Homeowners’ Insurance Premiums set to rise – and you thought you weren’t affected by Katrina, et. al?
Higher standards for Realtors – with so many Realtors clamoring and calling for higher standards for their profession, when will their (my) association (NAR) listen? In a nutshell, the association is more powerful lobbying with 1.2 million members who may or may not be professional than with 500,000 (or some other arbitrary number) who are professional? It’s all politics. All of it.
Conservation easements and the law of unintended consequences – I hadn’t thought of this –
Once a parcel of land is protected from development, it increases the attractiveness of neighboring parcels for development. The knowledge that the original parcel will not be developed, and that the landscape will not change, makes housing in the neighboring tract all the more desirable. Thus, in theory, conservation easements could serve to accentuate the scattered, disconnected pattern of development.
Tradeoff in Housing and Transportation Costs
This week’s Blogging Roundup. How Waldo reads them all, I have no idea.
Technorati Tags: real estate, realtor, sprawl
Regarding the Insurance Premiums story: the Best time to buy insurance stocks is right after a big catastrophic disaster like Katrina. They usually take a dive. But then at that moment everyone’s forgetting that insurance companies never take those hits. Insurance is in a way just like casino’s- if you keep the player at the table long enough.. the house (casino) will make back it’s losses plus some.
One of the more interesting aspects of that story (to me) was that there are companies that insure the insurers. I had never thought of that. Nor had I made the comparison between insurance and casinos.