New River Boss

Los Angeles River Revitalization Corporation Names First Executive Director

by Roselle Chen

Published: Wednesday, January 19, 2011 4:45 PM PST

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES – The Los Angeles River Revitalization Corporation today announced the appointment of the organization’s first executive director to helm its restoration plan for the Los Angeles River.

Omar Brownson, who currently serves as chairman of the Liberty Hill Foundation advisory board, a Santa Monica based charitable organization that gives grants to groups in support of social action and change, started his new job on Jan. 17.

“The L.A. River represents one of the city's greatest opportunities for connecting recreation, urban revitalization, and economic development,” Brownson said in a statement. “I am tremendously excited about building the River Corporation platform and bringing to fruition the vision of the L.A. River Revitalization Master Plan along with our numerous River supporters and friends.”

The RRC began in 2009 as a nonprofit corporation to redevelop the area along the banks of and around the river.

Brownson’s immediate plans for the RRC are to explore fundraising opportunities for the land surrounding the river and manage projects for ongoing real estate developments.

The revitalization plan was approved in 2007 by the Los Angeles City Council to open up the 32 miles of waterfront space by the river for parks, businesses, housing, bike paths and more. The space was previously unavailable to the public due to rail yards and other industrial uses.

Contact Roselle Chen at roselle@downtownnews.com.

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Contemporary Beverly Hills house has Old-World flair

Built for gossip columnist Rona Barrett and later owned by singer Luther Vandross, the Harold Levitt-designed Modernist home reimagines a European villa.

By Darrell Satzman

January 9, 2011

A verdant acre in the residential heart of Beverly Hills is the setting for a contemporary home with Old World flair designed by architect-to-the stars Harold "Hal" Levitt.

Levitt's design combines modern elements such as geometric skylights, generous sheets of glass, touches of concrete and an open floor plan in reimagining a European villa.

Levitt, who died in 2003, designed the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences building in Los Angeles. He's better known, however, for the striking home plans he created for Lew Wasserman, Steven Spielberg, Quincy Jones and Dean Martin, to name a few of his high-profile clients.

This house was built in 1983 for Hollywood gossip columnist Rona Barrett and was later owned by singer-songwriter Luther Vandross. The current owners have made a number of improvements with an eye toward preserving Levitt's Modernist vision.

Set behind gates, the home is hidden from the street. The entrance is on the second floor, with the lower level built into the sloping hillside. Dense walls of vegetation surround a stone-and-concrete motor court and manicured gardens at the front of the house. Stucco walls draped with ivy give way to a pair of 12-foot-tall doors painted hunter green. Beyond those outer doors is a Levitt trademark: a courtyard entry. The space has a limestone path and a small garden on either side.

A second set of green doors opens to the home's entry hall with a patterned limestone floor. In the center of it is a round opening about 10 feet in diameter with a glass-and-steel railing. A large circular skylight centered above the opening brightens the entry hall as well as a round sitting room directly below on the lower level.

A rectangular great room occupies the center of the upper floor and features inlaid wood floors in a weave pattern and a masonry fireplace with an antique carved stone mantel. One section functions as a sunroom, with a slanted rectangular skylight and windows on three sides with views of the backyard. Double glass doors lead to a broad limestone terrace on two sides of the house. The terrace widens at one point to accommodate an outdoor dining area.

Black granite floors and countertops and maple cabinetry adorn the kitchen, which features two islands. The kitchen has two skylights, one of them above the breakfast area. An office built in recent years off the kitchen is the only part of the structure that is not original.

The master bedroom is also on the upper floor of the house. It has a sitting area, a fireplace with a limestone mantel and a pair of glass doors leading to the terrace. The suite includes an attached library with built-in maple cabinetry, dentil moldings and a mirrored wall. There is also a private patio off the master bedroom that has a stone spa with a waterfall. The remodeled master bathroom has floors, walls and counter tops of blue-veined white marble. The divided space has twin marble tubs, a pair of glass-walled showers and a sauna. A walk-in closet with skylight connects the two sides.

In addition to the sitting room, the home's lower level has four bedroom suites and a large den or media room with a custom wood entertainment cabinet with room for three television sets.

