Median home prices up in 2Q in most US cities, but not in Boise

The median sales price for previously occupied homes rose from year-ago levels in 100 out of 155 metropolitan areas.

From the August 11, 2010 Idaho Statesman:

Home prices rose in nearly two-thirds of U.S. cities this spring as buyers took advantage of tax incentives that gave the struggling housing market a temporary jolt.
The median sales price for previously occupied homes rose compared with last year in 100 out of 155 metropolitan areas tracked in the April-to-June quarter, the National Association of Realtors said Wednesday. That compares with 91 out of 152 cities in the January-to-March quarter. Fourteen cities had double-digit price increases.
But the boost to the housing market in the second quarter faded shortly after tax credits expired at the end of April. Home sales fell in June and are expected to plunge further in July. Prices are expected to follow in the second half of the year.
The lowest mortgage rates in decades haven't been enough to energize buyers. Home loan applications were virtually flat last week, the Mortgage Bankers Association said Wednesday.
The national median price in the second quarter was $176,900, up from $174,200 in the same quarter last year and up from $166,400 in the January-to-March period.
The median price is the midpoint, which means half of the homes sold for more and half for less. It typically falls in the winter and rises in the summer months. That's because families with children traditional move during the summer and buy larger homes.
Home sellers, meanwhile, are being forced to cut their asking prices as demand remains weak. Among sellers who listed homes for sale at the start of this month, 25 percent had dropped their prices at least once, according to real estate website Trulia.com, which collects data from around the country.
That percentage had fallen as low as 19 percent in March, when tax credit-fueled sales were booming. The biggest problem, said Pete Flint, CEO of Trulia, is the lack of jobs.
"Until the employment market stabilizes, we don't see stabilization in the housing market," he said.
In the Realtors report, the largest price gain was in Akron, Ohio. Prices there were up 36 percent from a year ago. The San Francisco and San Jose areas, which have mounted a strong rebound from the housing bust, also saw prices rebound by about 25 percent. Prices in the Riverside, Calif. metro area were up 18 percent from a year ago.
The biggest price drops were in Cumberland, Md., Tucson, Ariz., Ocala, Fla. and Beaumont-Port Arthur, Texas. Prices in all of those cities were down at least 13 percent from last year.
If the broader economy sinks back into a recession, things will get a lot worse. Celia Chen, senior director of Moody's Analytics, projects that home prices could drop another 20 percent by early 2012 if there is another recession. If the economic recovery remains on track, she sees prices falling another 5 percent and hitting bottom early next year.

Here's a look which cities had the biggest yearly home price gains, and which ones had the largest declines:

BIGGEST INCREASES

1) Akron, Ohio, $119,700, up 36 percent
2) San Jose, Calif. $630,000, up 26 percent
3) San Francisco, Calif. $591,000, up 25 percent
4) Riverside, Calif. $190,200, up 18 percent
5) Elmira, N.Y., $99,200, up 17 percent
6) Lansing, Mich., $99,100, up 13 percent
7) San Diego, Calif., $392,600, up 13 percent
8) Palm Bay, Fla., $117,300, up 13 percent
9) Erie, Pa., $110,200, up 13 percent
10 Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Fla., $94,1000, up 12 percent

BIGGEST DROPS

1) Cumberland, Md., $104,500, down 15 percent.
2) Tucson, Ariz., $150,200, down 14 percent
3) Ocala, Fla., $95,900, down 13 percent
4) Beaumont, Texas., $120,700, down 13 percent
5) Boise City, Idaho., $140,100, down 13 percent
6) Hagerstown, Md., $149,800, down 9.2 percent
7) Jacksonville, Fla., $139,000, down 9 percent
8) Daytona Beach, Fla., $117,000, down 8 percent
9) Salem, Ore., $176,800, down 7.5 percent
10) Biloxi, Miss., $128,500, down 7.4 percent


Read more: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2010/08/11/1299491/a-look-at-home-prices-in-us-cities.html#ixzz0wKXaDUd3

Chip shortage could benefit Micron Technology | Micron Technology | Idaho Statesman

As back to school time sees an increase in demand for electronics such as laptops, flash drives, chip maker Micron could have something to celebrate. But that might not mean anything for Boise.

Read more here.

Idaho has a big labor pool, but a small talent pool |

What I've been saying all along...

Idaho's unemployment is at a record level, yet Clearwater Analytics and other local high-tech companies are having a difficult time finding people for key positions. The area's labor pool may be big, but it lacks depth - experienced or specialized high-tech workers. And that could hinder the state's ability to compete nationally and globally in the high-tech industries.
"Without a doubt the prevailing opinion on the coastal states is you probably cannot grow a tech company very big in the state of Idaho because the talent pool isn't there," said Bob Lokken at a business innovation conference last week. Lokken founded ProClarity, which was acquired by Microsoft; he recently launched WhiteCloud Analytics.

Read full article here.

Idaho in the top 5 in 2009 for number of new startups | Idaho Economy | Idaho Statesman

Hundreds of business start-ups in 2009 put Idaho in the top five states on the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity. The index calculated that about 450 out of 100,000 adults in Idaho started businesses each month in 2009.
Idaho also is making high marks on other lists recently. The state jumped to No. 7 from No. 14 on the American Legislative Exchange Council's Best Economic Outlook list. Boise came in at No. 16 on Forbes' America's Most Innovative Cities, which rates patents, funding, jobs and technology. The Economist praised Boise and Idaho's open space as "the final frontier in the Internet age."

