One of my favorite visuals when I visit San Francisco are the trolleys and street cars. When I rode a street car for the first time a few years ago, I didn’t realize that they were largely retired cars purchased from eastern cities like Newark and Philadelphia.

Here’s a cool map from The Infrastructurist (hat tip to The Architect’s Newspaper Blog) outlining where some of the activity is. There’s a version on the infrastructurist site

There seems to be a bit of a renaissance toward light rail service in many cities given their reasonable economics and limited pollution among other advantages (such as fun). This has likely been a result of the swing towards urban residential development, especially in former commercial districts and class b and c office markets. The credit boom fueled demand for residential housing in downtown markets and more need for public transportation.

With the recession, credit crunch and falling tax collections being experienced in many urban municipalities, I wonder if the opportunity for light rail expansion is already past. Transportation is always a key consideration in urban residential housing market.

Man, I love trains.

About a month ago, we noticed a lot of equipment appearing in the yard of the house a little ways down the road and across the street. It backs up to our street and fronts an adjacent neighborhood comprised of mainly 1950’s style colonials around a cul-de-sac.

The neighborhood is becoming the backdrop for the filming of a movie this summer based on the 1961 Richard Yates book called Revolutionary Road starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, two of my favorites.

What does this have to do with real estate? Hmmmm… ok, give me a second and I’ll think of something.

A month ago, we were approached by the Revolutionary Road movie production crew to film scenes in our house for 3-4 days. They would move all of our furniture and possessions out of the house and put us up in a hotel. Of course, for the hassle, the going rate was $10,000 per day. Hey, I could suffer with the inconvenience. It would cover the late fees for the dvds my kids lost from Blockbuster last year.

Over the course of the week, we were in the running with two other houses. Ultimately, the powers that be decided to go with a house in an adjacent town because our interior condition was “too nice” and “not worn enough.” Of course I was tempted to confirm whether they had actually looked in my teenage sons’ bedrooms before they rendered the decision.

After our brush with the movie business went bust, we found out that several neighbors, closer to the main house where the movie was to be filmed, had been hired for the use of their driveways to store equipment, set up food tables for staff, store the port-a-potty truck, etc. The going rate was about $250 per day which seemed pretty cheap to me, but probably worth the bragging rights.

Our next door neighbor’s house, which has been for sale, was rented out for the actors and actresses to have a nice place to practice their lines. I don’t know what the rate was, but the owners of the house where a large portion of the filming is being done, were supposedly paid $185,000 for three months of use and were rented a large house on the waterfront.

In New York City, where there are a heck of a lot movies being filmed on any given day, there are people who actively market their properties to be used in movies. Its a whole cottage industry. In a number of the properties we have inspected for appraisals over the years, many homeowners will volunteer their experiences. Its not clear whether this type of short term property use impacts market value locally, but everyone seems to have fun talking about it.

Lately, the street in front of my house is often clogged with parked semi-tractor trailer movie production trucks and police directing traffic. Its certainly exciting but I can see it is going to get old fairly quickly.

But if Leonardo and Kate were to come over for dinner…we’ll splurge and order out pizza.

It is not uncommon for tenants and homeowners to refuse to move out or sellout to developers. They simply don’t subscribe to the argument by the developer that, besides the money, it is being done for the greater good. In order to apply pressure, the developer builds taxpayers, usually one story buildings with short term tenants that pay enough rent to cover the real estate taxes. The developer simply waits, sometimes for decades until they are able to aquire the site.

Here’s an old New York Times article that provides some hold-out stories.

The page one photo in the New York Times yesterday was something more surreal. The Chinese developer simply dug out around them. The homeowners in New London, CT who were booted from their private homes by eminent domain might look at this for inspiration.

Update: More photos.

In this week’s The Hall Monitor weekly post on our other blog, Soapbox, Building Shorter Economic Lives In Our Favorite Pasttime, THM laments the out of sight cost and construction timing of the place of our favorite pasttime.

Amy Zimmer wrote about the latest attempt to break the record for riding the entire New York City subway system continuously [Metro].