A blue Roman pool is at the center of a backyard, which is a study in shades of green. Mature pines, palms and eucalyptus, flowering shrubs and a towering forest of bamboo create walls of privacy on three sides.

To submit a candidate for Home of the Week, send high-resolution color photos on a CD, caption information, the name of the photographer and a description of the house to Lauren Beale, Business, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012. Send questions to homeoftheweek@latimes.com.

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

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Self Employed - Have some cash but can't refinance due to your tax returns - Read this!

A Little-Known Strategy for Cutting Mortgage Payments

By LYNNLEY BROWNING

Published: December 30, 2010

HOMEOWNERS looking to lower their monthly mortgage payments and also save some on interest may be able to do so without all the hefty fees and daunting credit requirements of refinancing.

 

A little-known strategy, called “recasting,” or “re-amortization,” is available through some mortgage lenders and servicers.

It involves paying off a lump sum of the principal amount and asking to have the monthly payments reset according to the original interest rate and loan terms. The lump sum reduces the principal, so your new monthly payments decrease slightly and you save on interest paid over the life of the loan.

Lenders typically charge an administrative fee of $150 or more for this service, though borrowers are not required to pay closing costs or submit to another credit check, because they are not asking for a new loan.

Recasting works well for those unable to qualify for refinancing amid the ever-toughening credit guidelines — perhaps because they are self-employed or have less-than-stellar credit — as well as for those with extra cash, like a year-end bonus.

“People don’t really know about it,” said Alan Rosenbaum, the founder and chief executive of the Guardhill Financial Corporation in New York, “but it’s become more common recently.”

Although the term “recasting” is often used by the mortgage industry to refer to interest-rate resets on adjustable-rate mortgages, here the interest rate and loan term stay the same.

Here’s how it might work. Let’s say that as of late December, you had just over $230,449 of principal left on a 30-year fixed-rate loan for $300,000 taken out at 7.93 percent in 1995. You have been paying just under $2,187 a month in principal and interest. But if you put in $20,000 toward that remaining principal and asked your lender to reamortize your payments over the remaining 15 years on the loan, your monthly payment would drop by $184, to around $2,002. Putting in $100,000 would save $945 a month and bring payments to $1,241.

Making extra payments toward the principal while not asking the bank to recast a loan keeps monthly payments the same and merely shortens the time it takes to pay off the loan.

There are a few caveats to recasting, however. The first is that you may need to have a large sum on hand. JPMorgan Chase, for example, charges a $150 fee and requires a minimum $5,000 payment toward the principal.

Another issue is having a lender, or loan servicer, that offers the service. And even those that do may impose restrictions. JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America exclude loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs, and loans that were sold off and securitized may also need investor approval.

While few if any lenders advertise recasting, “they are trying to become more customer-service-oriented, and they will do it on a case-by-case basis,” Mr. Rosenbaum said. Homeowners should contact their lender’s customer service department.

Lenders, which would probably rather earn thousands of dollars in closing fees from refinancing your loan, are not obliged to recast mortgages. And certain types of mortgages, for example interest-only and adjustable-rate loans, usually aren’t eligible. The borrower will also need to have been current with all mortgage payments to qualify.

Edward Ades, the owner of Universal Mortgage in Brooklyn, says recasting can be especially useful to recent buyers, for whom it makes little financial sense to refinance but who expect to receive a tax refund or other substantial money after closing on their property, like proceeds from a relative’s sale of property, stocks or other assets.

If your interest rate is 5 percent or lower, Mr. Ades added, it may not make sense to recast a loan, because the extra cash could be put into an investment with a higher return. “At the end of the day,” he said, “I always tell people they have to do whatever makes them sleep better.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 7, 2011

An earlier version of this article included an incorrect calculus of the monthly savings of re-amortizing a loan.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 2, 2011, on page RE9 of the New York edition.

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4 Tricks and Traps Foreclosure Buyers Need to Know

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson | Broker in San Francisco, CA
Interest in buying a foreclosed home is on the rise, but so are concerns about the risk involved in the process. In a December survey, Trulia found that 49 percent of Americans were at least somewhat likely to consider buying a foreclosure, up from 45 percent in May 2010.  But the number of US adults who believed there are disadvantages to buying foreclosures had also increased, from 78 percent to 81 percent over the same time frame.  Among those folks who had qualms about purchasing a foreclosure, the top concerns were:

• that buying a foreclosure might involve hidden costs,
  
• that the buying process itself is risky, and
• that the home might continue to lose value, after escrow closes.

