May 2012
8 posts
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The Relative Frequency of Real Estate on Google... →
Check this link out. I find it fascinating to see how chatter - for the purposes of this graph, search - changed as the market did. A score of 1 is average.
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Web Search and Real Estate
I am in the process of re-activating my Pennsylvania real estate license, as well as getting my NJ one.
While I am and will remain primarily a developer, there is a good deal of value for me personally, and, I think, for clients in working with someone like me on various transactions. Investors and other developers may top this list, as I am in-tune with a large number of potential project...
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Demographics ... →
This article from the NY Times seems like it could be an awfully large smoke signal. Things are changing. What will it mean?
What Developers Do
I am not an architect, but I have a heavy hand in design of our projects. The final version may be drawn up by an architect or one of our draftsmen, and it is certainly a collaboration, but in the end my design input is significant.
I am not a builder, but I hire and manage contractors for projects, working with them on budgets, on-site decisions, and everything they do. I have developed...
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Stocktwits, Trulia, and Search and Results
Over the past few weeks I’ve become fairly obsessed with Stocktwits. It’s not that I am a big trader, and I am very far from an expert. However, I find the social aspect of the site - and the concept that you can sort through lots and lots of noise to find a few people to align your thoughts with and flush out investment ideas - brilliant and inspiring. It is the single best real...
Revised Website
Yesterday we re-launched our website. Check it out at www.squallco.com. The main reason for doing this was to better incorporate other work into our site. When we designed the site a few years ago, it was geared almost entirely to LBI and the prefabs we designed with Steve Midouhas. While that is still a prominent aspect of our site and plans, we also have broad experience in a variety of...
November 2011
8 posts
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Lighting Options and Energy Savings
Recently, in addition to working with Joe on HVAC and insulation options I have spent time considering various lighting options. Ultimately we want to get the Lambertville house, and others that SquallCo creates, to be very energy efficient. There are two main motivations for this: ongoing operating cost and carbon emission reduction.
The options for light bulbs have gotten more complicated...
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Insulation Cost/Benefits
The Lambertville house needs literally everything. One of those needs is insulation. With demo done, we have a house down to the studs that is, more-or-less, an open slate. Putting it back together is an interesting and challenging exercise in design, both functional and aesthetic. Behind our old plaster and drywall walls were old balloon framing and some old-school insulation: bricks, straw,...
October 2011
2 posts
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There Seem to be Weeds in this Blog ...
I have been a little negligent in my blog posts lately. I hope to change that. While things may have seemed to die down a bit, the reality is they’ve actually been going in the other direction. Between managing a gut-rehab for a client in Philadelphia, to starting work on a gut-rehab development project and sub-division in Lambertville, NJ, to working to develop clients in LBI, I just...
“Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
(via)
August 2011
1 post
July 2011
3 posts
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Demo is Nearly Done
As I posted previously, we recently began demo on the renovation of a row-home in Philadelphia. Demo is largely complete, and some framing has begun. Demo is in many ways the most interesting part of a project. Plan as you will before-hand, you never really know what you have until demolition is complete. As you peel away layer after layer of a home, you reveal a home’s history.
It is...
June 2011
2 posts
6 tags
Beach Houses We Love
The June issue of Dwell magazine featured an article on”Beach Houses We Love.” I like many of them, love one or two, and don’t like a couple at all. You can judge for yourself here.
Around a year ago we started marketing our beach homes as an alternative to the typical LBI house. Where others build to the maximum allowable foot, we imagine a smaller, more sensible scale....
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The Start Of a Rehab Project
Several years ago a guy and his wife walked through an open house I held for a property we’d developed and were working on selling. The house was an open loft-like home with a green roof. It was really cool, and they liked it. At the time it wasn’t right for them, but we exchanged numbers and stayed in touch.
About a year after that Franco asked me to work with one of his...
May 2011
2 posts
5 tags
I think I think this is actually good. I think. →
If it does, in fact, get more expensive for people to borrow for expensive homes because the government stops insuring these borrowers, I think it will ultimately be a good thing. There will be a fair amount of pain in the short-term, and it really stinks for people that currently own homes that were federally insured. It stinks because the value of their homes has been, in essence, propped up....
April 2011
2 posts
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March 2011
3 posts
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An interactive map of population change. Very... →
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This is what a developer should be. →
February 2011
3 posts
3 tags
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December 2010
2 posts
5 tags
WatchSteve Glenn, founder of Living Homes, talk about Prefab, sustainable design, and more. If you’re interested in Prefab or wondering why it matters, he explains it very well.
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November 2010
6 posts
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Confessions
This past weekend I finished a book a friend suggested, “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”. In it the author, John Perkins, tells the story - mostly his own - of how the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (and others) worked with and seemingly for Halliburton, MAIN (which is now defunct but was the company he worked for), and many other similar companies to load third...
Water World
davidgalestudios:
As a result of recent calculations that take the changes into account, many scientists now say that sea level is likely to rise perhaps three feet by 2100 — an increase that, should it come to pass, would pose a threat to coastal regions the world over.
And the calculations suggest that the rise could conceivably exceed six feet, which would put thousands of square miles of...
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October 2010
6 posts
4 tags
PreFab is Alive (but housing is on life support)
A few days ago architect Greg LaVardera wrote an interesting blog titled “Prefab is Dead” (it is worth noting that he is specifically discussing modern prefab). You can read it here. In it Greg argues many points that I agree entirely with.
Among them: the cost of modern prefab isn’t as inexpensive as many people hope it to be, many builders are unfamiliar with - and...
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Watchjimkeenan:
Great 8 min vid of Buffet. Filled with his killer one liners and business insight. Good stuff. Warren Buffett’s Worst Trade & Biggest Mistake ~ market folly
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September 2010
11 posts
4 tags
Rainwater Runoff and the Barnegat Bay
It’s raining out today. On Long Beach Island that almost always means at least some flooding. If the tide happens to be high it can mean quite a bit of it. It can make getting anywhere tough, and in some areas it can mean flooded backyards. What it also means is that all kinds of stuff - from fertilizers to debris - will end up in the Bay. To a certain extent this is to be expected and...
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