James Y. Kuang Realtor Blog Real Estate San Gabriel Valley Homes For Sale: February 2018

Tuesday, February 20, 2018

Driverless Cars Could Fuel An Exurb Boom

Driverless cars may sound like an idea ripped from a sci-fi movie, but the technology is real and expected to hit roadways over the next decade in a big way. As more people warm up to the idea, driverless cars could have a big impact on where people decide to live, according to a new poll from the National Association of Home Builders.

Sixty-three percent of consumers recently surveyed said that if they owned a driverless car they would “definitely” or “maybe” feel more encouraged to move further away from their work. Younger people surveyed said they’d be more likely to move away from work if driverless cars became a safe and reliable commuting option. More than 60 percent of millennial and Generation X members said they might be encouraged to do so, compared to only 18 percent of seniors.

“Real estate might be the industry that is most transformed by autonomous vehicles,” David Silver, who teaches self-driving engineering at Udacity Inc., told Bloomberg. “It could change real estate from a business that is all about location, location, location.”

Investors such as Ric Clark, chairman of Brookfield Property Partners LP, a large real estate investment firm, is already weighing options of what to do with the space that could one day be freed up by driverless car roadways. Brookfield’s $152 billion in real estate assets include about 175 malls across the U.S. where “the biggest physical acreage is surface parking lots or structured parking,” Clark says. “For years, we have seen this stuff and thought we would love to build apartments or maybe if there is a higher and better use we could build on it.”

Driverless cars could free up areas for entirely new neighborhoods. In New York, for example, parking covers an area equivalent to two Central Parks, according to estimates published by Moovel Lab.

David Williams, technical director at insurer Axa SA, travels more than three hours a day between the northern suburb of Bury St. Edmunds and his work in London. “Imagine if my entire journey was much more flexible, much more integrated—no waiting round on cold platforms and I could be doing something else from A to B,” Williams told Bloomberg. “Would that mean the city effect of increasing house prices spreads further out?”

SOURCE: DAILY REAL ESTATE NEWS

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Tuesday, February 6, 2018

‘Hemp Homes’ Spark Building Industry

As more states legalize marijuana for recreational and medical purposes, the housing industry is increasingly looking to embrace it as a building material too, The New York Times reports.

North Carolina boasts the first modern U.S. hemp house, which was constructed in 2010. About 50 homes in the country have since popped up with hemp built in.

Hemp structures date back to Roman times. But now, some builders want to bring it back to their markets, since it’s known for being a fast-growing, sustainable product.

“Mixing hemp’s woody fibers with lime produces a natural, light concrete that retains thermal mass and is highly insulating,” The New York Times reports. “No pests, no mold, good acoustics, low humidity, no pesticide. It grows from seed to harvest in about four months.”

As for the smell? “It smells a little like lime,” says Sergiy Kovalenkov, a Ukrainian civil engineer who has built hemp structures in the Ukraine. “We’re using the stock. You cannot smell cannabis—it has nothing to do with smoking weed or cannabis plants. It’s an industrial agriculture crop.”

To clarify, industrial hemp is not the same as the product that can give you a buzz. It contains only 0.3 percent of the substance THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol.

But builders are finding hemp houses can be difficult to build. Even in areas that have made marijuana legal, developers still often must have special permits to build with hemp. International standards also still do not exist yet for building with hemp or codes that regulate how it should be used structurally or safely.

Hemp is more widely used across the globe as insulation to fill walls and roofs and under floors in wood-framed buildings. It can become stucco-like in appearance, but it’s more like drywall than concrete so it can’t be used for, say, a foundation.

“In many climates, a 12-foot hempcrete wall will facilitate approximately 60 degrees indoor temperatures year-around without heating or cooling systems,” Joy Beckerman, vice president of the Hemp Industries Associations, told The New York Times. “The overall environmental footprint is dramatically lower than traditional construction.”

The hempcrete movement is starting to spread. A Washington State company is reportedly using it to retrofit homes; Left Hand Hemp in Denver completed the first permitted structure in Colorado last year.

“When I started Hempitecture in 2013 and presented the concept, venture capitalists laughed at the idea,” Matthew Mead, the founder of Hempitecture, a construction firm in Washington, told The New York Times. “Now there are over 25 states with pro-hemp amendments and legislation, and the federal farm bill has its own provision supporting the development of research toward industrial hemp.”