While there certainly are risks that run with buying a foreclosed home, the most risky way to do it is also the least common method: at the foreclosure auction itself. Auction buyers often don't have the opportunity to fully vet the foreclosure to ensure that they are receiving clear title and/or to make sure they're not getting a lemon. With that said, most foreclosures are resold not at the foreclosure auction, but as an REO (short for Real Estate Owned - by the bank), listed by a real estate broker on the Multiple Listing Service and on Trulia! When you buy an REO in this way, you have lots of opportunities to use some tricks of the trade, so to speak, to avoid some of the traps you may fear. Here are my Top 4 Tricks and Traps for Foreclosure Buyers:
1.  As-is means as-is, period.  (Most of the time.) Banks have very little interest, inclination or even the logistically necessary resources to execute repairs on your home. Many of these homes are managed by an asset management company in another state, and may not even have a local person besides the agent who can handle large repairs. Generally speaking, bank-owned homes are sold on a very strict "as-is, where-is" basis, which just means that you should expect to take possession of it, if you buy it, in exactly the position and location it is, no matter how defective.  Do not walk into a viewing of a foreclosed home, notice how the plumbing is all ripped out of the wall, and make an offer for it, assuming you'll be able to get the bank to "fix" the issue later.  Usually, if the bank is willing to do any repairs to a foreclosed home, they do so, on the advice of the listing agent, prior to the home being listed.
Out of hundreds of foreclosure transactions I have personally been involved in, I have seen exactly four where the bank did agree to do some level of repairs at a buyer's request.  Every one of those times, the repair was to fix a health-and-safety endangering property defect, like a gas-leak or an electrical fritz. And every one of those times, the property defect was highly non-obvious - not something even a diligent buyer could have detected visually prior to making an offer.  Maybe another few times I've seen a bank agree to a small price reduction due to surprising condition problems.  And dozens of times, I've seen transactions fall apart or buyers take on the property’s repair costs, when they request repair credits, price reductions or actual repairs from the ban seller.
If a foreclosure you're considering has obvious property damage, have your contractor stop by with you or gather whatever information you need to get as comfortable as possible with your offer price, assuming that the bank will not be chipping anything in for repairs, before you make the offer.

2.  The bank speaks no evil.  When it comes to real estate disclosures, the fact is, the bank speaks not much of anything!  Many states exempt banks and other types of corporate homeowners from making substantive disclosures about the condition of the property.  Even in jurisdictions where the bank is not legally exempt, most banks will simply write across the required disclosures something to the effect that the bank has no knowledge of the property's condition.  (Before you protest with a "that's not fair!!" keep in mind that the bank never lived in the property, so most often truly does have no idea of any important facts or details about its condition or location, the things an average home seller would be required to disclose.)
Even in a normal transaction, it behooves a buyer to be thorough in having the property inspected and meticulous about reviewing the resulting inspection reports.  But buying a foreclosure ups even that ante, as you have no seller disclosures to highlight particular problems you should have looked at, and none of the usual legal recourse you would have if a “regular” seller made incomplete disclosures.  Get a property inspection.  A pest inspection.  A roof inspection.  A sewer line inspection. A pool inspection, if you have a pool and care about its condition. Yes - all these inspections cost money, but the drama and thousands each of them can save you is well worth it. And read your state’s buyer inspection advisory or similar document (ask your agent), just to make sure you’re aware of all the inspections that are available to you, and work with your agent to determine which ones make sense, and which are not appropriate.
Some insider tips:

• Vacant foreclosures often have their utilities disconnected.  Work with your agent to make sure the utilities get turned on - even for a single day - so that your property inspector can run the water taps, test the stove and dishwasher, see if the water heater and electrical outlets work, and so forth.
  
• If appliances are there, the bank will probably leave them there, even though they may not have technical “legal” ownership of them, so they may not be included in the contract, like in a "normal" home sale.
• However, the bank will not give you any sort of warranty on appliances, so try to obtain any warranty coverage you want or need elsewhere - from a home warranty company or, potentially, the original manufacturer/retailer.