The 25 hours, 11 minute record was sent in 1998 [Time for Kids] by Michael Falsetta and his friend Salvatore Babones. Michael is a senior executive at our commercial firm, Miller Cicero, LLC.

Falsetta, an executive at a real estate firm, remembers drinking just one liter of water and eating three Power Bars. Babones, a sociology professor at the University of Pittsburgh, said, “We took 10 minutes off and missed a transfer at Jamaica station so that we could use the restrooms there.”

Babones doubted their record would be broken, but his partner said they “would come out of retirement and issue a challenge” if their record fell.

I love the convenience of the NYC subway system – I use it nearly every business day. However, I don’t know if I love it enough to ride for 24 hours straight.

UPDATE:
Two Adventurers, One Subway System, and a Challenge to Break a Riding Record [NYT]
Two Commuters Try To Break Record For Traveling Entire Subway [NY1]

UPDATE 2:
The Rise and Fall of the Amateur New York Subway Riding Committee [Gricer]
Subway Challenge on MySpace
Buddies go after subway riding mark [Newsday]
Subway Record Attempt [Fox5]

UPDATE 3:
Straphangers Break Record For Fastest Subway System Record [NY1]

If the mass transit thing doesn’t work out, these guys are destined to be in public relations. They got a lot of coverage.

One of the most important municipal considerations of new housing development is the adequacy of the surrounding infrastructure, specifically sewers. The rapid pace of housing development over the past several years has taxed the ability of municipalities to handle the extra volume (er..sorry). In rural areas, property owners are reluctant to bear the cost of installing new sewers, but many of the new units that come on line are higher in density, like condos, PUD’s and multifamily properties. Here’s a collection of recent news articles to illustrate the point.

• In fast growing rural counties, septic systems are creating environmental concerns [Missoulian] for nearby lakes and streams.

• Rural areas are resistant to sewer systems [MCall.com] as septic systems can be inadequate for new developments.

• Sewer systems are assumed to be part of values [LJWorld.com] inherent in new residential development in this discussion with a county appraiser.

• Increasing housing density to drive down prices starts with providing sewers [JuneauEmpire.com] and other services that can handle the additional capacity.

• Expanding residential development, in this case, leapfrogging over unsold parcels, is taxing the Omaho sewer infrastructure [Omaha World Herald] via [theboxtank].

Photo archives

• Here is a photo archive of Chicago’s sewer system and a short history [Chicago Public Library]. The expansion of Chicago’s sewer system in the early 1900’s was largely due to the expansion of speculative residential housing in the newly emerging suburbs.

• Here’s our collection of various manhole covers in Manhattan [Miller Samuel]. We spend so much of our time looking up at buildings, we forget to look at the ground.
  

[Still on vacation: when asking my wife if she would watch the NCAA basketball tournament with me, she responded she would rather watch me blog. -sigh]

Here’s a discussion on various environmental influences on the housing market…

Chicago is also famous for a somewhat peculiar annual event: dyeing the Chicago River green. The tradition started in 1962, when city pollution-control workers used dyes to trace illegal sewage discharges and realized that the green dye might provide a unique way to celebrate the holiday. more info: History Channel

Today they use 40 pounds of dye instead of 100 pounds, to minimize the environmental damage.

but I digress…

(inspired by Rick Moranis [NYT])

A few weeks ago, I submitted a post about the release of Larry Sicular’s Stamford Review and the two articles I had contributed [Matrix]. The Gothamist posed a series of questions to us:

1. New York is already Overcrowded– in this issue of the Stamford Review one of the authors writes that Flushing is more dense than San Francisco, and Staten Island is as dense as Seattle. What’s the most overcrowded part of the city?
2. The article also says that developable land is running out. Since new building starts are accelerating, and new people are immigrating to the city every day, what happens when the land runs out?
3. Rich people will obviously be able to afford apartments no matter how expensive they get– but where will all the poor people go? And should NYC be doing anything to protect them?
4. What neighborhoods are going to be targets for this massive redevelopment?
5. In many neighborhoods, like Red Hook, we’re seeing historic buildings get torn down and replaced by big box stores and ugly new residential developments. Is that an inevitable consequence of the city’s growth?
6. What’s the deal with Governor’s Island? Should the city be using that for housing?
7. People in their late 20s and early 30s are facing a pretty tough situation with very high housing prices– do they have a prayer of seeing things improve, or are we going to soon face a situation like Tokyo’s, where middle-class families of four live in 500 sqft or less?
8. If you had to pick three neighborhoods that offered the best value for a new couple purchasing their first home, what would they be?
9. What are the biggest misnomers and bad ideas about today’s housing market?