Read full article here.

Boise school leaders protest change to school day | Local News | Idaho Statesman

From today's ID Statesman: A real-world look into the complexities of urban public policy, with density issues, service levels and impact areas at the center of the argument. Just like we discuss in class!

While the majority of Boise School District trustees voted to start and end the school day later at nine elementary schools this fall, two trustees lodged protest votes against the state mandate that forced the decision.
"Nobody squawks more about federal mandates and federal control than the Idaho Legislature, but they do the same thing to the School District," said trustee Rory Jones, who voted against changing the school day to 9:15 a.m.-3:45 p.m. The current hours are 8:45 a.m.-3:25 p.m.
If the district did not make the change, the state would have withheld the $385,000 it says the district will save in busing.
"The sad part for me is the burden falls on a limited number of families who don't deserve this," Jones said.
About 20 percent of the kids in the district, or about 2,295 students and their families, will be affected, he said.
In an audit mandated by the state, the district's bus contractor, First Student, said these nine schools were close enough to the ending locations of other bus routes that merging the routes could save miles.
The state pays for the majority of school districts' transportation costs, but so far, the Boise School District has been the only one in the state affected by legislation that triggers an audit when the cost to transport students exceeds a cap set by the state.
"The Legislature wanted to look at districts with high population density to see if they were operating their transportation efficiency," said state Department of Education spokeswoman Melissa McGrath. "When you're saving money on transportation, $400,000 is money that can go in to other education programs."

But the formula the state used to calculate the cap is flawed, said Boise School Board President A.J. Balukoff.
The state used the cost per mile and the cost per rider to calculate efficiency, but 85 percent of transportation costs are fixed, he said.
Many kids in the Boise School District walk to school, and many don't qualify for busing because they live within 1.5 miles of their school, he said.
That makes the cost per rider high because there are fewer riders, he said.
Inner city transportation also has its own hitches. A bus that starts and stops every three blocks is going to have low miles, compared to a bus that goes out to Orchard Ranch and back, which is a 50-mile trip, and will appear to cost less to operate, he said.
"What does that tell you about your efficiency? Nothing," Balukoff said.

Read full article here.

Good news for Idaho's Future?

The future sure sounds promising, according to an ID Statesman article published today:

Idaho's green energy push is very different than that of other states and countries. It has offered few tax incentives and has never established so-called renewable energy portfolio standards - which require utilities to use so much green power- to promote the industry.

So what's Idaho got to sell?

Earlier this month, Chinese-owned Hoku Scientific began producing polysilicon for use in solar panels at its new $390 millionplant in Pocatello. Economic development officials there say they have three other energy companies looking to build in eastern Idaho that could bring more than $100 million in investment. Officials could know by June whether one has committed to Idaho, and by the end of the year for the rest.
"Hoku just fired up the plant and they're off to the races," Little said.
Micron Technology recently forged a partnership with Australian power giant Origin Energy to develop solar power technologies that is expected to lead to commercialization within 18 months. The U.S. Department of Energy, through the Idaho Office of Energy Resources, awarded Micron a $5 million grant to help it enter into the light emitting diode (LED) high-efficiency lighting market that is expected to take off by 2012.

Read more here.

Immigrants in work force contributing factor to urban growth: new study finds

From the New York Times, April 15, 2010:

In 14 of the 25 largest metropolitan areas, including Boston, New York and San Francisco, more immigrants are employed in white-collar occupations than in lower-wage work like construction, manufacturing or cleaning.

The data belie a common perception in the nation’s hard-fought debate over immigration — articulated by lawmakers, pundits and advocates on all sides of the issue — that the surge in immigration in the last two decades has overwhelmed the United States with low-wage foreign laborers.

Over all, the analysis showed, the 25 million immigrants who live in the country’s largest metropolitan areas (about two-thirds of all immigrants in the country) are nearly evenly distributed across the job and income spectrum.

“The United States is getting a more varied and economically important flow of immigrants than the public seems to realize,” said David Dyssegaard Kallick, director for immigration research at the Fiscal Policy Institute, a nonpartisan group in New York that conducted the data analysis for The New York Times.
....

The analysis suggests, moreover, that the immigrants played a central role in the cycle of the economic growth of cities over the last two decades.

Cities with thriving immigrant populations — with high-earning and lower-wage workers — tended to be those that prospered the most.

“Economic growth in urban areas has been clearly connected with an increase in immigrants’ share of the local labor force,” Mr. Kallick said.

Surprisingly, the analysis showed, the growing cities were not the ones, like St. Louis, that drew primarily high-earning foreigners. In fact, the St. Louis area had one of the slowest growing economies.

Rather, the fastest economic growth between 1990 and 2008 was in cities like Atlanta, Denver and Phoenix that received large influxes of immigrants with a mix of occupations — including many in lower-paid service and blue-collar jobs.

In metropolitan Denver, where the economy doubled between 1990 and 2008, 63 percent of immigrants worked in jobs on the lower end of the pay scale.

Denver “did a great job of attracting people from other places in the world,” said Rich Jones, director of policy and research at the Bell Policy Center, a nonpartisan group in that city that focuses on the impact of economic and fiscal policies in Colorado. “They are coming with a variety of skills,” Mr. Jones said. “They created demand for goods, services and housing that began a dynamic.”

Read full article here.