3.  The contract terms, they are a changin'. One thing squarely in the wheelhouses of local real estate pros are local market standard practices.  From negotiating practices to which party pays which closing costs, every market is different, and experienced local agents are experts on this information.  If you’re buying a foreclosure, though, the bank will often require you to use it’s own purchase contract, rather than the more commonly used state forms.  Many times, this is done to advise the buyer of the bank’s refusal to make substantive disclosures (see above) and to change some of the normal practices for your area to the bank’s standard practices.  For instance, if you are buying a home in a contingency state, where you would usually have to sign a document proactively releasing contingencies, the bank’s contract will probably change that, so that your transaction operates on an objection period. In "objection" based transactions, you  have a certain period of time in which you must either speak up about your concerns with the property and/or cancel the deal, or you will automatically be presumed to be moving forward with the deal and your deposit money will be forfeited if you change your mind after that date. 
If you’ve been making offers on non-foreclosures on the standard contract form, or you’ve bought homes before and think you know the drill, please - I implore you - READ every word of the contract you sign when you buy a home from the bank, and ask your broker, agent or attorney to explain anything that doesn’t make sense. 4.  Expect the unexpected.  When you buy a foreclosure, you might end up working with the bank’s escrow company, instead of a company you or your agent selects.  And the bank's escrow provider might be slow or disorganized.  C’est la vie. The bank might rush you for your deposit money, but take their own sweet time coming up with the necessary signatures on their end to close the deal.  Par for the course.  You might expect that the bank would be desperate for buyers, and instead find out that there are 20 offers on the same REO.  Or, you might be the only offer and still get your aggressively low (but still reasonable) offer rejected, only to have the bank reduce the list price of the home to the same price of your offer!  (They often want to see if exposing it to other buyers at the new, lower list price might generate more interest and higher offers.)  

When you’re buying a foreclosure, expect glitches, expect your calendar to be derailed, expect the bank to be inflexible and possibly even unreasonable.  It’s not overkill to ask your broker or agent to brief you on the common complications they see in REO transactions.  Having realistic expectations may keep you from pulling your hair out.  And if the transaction turns out to run smooth as silk?  You’ll be pleasantly surprised.

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Now is the time to sell, real estate consultant says

People who have been delaying putting their homes on the market should do it soon because prices may go down 5% to 8% as banks unload a glut of repossessed properties, Steve Harney tells agents.

By Mary Umberger, Reporting from Chicago

January 2, 2011

Sell now, avoid (some) regret later.

That was Steve Harney's advice recently to a roomful of real estate agents. Harney is a housing industry consultant who told the assembled agents of John Greene Realtor in Naperville, Ill., that they should tell clients who have been sitting on the fence about selling that the time is now — if they want to sidestep more marketplace competition in a few months.

Or, as he put it, the cork in the dam is about to pop.

That "cork" is banks' indecisiveness. The "water" behind the dam is their stockpile of foreclosed homes, which has been growing with a vengeance for a couple of reasons, Harney said.

Banks have been in a state of limbo this year about what to do with repossessed houses, and so they have mostly held on to them in order not to add to the nation's oversupply of homes for sale, Harney told the agents.

"The banks have been saying, 'There has to be a number [the market] can hit where we can keep the river going without flooding the valley,'" he said.

Apparently, he said, the nation hit that number recently, as prices reached a relative level of stabilization. A Dec. 17 report from Re/Max, for example, said sale prices dropped "only" 1.7% from last year in its 54-city survey, which would indicate general price equilibrium.

But before you break into applause, consider that while the banks were waiting for that sign of stability to decide when to put their holdings on the market, they also were foreclosing at a rapid pace.

"In August, the number of houses banks took back was up 49% over the year before, and September was the greatest month in history for repossessions," Harney said.

That's bad for individuals, of course, but necessary, in Harney's view, for the housing market to heal itself.

Then, the robo-signing mortgage-document fiasco unfolded, causing major lenders to put new foreclosures on hold for a while. But as that situation begins to inch toward resolution, banks are resuming foreclosures, which is only putting more pressure on the dam, Harney said.

