynamic centers of economic development and continued growth,” says Michael Klibaner, head of research Shanghai. “Massive infrastructure investment makes these markets increasingly accessible at a time when interest in China has shifted from being export oriented towards a focus on the domestic market.”

Analyzed in the report were the 40 top Tier II and Tier III cities which will be a strong future investment value. Each city was further analyzed for it real estate strengths. For industrial logistics Logistics Chengdu, Qingdao and Zhengzhou ranked high. For office, Tianjon, Chongqing and Nanjong made the list; in retail Changsha, Wuhan and Wenzhou.

“The future evolution of China’s cities and their real estate markets will be driven by a rich combination of factors that are strongly influenced by government policy,” the report states. These policies focus on urbanization, with plans in place to see the city population explode to 850 million people by 2020. “The government’s ideal end vision of the urbanization process is a country wide network of environmentally sensitive cities each with their own unique competitive advantages and strong trading connections.”

JLL lists Dalian, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Shenyang, Wuhan, Tianjin, Nanjing and Chongqing as having the greatest potential to become robust business hubs.

“We are confident that more business park hotspots will emerge as experienced developers and investors penetrate further into China’s Tier II and Tier III cities,” says Tammy Tank, head of business parks in China. “Although investors are currently adopting a cautious approach due to the limited amount of international standard space on the market and the opaque business environment, they are universally confident about growth prospects over the next decade.”

Info courtesy of

http://www.globest.com/news/1366_1366/asia/177432-1.html

http://travel.aolcdn.com/travdestguide/Tianjin-China_02-360a032407.jpg

http://www.visit-southampton.co.uk/xsdbimgs/May%20Breeze%20square.jpg

http://www.virtourist.com/asia/china/chengdu/imatges/01.jpg 

10 Unhappiest American Cities

 10 Unhappiest American Cities
by Jodi Summers
Oh, be glad we live in a part of the country where the weather is delightful. Hard to be depressed on a beautiful day. As a recent BusinessWeek.com report reveals, no sun, no jobs and lots of foreclosures are the recipe for unhappy citizens. Statistics show higher levels of suicide, clinical depression, divorce and violent crime.

In the name of analysis, BusinessWeek.com ranked 50 of the largest metros based on their misery and depression levels. The depression scoring is based on insurance reporting. The rest of the rankings come from the National Assembly of County & City Health Officials, FBI crime reports, the U.S. Weather Bureau and the U.S. Census.

Most of these cities had these problems before the economy headed south – and current economic woes certainly can’t be helping.

Here are the top 10 most depressed cities as per Businessweek.com No place in California is on the list:

1. Portland, Ore.

2. St. Louis

3. New Orleans

4. Detroit

5. Cleveland, Ohio

6. Jacksonville, Fla.

7. Las Vegas

8. Nashville, Tenn.

9. Cincinnati, Ohio

10. Atlanta

Source: BusinessWeek.com, Prashant Gopal (02/26/2009)

U.S. RESIDENTS STILL BELIEVE IN THE AMERICAN DREAM

U.S. RESIDENTS STILL BELIEVE IN THE AMERICAN DREAM

by Jodi Summers

Once upon a time, when the world was not a global village, foreigners believed that America was the land of opportunity, with street paved in gold. A recent poll by the Pew Charitable Trusts has concluded that nearly 80% of Americans believe it is still possible to improve their economic standing and remain optimistic that their family’s economic circumstances will improve within their lifetime and across generations.

“If you can’t do it here, where else can you do it?” asks Reda, who emigrated to the U.S. from the former Soviet Union.

The beautiful part of the finding, is that all people living here believe life can be better here. The conclusions hold true across racial lines and even among lower-income, less-educated and unemployed people, according to the national public opinion poll conducted for Pew’s Economic Mobility Project by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and Public Opinion Strategies.

“Although the current economic crisis seems to be deepening each day and many families are feeling the pinch – either through company layoffs, decreasing home values or loss of retirement savings – Americans are taking a longer-term view,” said John E. Morton, managing director of Economic Policy at The Pew Charitable Trusts. “We may be struggling in our daily lives, but Americans are confident in themselves and their ability to get ahead in the future.”

A majority of those polled support a wide range of policies the government could adopt to encourage upward economic mobility, such as making college more affordable, investing in early childhood education, making retirement savings easier or providing job training and financial education. In addition, a majority (71 percent) think it is more important for the country to provide people a fair chance of improving their economic standing than it is to reduce inequality in the United States.

“This poll confirms the long-held American belief that hard work and talent brings a just reward, and our society should aim to provide equality of opportunity, not guarantee equality of outcomes,” noted Morton. “These results convey a clear message to policy makers – the solutions to the economic challenges facing American families should focus on promoting opportunity and upward mobility.”

OUR PRIOERTIES

By a 71 to 21 percent margin, Americans said that personal attributes such as hard work and drive are more important to economic mobility than structural issues such as the state of the economy and one’s economic circumstances growing up. Similarly, respondents said personal attributes, including poor life choices, taking on too much debt and lack of education, are the factors that are most likely to contribute to someone falling down the income ladder.

Looking to the future, more than two-thirds of people (72 percent) believe that their personal economic circumstances will be better in the next ten years than they are today and most parents say their own children will have a higher standard of living than they had (62 percent). Notably, Americans largely define the American Dream as freedom to accomplish anything you want with hard work or having future generations be better off than their parents. “Becoming rich” was one of the lowest ranked definitions of the American Dream.

THE OBAMA FACTOR

African Americans are the most optimistic group about their and their children’s opportunities for economic mobility. Eighty-five percent believe their economic circumstances will be better in 10 years than they are now, compared to 71 percent of whites and 77 percent of Hispanics. When asked whether their children would have an easier or harder time moving up the income ladder, whites are the most pessimistic, with 54 percent saying it will be harder to move up the income ladder, compared to 34 percent of African Americans and 41 percent of Hispanics.

“This research shows that Americans throughout our diverse society have an abiding faith in their ability to get ahead,” said Ianna Kachoris, project manager of Pew’s Economic Mobility Project. “However, our economic analysis has previously reported there are considerable racial gaps in mobility, as well as significant immobility for many Americans at the bottom of the income ladder. People’s perception of their ability to get ahead may not necessarily coincide with reality, and special attention should be paid to improving mobility for all Americans.”

For all the information please go to:

http://www.pewtrusts.org/news_room_detail.aspx?id=50022

http://geology.com/world/the-united-states-of-america-satellite-image.shtml