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T he P uri land O bserver • N ovember 8, 1995
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Mortgage Rates Fall, Buying Expands
Cheaper mortgage rates lured
home buyers into the market this fall
leading to a rebound in sales, the
Commerce Department said.
Sales rose 3.3 percent in Sep­
tember to a seasonally adjusted an­
nual rate o f 727,000 units, following
a revised I I I percent plunge in
August to 704,000.
Housing is a key contributor to
economic growth not only because it
is big employer during construction
but also because o f its so-called “mul­
tiplier effect" from subsequent pur­
chases o f goods like furniture and
appliances as well as services.
Sep tem b er was the fourth
straight month in which sales o f new
homes exceeded 700,000 a year — a
level o f sales vitality not seen in
nearly two years since the four months
from September through December
1993.
In another indicator o f resurgent
economic activity, Chicago purchas­
ing managers said their Chicagoland
Business Barometer posted a solid
rise in October with big gains in
production and orders. The index
measure rose to a seasonally adjust­
ed 53.4 in October from 49.0 in Sep­
tember - the first monthly gain after
four consecutive months o f decline -
with any measure over 50 pointing to
an expanding manufacturing econo­
my.
Wall Street cheered the reports,
with stocks soaring during the day.
The Dow Jones industrial average
was up 35 points at 4,792 in after­
noon trading. Bonds also posted
moderate gains.
Analysts said the reports high­
lighted the vigor in a variety o f sec­
tors that currently are nourishing the
nearly 5-year old recovery from the
last recession in 1990-91.
“ Housing, capital spending and
exports, that’s where the strength is
coming from,” said economist Eu­
gene Sherman o f M .A. Schapiro and
Co. Inc. in New York.
Sherman forecast the nation's
gross domestic product w ill expand
at a 3.1 percent annual rate in the
final three months o f this year after
exceptionally vigorous growth at a
4.2 percent rate in the third quarter.
Not only were new-home sales
fairly buoyant in September, but so
were sales o f existing homes. Last
week, the National Association o f
Realtors said sales o f existing homes
rose 0.7 percent in September
the
fifth consecutive monthly increase
— to an annual rate o f 4 .15 million
units from a 4.12 million-unit rate in
August.
“Tum bling mortgage rates do
wonders for the housing market and
they certainly have done so during
the third quarter,” said economist
David Lereah from the Mortgage
Bankers Association.
New-home sales were running
at an average 741,000 a year during
the third quarter, an 11 percent in­
crease from the second quarter’s
666,000-a-year pace.
D avid Seiders, an econom ist
for the N ational A sso cia tio n o f
Home B u ild e rs, said member sur­
veys show prospects rem ained
fa irly stro n g for the next s ix
months though not lik e ly at the
levels seen in the third quarter.
“ W e’d expect the sales pace
to ease down m oderately from
this rate to a more sustainable
range,” Seide rs said, w hich still
w ould represent a healthy hous­
ing market, one lik e ly to dissuade
the Federal R eserve from low er­
ing interest rates again this year.
Regionally in September, sales
o f new homes rose 12.7 percent in
the Midwest to a rate o f 151,000 a
year and were up 6.9 percent in the
Wes, to 2 3 1,000.
Apartment Charged With Discrimination
Ahousingdiscrimination com­
plaint based on sexual harassment
has been filed against Tom and
Kathy Weathers, operators o f the
Joyce Hotel and Kim berly Ray
“Ken” Zipfel, manager o f the hous­
ing downtown housing complex.
The complaint, announced by
U.S. Attorney for Oregon Kristine
Olson, alleges that the defendants
violated provisions ofthe Fair Hous­
ing Act o f the C iv il Rights Act.
The case is a consolidation o f
eight complaints that were filed
against the defendants by former
tenants o f the hotel, a single room
occupancy residential hotel at 322
S.W . 11th Ave.
The defendants rented or at­
tempted to rent rooms at the Joyce on
a daily, weekly or monthly basis. At
least two o f the complainants were
referred to the Joyce Hotel by out­
side agencies concerned with the
homeless.
The eight women and one man
were subjected to unwelcome sexual
advances and requests for sexual fa­
vors, the suit charges. In addition,
several o f the women were allegedly
subject to unwelcome physical con­
duct ofa sexual nature by the resident
manager, defendant Zipfel.
The complain, further alleges
the Weathers, knew or should have
known about the sexual comments
and conduct. The Weathers are
charged with failing to take prompt
remedial action to end the harass­
ment.
The complaints were investi­
gated by the Housing and Urban
Development agency which deter­
mined that reasonable cause exist­
ed to believe that housing discrim ­
ination had occurred.
H U D issued a charge o f dis­
crim ination, but the com plaints
chose to resolve the matter in feder­
al court.
The law suit seeks in ju n c­
tive, com pensator and p un itive
dam ages on b e h a lf o f the co m ­
plainants.
Homelessness Grows On A Global Scale
A half billion peo­
ple in cities and towns
worldwide are homeless
or live in inferior hous­
ing, a burgeoning prob­
lem that threatens the
economic and social fab­
ric o f many nations, a
U.N. agency said in a
recent report.
