Yearly Archives: 2016

San Mateo County and East Palo Alto City leaders celebrate the groundbreaking for University Avenue Senior Housing, a partnership between MidPen Housing and EPA CAN DO. On March 17th East Palo Alto Mayor Donna Rutherford and San Mateo County Supervisor Warren Slocum joined other city and county leaders to celebrate the groundbreaking of University Avenue Senior Housing , an affordable rental community being jointly developed by EPA CAN DO and MidPen Housing. The ceremony begins at 11:00 a.m. at 2358 University Avenue in East Palo Alto.<

The Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) will play key roles in a variety of projects recently funded by the Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). NREL's innovative approaches have received five awards across three different ARPA-E programs for advancing transformational technologies to generate, store, and use energy more efficiently, at lower costs and with reduced emissions.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development today announced that it is making more than $100 million in grants available to help eliminate dangerous lead-based paint hazards from the homes of lower income families. These grants are intended to protect young children from lead poisoning and provide an opportunity for states and local communities to establish programs to control health and safety hazards by assessing and remediating lead-based paint and other housing related health hazards

NAREE, The National Association of Real Estate Editors, is issuing a call for entries for the prestigious 9th Annual Robert Bruss Book Awards program. "NAREE's Bruss Book Awards program is the most renowned competition in this genre," said NAREE Executive Director Mary Doyle-Kimball. "Our past winners have included accomplished journalists, thought-leaders from academia, visionaries from the design world and brilliant marketers of real estate."

Find out how federal agencies are using building information modeling (BIM) for space and equipment planning by attending an upcoming Federal Real Property Association meeting, entitled “Federal Agency Collaboration Using BIM and the Cloud,” to be held next Tuesday, March 22 from 11:30 am to 1:00 pm, in Washington, D.C.

For the first time, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) entered the data security enforcement arena, announcing that ittook action against online payment platform Dwolla. Dwolla collects and stores personally identifiable information, including customers’ names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and banking information. NMHC has been following cyber policy and regulatory developments carefully because of the highly sensitive personally identifiable information that firms and their service providers collect.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - (RealEstateRama) -- The National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) and KeyBank signed a landmark $16.5 billion community benefits agreement. The commitment, signed...

Nearly half of Americans (47 percent) lack the ability to pay for an unexpected $400 expense, according to the Federal Reserve Board’s Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2014. Retired Americans and those nearing retirement age often are particularly financially vulnerable.

Two-time Academy Award® winning actress Sally Field spent years living in a rambling ranch house in the Malibu Hills with a swimming pool, plenty of room for her three sons and, later, her cancer-stricken mom, and a lifetime of accumulated stuff. Following the death of her mother at age 89, empty nester Field has settled into a new stage of life with a new way of thinking.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today announced nearly $14 million in grants to 32 states, commonwealths and territories for projects to suppo

The U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities (Endowment) hosted a special session at the 2016 Sustainable Water Management Conference to highlight the important role that forests play in protecting drinking water. “Seeing Green: Improving Water Quality and Quantity through Forestry” featured six speakers who highlighted case studies, new opportunities, and successful strategies from across the country. The session was held Wednesday morning, March 9, 2016, in Providence, Rhode Island.

United States Attorney Stephanie A. Finley announced today that the former director of the Morgan City Housing Authority and two former employees were arraigned today on charges related to theft of half a million dollars

The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) issued new rules to update the certification process for loans backed by the agency. All lenders making FHA-backed loans must certify that each loan has complied with the appropriate rules that serve to protect both consumers and taxpayers. Lenders who violate the rules could face the liability of having to forfeit FHA insurance and buy back any loans they sold under false representations and pay triple damages. Lenders must also get certified to be eligible to offer FHA backed loans. Rules finalized today are for the individual loan certification process. The certification process for lenders is, at this stage, only a proposal.

WASHINGTON – (RealEstateRama) — ABA Community Bank Mortgage LLC, a subsidiary of the American Bankers Association, has selected BOK Financial Correspondent Lending as its...

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today at the third Oversight and Government Reform Committee (OGR) hearing examining the Flint lead-in-water crisis got Michigan Governor Rick Snyder to admit that the Flint Water Task Force, which he created last October, has already settled the question of who was responsible for the Flint water crisis: the state of Michigan, through its Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ). Norton has paid special attention to Flint, given the District of Columbia’s own lead-in-water crisis during the early 2000s

Omron Automotive Electronics Co. Ltd has agreed to plead guilty and pay a $4.55 million criminal fine for conspiring to rig bids on power window switches installed in Honda Civics sold to U.S. consumers, the Department of Justice today announced

The Urban Land Institute (ULI), one of the world’s leading authorities on land use and urban planning, appointed a group of 15 nationally recognized industry leaders to its newly formed executive committee for the Americas. The regional committee is a key element in ULI’s comprehensive restructuring plan launched earlier this year.

Hybrid materials developed at Berkeley Lab could lead to cheaper ways to reduce power plant greenhouse gas emissions WASHINGTON, DC – (RealEstateRama) — A new,...

Independent mortgage banks and mortgage subsidiaries of chartered banks reported a net gain of $493 on each loan they originated in the fourth quarter of 2015, down from a reported gain of $1,238 per loan in the third quarter of 2015, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) reported today in its Quarterly Mortgage Bankers Performance Report