It’s not your father’s mobile home. The i-house combines modular construction with environmentally-friendly features and a trendy, Scandinavian-influenced design.
Clayton Homes CEO Kevin Clayton says his company gave its architects free reign to come up with the new concept. “Take it as far as you can. There are no limits. There are no boundaries. We want to see what’s possible,” he said.
The i-house costs between $100 and $130 per square foot, about half the price of a standard “stick built” home. Its energy efficient windows, insulation and appliances, which include optional solar panels on its butterfly roof, can reduce the i-house’s electric bill to $1 a day, according to the manufacturer.
The i-house gets its name from its unique shape: A long rectangular main unit with a separate “flex room” to “dot the i.” Click on the video below to watch our FOX Report.
For those of you who like your glass half-full, this just in from the National Association of Realtors:
Existing home sales rose in April with strong buyer activity in lower price ranges.
Now the half-empty part: The latest S&P/Case-Shiller Index shows a 19.1 percent decline in average home prices nationwide in the first quarter of 2009 versus the same period last year. Statistics from March lead Standard and Poor’s to conclude:
We see no evidence that a recovery in home prices has begun.
Out of 20 major metropolitan areas surveyed by S&P/Case-Shiller, Phoenix, Las Vegas and San Francisco suffered the most significant decreases in housing prices over the past year — posting losses of 36, 31.2 and 30.1 percent respectively. Click on the video below to watch my report for FOX Business Network.
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Joshua Keen, an agent with RealSource Brokers in Atlanta (where housing prices dropped 15.7 percent over the past year) predicts prices won’t drop much further. But he says even after the real estate sector recovers, the market will be very different from the years before the proverbial bubble burst. Keep Reading …
With the economy wreaking havoc on local tax bases, some communities are looking to cut costs by privatizing services.
“We were able to save the community about 3 million dollars,” said Danny Ross, a city councilman in Dunwoody, GA. The Atlanta suburb incorporated on Dec. 1, making it Georgia’s newest city.
Public services, originally provided by DeKalb County, are now outsourced to private contractors.
Dunwoody follows the example of neighboring Sandy Springs, which became Georgia’s 6th largest city when it incorporated in 2006. Sandy Springs hired the private firm CH2M Hill to provide virtually all public services, with the exception of police and fire/rescue.
The company’s large staff of civil engineers and sub-contractors can be shared by multiple cities and used on an as-needed basis.
“Once the service has been provided, they’re no longer part of the city’s payroll,” said Herb Washington, CH2M Hill’s operations director for municipal services. “Labor costs are the bulk of expenses associated with running a municipal government.”
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Cities can also save money by sharing service vehicles. CH2M Hill manages a large fleet of unmarked trucks. When technicians finish a project in Sandy Springs, they replace the magnetic city logo on the side of their vehicle with the emblem of the next municipality requesting work.
Georgia is, by no means, alone in the trend toward privatization of municipal services.
Officials in Tupelo, Miss. are considering hiring an outside contractor to run their public works department. Even cities as large as Los Angeles are looking into such arrangements as they struggle to balance budgets in tough economic times.
Fears over a sluggish economy, an increase in burglaries and bank failures are driving some consumers to take matters into their own hands. Sales of home safes are up nationwide.
“I’ve never seen it before in my (35 year home security) career,” said Burt Kolker of Sandy Springs Locksmiths. According to Kolker, safe sales at his suburban Atlanta showroom have increased more than 50 percent in recent months.
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Locking cash in a home safe may seem low-tech in this era of electronic funds and Internet banking. But psychiatrist Keith Ablow says there is an element of “rational fear” as Americans lose faith in some of the basic institutions driving the economy.
“Touching things, holding them, keeping them safe — that’s the sort of primal instinct,” Ablow said.
We’re doing liveshots today about a couple of the few bright spots in the ecomony. As part of that story, we talked to Rick Seaney, the head of Farecompare.com. Seaney says if you’re looking to travel this holiday season, buy your tickets over the next week or so, because the airlines have some good deals out there.
Here are some great other tips for booking air travel:
1.If you’re booking travel for more than one person, first search for the price as if only one person is travelling. Seaney explainined that if you check prices for, say, a group of four people, and there are two tickets left at $200 and the rest at $400, it’s airline policy to give you the same price on all four tickets. Guess which price they’ll give you? The higher one, even if there are a couple seats still left at a lower price. So check prices for just one person first. If you see the one person price is $200 a ticket and then see that the cost for the group is higher, split your bookings. Buy two tickets at a time, for example.
2. The cheapest days to fly are Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday.
3. The best times to fly are the first flight in the morning, the first flight after lunch and the first flight after dinner. The motto to follow is ”Don’t be part of the crowd.” If everyone else is flying at a certain time, chances are, you’ll pay more.
4. The best time to book a ticket is Monday afternoon to Wednesday night.
Generally, Seaney says, airline deals come out on Monday afternoon. Then other airlines match on Tuesday and Wednesday. Don’t ever shop for tickets on the weekend. That’s when fares go up.
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