“ Homelessness is on the increase
everywhere, in the developed world
as well as in the underdeveloped
world,” said W ally N ’Dow, head o f
the United Nations Center for Hu­
man Settlements. “No one can afford
the exploding urban blight, socially,
economically and politically.”
Housing shortages and poor hous­
ing conditions — the results o f mas­
sive urbanization — are life-threaten­
ing, said the center, which provides
technical support to governments.
Sub-standard housing, unsafe
water and poor sanitation in densely
populated cities are responsible for
10 million deaths worldwide every
year, it added in a special report.
The problem is getting worse
because housing cannot keep up with
an exploding urban population, which
will double from 2.4 billion in 1995
from five billion in the year 2025.
“ We w ill witness at least a dou­
bling o f the homeless and shelterless
people (unless we act),” N ’ Dow said.
“ That’s a catastrophe. It ’s a clear and
present danger.”
The center said the cities with
the worst housing problems include
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with 79 per­
cent o f the people homeless or living
in inferior housing; Jakarta, Indone­
sia, with 54 percent, and Bogota,
Colombia, with 50 percent.
T o cope with the urban popula­
tion explosion, the U N . agency called
for a new partnership between gov­
ernments and businesses, better use
o f scarce resources and the elimina­
tion o f excessive building regula­
tions.
“One ofthe most important fac­
tors is how we release the land, how
we provide access to the land, who
controls the land,” N ’Dow added.
According to the center, by the
year 2015 the 10 largest cities in the
world w ill be in Asia, Latin America
and Africa.
Only one o f them — Tokyo,
with 28.7 million inhabitants
will
be in an industrial country.
The others— Bombay,
India, with 27.4 million res­
idents; Lagos, Nigeria, 24.4
million; Shanghai, China,
23.4 million; Jakarta, Indo­
nesia, 21.2 m illion; Sao
Paulo, Brazil, 20.8 million;
Karachi, Pakistan, 20.6 mil­
lion; Beijing, China, 19.4
million; Dhaka, Bangladesh, 19 m il­
lion and Mexico City, 18.8 million —
will all be in the developing world
New Y o rk and Lo s Angeles in
the United States and Seoul, South
Korea, w ill fall from the top 10 in the
next 20 years.
Internet Links Customers To Real Estate
When Greg M cDonald was
considering a transfer to the Cleve­
land area from East Providence,
R.I., he and his wife, Lisa, wanted
information - about the city, the
suburbs, the schools, the housing
market.
So he did what comes naturally
in this connected age. He sat down
at his computer, logged on to Prod­
igy, entered the on-line service’s
Interne, gateway and used a World
Wide Web search utility to find
Cleveland resources.
In the process he ran across the
Web “home page” o f Barb Izzi, a
real estate agent with Smythe
Cramer in Hudson. He contacted
her through electronic mail, and
she responded the same way. That
introduction eventually led to the
M cDonalds’ purchase this summer
o f a house in Strongsville
In Northeast Ohio and around
the country, real estate companies
and their agents are turning to the
Web as a promising way to reach
potential customers.
Izzi had listed only four prop­
erties on her Web page, with a color
picture and information about each.
Though the house the McDonalds
bough, wasn’t one o f them, the page
“gave me an idea o f the type o f
housing that was available in Cleve­
land,” said Greg McDonald, a C h i­
cago native who works as a perfor­
mance contracting manager for
Johnson Controls Inc. in Garfield
Heights.
And communicating with an
agent on the Internet, he found, "was
a very convenient way" to begin house
hunting.
“ I saw ( Iz z i’s) picture (on the
Webpage), I knew who 1 was talking
to, but 1 never actually verbally spoke
to her” until he had made a final
decision to go after the promotion
that would relocate his family to
Northeast Ohio
Izzi lays claim to being the first
real estate agent in Northeast Ohioto
have established a business presence
on the Web. Since she hired someone
to se, up her home page in March, she
said, thousands o f people from all
over the country have tapped into it
with their computers and modems.
Those “ hits” have included about a
dozen serious inquiries, including the
McDonalds.
Another came from Ed and Jo
Yuhas o f Dublin, north o f Colum ­
bus. He works for Nestle in Colum ­
bus, and his division is being con­
solidated with operations in Solon.
A s they planned their reloca­
tion to this area, the Yuhases checked
out Iz z i’s Web offerings and other
listings. They eventually decided to
build a new house in Aurora - a deal
Izzi brokered Bu, the Web was
their introduction to the local hous­
ing market.
Now other local real estate of­
fices and agents are getting in on the
Web action.
The Web is a way o f “ listing
individual homes for the entire world
to see,” said M ike Evans, a manage­
ment consultant for R E /M A X In­
ternational real estate agents in
Cleveland.
“ If you lived in Seattle and you
knew you were going to be transfer­
ring to the Cleveland area, you would
be able to dial into the Cleveland
area and find the homes that were
for sale in this marketplace.”
Not all the homes, though Most
real estate offices in the area are just
discovering the Web, and i, w ill be
a while before all the homes avail­
able in the Multiple Listing Service
books are also listed on the Web
Homeownership Forum
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FROM 7:00 P.M. TO 8:30 PM.
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