With the general agreement that the market has hit some long-awaited neutral spot, the banks have their hand on the cork, Harney said. He, among others, expects that cork to come out by the second quarter, as lenders push 3 million or 4 million (as seen by foreclosure-data firm RealtyTrac) to 8 million (as forecast by Morgan Stanley) foreclosed houses onto the market.

As a result, the burgeoning inventory should push prices down 5% to 8%, Harney said, although gloomier views foresee a 20% drop.

Harney is among those who believe that the worst is generally over for the market, and that the inventory mess and lending issues will work themselves out in 18 months or so as pent-up buyer demand begins to reassert itself.

Meanwhile, he said, selling earlier this year will probably net a better return than late.

"If you have a $500,000 house in Chicago, and the price drops 5%, you've just lost $25,000," he said. "That's why I'm telling agents, 'Don't let sellers wait till spring; they're going to lose money.' "

But what does that mean for buyers this year? Why should they buy from those early-year sellers if the prices are going to drop further?

Harney good-naturedly espouses a kind of logic that seems endemic to the real estate industry (and drives some economists crazy): That it's always a good time to buy — and to sell.

"There's no good news or bad news, just news," Harney said. "Every time a house rises in value, there's a person who makes money and a person who says, 'Darn!'

"And every time a house loses value, there's a person who says, 'Darn!' and a person who says, 'I got a steal!' "

Buyers, he said, should take a look at those recent charts that show mortgage interest rates creeping up and consider how much it might cost them to wait.

"That cost is going to go up, even as prices go down," said the former owner of a New York real estate brokerage. "Now is the time to buy."

Umberger writes for the Chicago Tribune.

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

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Shenzhen New World Group Purchased Marriott Hotel in L.A.

World Trade Centre Association in Los Angeles, California declared that Shenzhen New World Group has purchased Marriott Hotel with 60 million dollars, and was to invest more 1.3 million dollars to perfect the hotel.

Though neither of Shenzhen New World Group and Marriott Hotel has formally announced the price, Alan Lay, the consultant of Atlas Hotel Group, indicated that Shenzhen New World Group had paid 60 million dollars for the hotel which includes 469 rooms. When Marriott Hotel’s business was moving well in 2007, Namtso capital group, who is interested in purchasing, had quoted a high price of 11.5 million dollars.

Since Oct.2008, as deterioration of the economic condition, American Hospitality’s revenues began to decline linearly. Last summer, the GM capital lender confiscated Marriott Hotel at the downtown of Los Angeles.

Built in 1983, the hotel with 14 stories had luxury like Sheraton, but it was lack of necessary maintenance due to insufficiency of funds in recent years. Lay said, actually it was agreeable with current trends in Hospitality for Shenzhen New World Group acquiring the hotel at the half price in 2007, since the price of the hotel has also gone down 50%.

Shenzhen New World Group Purchased Marriott Hotel in L.A.

Rey said, “In the long term, it’s a good bargain to purchase Marriott Hotel at this price. However, the Shenzhen New World will also have to invest greatly in the refurbishment of hotel to make it in line with existing standards.” Shenzhen New World Group plans to invest 13 million U.S. dollars in repair cost, which includes updating its electricity and water supply systems to meet the benchmarks of modern energy efficiency.

This is the first acquisition of the California assets by China’s Shenzhen. The New World Group, based in Shenzhen, is continuing to seek other acquisition opportunities in the United States.

“We do witness more and more Asian investors to be interested in the investment in the West Coast’s gateway cities in U.S.,” Rey said, Asian investors recently purchased the W Hotel in San Francisco and L’Oreal Vettel Beverly Villa Hotel.

Shenzhen Post Rebecca Contributes to the Story.

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Pacific Park on Santa Monica Pier is sold

CNL Lifestyle Properties, a Florida real estate trust, buys the amusement area for $34 million.

By Roger Vincent, Los Angeles Times

January 7, 2011

Pacific Park, the brightly lighted amusement park on Santa Monica Pier that has become an international symbol of Southern California, has been acquired for $34 million by a Florida real estate trust.

CNL Lifestyle Properties Inc. said Thursday that it bought Pacific Park and a ground lease for the two-acre property from Santa Monica Amusements, a group of investors who built the park and opened the first phase in 1996.

