Funding helps to make low-income housing safer and healthier

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is awarding more than $13 million in grants to 25 local projects to conduct a wide range of activities that include eliminating lead and housing-related hazards in thousands of homes; training workers in lead and healthy homes interventions; supporting research to improve home safety efforts; increasing public awareness, and evaluating outreach on controlling housing-based hazards.

SALEM – Oregon Housing and Community Services and Oregon Business Development Department recently initiated an electronic survey to gather information from the public about barriers to fair housing choice in Oregon.
Every five years, the agencies develop a state Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice. Under fair housing law, states that receive federal housing dollars must actively work to eliminate housing discrimination based on race, color, national origin, religion, gender, familial status or disability.

Salem – New federal dollars will help reverse the state’s housing crisis with funding from HUD’s Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) phase two.
A consortium lead by Oregon Housing and Community Services received a grant for $6.8 million in Recovery Act funds from the federal government. The funds will allow the agency to administer the NSP, enacted to help communities stabilize neighborhoods and rebuild economies.
The NSP is a key part of the Obama Administration’s comprehensive approach to address the national housing crisis, according to HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan.

By Russ Keaton, Senior Asset Manager,
Bluestone and Hockley Real Estate Services

Introduction
Over the past several months in my role as Sr. Asset Manager for Bluestone & Hockley, I have been contacting financial institutions in the Portland metro area regarding their current Special Credits/Assets and commercial real estate owned portfolio status.

FTI Schonbraun McCann Group Predicts REITS will Lead the Recovery

The velocity of real estate transactions is expected to improve in 2010, with property pricing to stabilize as liquidity returns to the markets and as the capital markets play a role in recapitalizing the industry, according to FTI Schonbraun McCann Group, the real estate advisory practice of FTI Consulting, Inc.

As you are hopefully aware, landlords are now required, as part of the rental agreement, to disclose their smoking policy to their tenants.

According to the new Oregon law that went into effect January 1st, “The disclosure must state whether smoking is prohibited on the premises, allowed on the entire premises or allowed in limited areas on the premises. If the smoking policy allows smoking in limited areas on the premises, the disclosure must identify the areas on the premises where smoking is allowed.”

A property management firm does one of two things; one, contracts with the owner or owners of a residential or commercial property to manage the property for a fee or two: owns and manages the property. This article focuses on those mangers that contract with property owners to manage specific property. The contracts that are set up may transfer most or all of the responsibilities for management to the management company. The property manager's exposure will depend in large part on the scope of the contract.

Exposure

Loan Renewals, New CRE Lending Jump in December
By Mark Heschmeyer

Even as banking regulators and politicians deal with the fallout from the collapse of commercial real estate values and the subsequent impact on the banking systems, it appears that an increasing number of lenders are more inclined to jump back into the sector.