Here’s a brief overview, links and answers to these questions posed by the Gothamist.

Reconfiguring New York City [Matrix]
Download the report for free [Stamford Review]
On the Reconfiguration of New York City [Curbed]
That Toll Plaza Feeling at 109th and Broadway [Curbed]

I stumbled across the latest issue of the National Catholic Reporter (ed. note- its an independent weekly established in 1964) with the front page headline: Catholic real estate bonanza: Firm touts ties with Vatican in bid for U.S. church property [NCR]. The article was about An Italian-owned Manhattan real estate development company claiming ties to high-ranking Vatican officials is bidding on properties owned by dozens of U.S. dioceses and religious orders.

Why is the Catholic church under contract to sell $100M in assets in three US cities and taking bids on $250M more?

• Changing demographics – The church was experiencing a shift from North and East to West and South and from city to suburb.

• Payouts from sexual abuse scandals – The church has paid off a $1B in lawsuits to date with more expected.

In Boston, the church has sold more than $200M in real estate since 2003 [Boston Globe].

Its not clear why the purchaser would announce the deal if they are still bidding on other properties with the church. The municipalities would benefit as these properties presumably would enter the tax roles as their ownership and use changes.

The Stamford Review, Spring/Summer 2006 is the third issue and was just released. It can be downloaded for free on their web site after a simple registration or hard copies can be purchased for a nominal fee. The intention of the publication was to bring together a diverse group of writers who are passionate about their topics to write about issues that affect New York City real estate, land use, architecture, and urban affairs.

See the author list below.

Shameless plug: I wrote two articles for this publication The Gentrification of Manhattan and Manhattan’s Housing Market and the Media

I hope you enjoy them.

Larry Sicular is the editor and has been a professional colleague of mine for 20 years. The journal, which is a labor of love for him, takes a monumental effort to coordinate, edit and publish and I truly appreciated the opportunity to be in it.

In the introduction of the publication, Larry describes the current issue as being:

…about the reconfiguration of New York City, a physical transformation that has been fueled by a mixture of population growth, increased affluence, and an unusually strong housing market. What is happening here is mirrored to varying degrees in successful cities elsewhere in this nation and across the globe.

Here, nine experts praise and critique city government’s efforts to guide this transformation, to meet and balance growing demands for market housing, affordable housing, open space, industrial space, and historic preservation. Even as the housing market softens, these policies will have long-term effects and will continue to be debated.

In recent years it has been easy to forget Jonathan Miller’s reminder that twenty years ago Manhattan’s housing market relied on government tax policy to stimulate demand. Julia Vitullo-Martin applauds the results of public and institutional investment in the Bronx, but she notes that destructive government policies helped depress the borough in the first place.

Much of our attention is drawn to the city’s extensive rezoning of former industrial areas on the Brooklyn waterfront and the west side of Manhattan. Frank Braconi questions whether these initiatives are sufficient to meet the needs of our growing population, while Kimberly Miller and Mark Alexander address what will be required to make the rezonings a success. Peter Beck shows us that limited public resources, directed to these areas for affordable housing, could perhaps be more effectively spent, while Lisa Kersavage shows us how rezoning need not have cost us valuable historic resources. Pamela Hannigan praises the city policy that is creating new industrial business zones in order to preserve and stimulate the valuable manufacturing resources that remain.

And then there is Governors Island. Is there a greater possibility for adding a jewel in our crown than the history and open spaces that this island offers and represents? Our third issue is dedicated to the possibilities of Governors Island.