The park will continue to be run by Santa Monica Amusements, which operates Pacific Park as a tenant. With its Ferris wheel — billed as the only solar-powered one in the world — and other rides visible high above the waves, the park is an emblem of the region, said Curt Caffey managing director of CNL Lifestyle Properties.

"You can't watch a morning newscast or television show without a pan of the pier," Caffey said.

CNL Lifestyle of Orlando, Fla., owns other entertainment venues in Southern California including Mountain High Resort in Wrightwood, Valencia Country Club and Ventura Isle Marina. The company hopes Pacific Park, which draws more than 4 million visitors a year, will stay popular even if times are hard, Caffey said.

"People are not going to give up on time to spend with their families," he said.

Pacific Park, which has no admission charge, grossed nearly $20 million last year from rides, games, food and concessions, General Manager Mary Ann Powell said. The most popular attraction is the Ferris wheel covered with thousands of vivid LED-lights that rises 130 feet above the ocean, followed by the West Coaster roller coaster, she said.

Wear and tear and salt air make the park expensive to operate, however. The Ferris wheel was replaced in 2008 for $1.5 million and it costs more than $200,000 a year just to keep the place freshly painted, Powell said.

"It's a very capital-intensive environment," she said.

roger.vincent@latimes.com

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

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Phil Missig was the listing agent on this Los Feliz hills home when Alix bought it, she has done an amazing job!

Article 1/1/2011

Wall-to-wall surprises: Wallpaper artist Alix Soubiran's L.A. home

la-hm-soubiran-home-photos-001 Wallpaper artist Alix Soubiran's L.A. home ( Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times ) By Emily Young Parisian-born artist Alix Soubiran could live quite happily without a stick of furniture. "A chair can be wonderful, but walls are what you see all the time," she says. "To me, walls that create a story or a mood are the starting point." Soubiran's own wallpaper designs transformed a ramshackle 1923 duplex in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles into the charming home she shares with husband Joe Mauceri, a film and TV director and writer, and their infant daughter, Monica Moonshine. Pictured here: the dining room, where Soubiran's playful side comes out.

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Economic downturn disrupted migration patterns, census data show

The long-standing population shift to Sunbelt states slowed while states with more jobs and affordable homes saw gains. The question is whether those changes will stick or old trends will return.

By Don Lee, Los Angeles Times

December 29, 2010

Reporting from Washington —

One of the hallmarks of the American economy has been the mobility of its people — the speed at which they pulled up stakes to seek better opportunities elsewhere.

But the deep recession has ambushed long-running population trends, sharply slowing migration to much of the Sunbelt while giving a boost to states with more jobs and affordable housing.

Now as the recovery seems to be gaining steam, a central question is whether the population distortions caused by the massive downturn from 2007 to 2009 represent a long-term change or whether previous trends eventually will return as the economy strengthens.

The first set of data from the 2010 census, released this month, underscored the big role that economic forces can play in driving population shifts. The movement of people — and political power — from the Northeast and Midwest to the South and West continued, with Texas gaining the most. Yet there were significant changes within that pattern, including a dramatic slowdown in migration to California, Florida and other states that had long been among the nation's fastest-growing.

Bob Palmieri, 58, of Long Island, doesn't plan to follow his parents, who in the 1970s were among the droves of seniors from New York and New Jersey who retired to Florida.

"I have a nice home here," he said. "I look at Florida as a place for older folks."

Those same forces will probably shape the current decade, at least the first part of it.

"Over time, the [population] numbers will reflect the rate of job growth," said Stephen Levy, director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy in Palo Alto.

Many Americans want to move but can't because they can't sell their homes. Others owe more than their homes are worth. And many young people, who account for the bulk of the moves, are stuck living at home, delaying marriage and having children as they contend with the sluggish economy.

Overall, the nation's population increased 9.7% from 2000 to 2010, the smallest 10-year growth rate since the decade of the Great Depression. As in the 1930s, the latest slowdown was because of fewer immigrant arrivals and a shrinking of the nation's birthrate, in part because of the economic downturn.

Without the recession, Florida might have added 500,000 residents over the last decade, said University of Florida demographer Stanley Smith. The state's 2000-10 growth rate was 17.6%, less than half the pace of the 1970s.

Smith said Florida's sunny weather and absence of a state income tax, among other factors, will help restore stronger population growth as the economy improves. But that may be a long time coming for Florida and other states such as California that leaned heavily on housing and other hard-hit industries. Home prices across the country continued to slide in October, dropping 1% overall from a month earlier, according to figures released Tuesday by Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller.

Florida's unemployment rate, 12% last month, remains one of the highest in the nation. With weak job markets — and in Florida's case an aging population that has contributed to more deaths and a lower natural rate of increase — analysts said such states may be looking at a persistently weaker population growth over the next decade than they have been accustomed to. That in turn could mean slower economic growth and more budget pressures on state and local governments.

Nevada and to a lesser extent Arizona also are in this camp. Their big housing busts and high unemployment curbed what had been a surging tide of jobs and residents moving in from other states.

Many of the new residents had come from California. But the recession and real estate slump limited those inflows from the Golden State — even as the new census suggests there was a much bigger exodus of Californians in the first several years of the last decade than previously thought.

The 2010 census put California's population at more than 37 million, a 10% increase from 2000, but that was about 1.5 million fewer than estimates by the state Department of Finance.

One possible reason for this discrepancy: The surge in housing prices before the crash made it harder for nonresidents to relocate to California, while many more people in the state may have left after the dot-com bust early in the last decade, Levy said.

If California's population growth in the last decade was just average — giving the state no new seat in the House of Representatives for the first time in 90 years — that's largely because the state's job growth during the last 10 years was also just average.

Then there's Texas, which added more people in the last decade than any other state. As its population surged nearly 21% to more than 25.1 million this year, the Lone Star State added to its expanding economic base and its congressional delegation. The latter is a significant source of future economic vitality because of the growing delegation's ability to steer federal spending to the state.

Texas shares some of the same appeal as some other Sunbelt states: low home prices and pro-business, pro-growth policies. But Texas didn't suffer a housing bust as it never enjoyed a housing bubble. And it has a diversified economy, with expanding ports, medical services and its mainstay energy industry, which has held up fairly well throughout.

As a result, the state has bounced back from the recession faster. Its unemployment rate has fallen to 8.2%, while California's remains stuck at above 12% and the nation's is hovering near 10%.

Businesses are following the people. Laura McGuire and her husband, George, plan to expand their home healthcare business in Texas next month. The couple have been running Griswold Special Care franchises in San Antonio since 2003, but will open two offices in Houston, one of the fastest-growing cities in America.

Laura McGuire said many of her clients are coming from more-expensive states.

"I see people selling their shacks in California and buying homes three times as big here," she said.

Statewide, half of previously owned homes in Texas sold for less than $147,000 last month, compared with a median price of nearly $297,000 in California.

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Consumer Confidential: Stormy tips for homeowners, unwelcome news for drivers

December 22, 2010 | 10:19 am

Here's your wet-wet-wet Wednesday roundup of consumer news from around the Web:

-- With SoCal getting yet another drenching, here are some timely tips for homeowners. First of all, most insurance policies for homes will cover damage from wind or rain. So if your roof or skylight starts leaking, or if, God forbid, a tree falls on your house, you'll probably be OK, money- and repair-wise. The real curveball comes from flooding. If the water outside rises and comes in under the door, say, you might be on the hook for any resulting damage unless you also have flood insurance. Similarly, most homeowner policies don't cover mudslides, so that's something else to consider. California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner advises homeowners to carefully inventory their possessions -- a simple videotape will usually suffice -- so that you're in a better position to deal with insurance investigators if the worst should transpire.

-- And here's some unwelcome (but unsurprising) news for all you drivers. This week's storms will leave their mark in the form of hundreds or even thousands of new potholes throughout the region. Bill Davis, executive vice president of the Southern California Contractors Assn., tells me that this happens every time we get a serious soaking. He says this is because we've got a whole lot of sand beneath the pavement, and when it rains, that sand turns to mush. "And when that happens," Davis says, "you get holes in the pavement." So how long will it take to fill in all those nasty potholes? "The rest of our lives," Davies replies. "It's a constant thing here." Heads up, gang.

-- David Lazarus

Posted via email from HaveYouSeenMyHouse -posterous

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