Is California's Wild Housing Market a Sign of a ... - AOL Real Estate

California is the comeback kid of the housing recovery. Though home prices are making annual gains not seen since 2006, The Golden State sticks out as one where they are on a startlingly dramatic swing upward. California prices have posted double-digit hikes on a year-over-year basis for eight consecutive months. In other words, they're rising fast -- very fast.

And now California is sweeping the top cities where home list prices are rising the fastest. Six of the top seven cities -- which all saw list prices jump more than 20 percent year-over-year in February -- are in California, according to Realtor.com. That's great, but perhaps a little scary.

As some experts have been warning recently, housing conditions like California's could be an early sign that we're headed into another housing bubble. Buyers all over the state are getting into bidding wars, home prices are on a steep incline that some say is unsustainable, and open houses are once again attracting a frenzy of house hunters. This is what we saw in 2005 and 2006. So should California, despite all its encouraging news, be making us worried? Not necessarily.

"It's important to put these increases [in home prices] into perspective," said Errol Samuelson, president of Realtor.com. "Despite these gains, home prices nationally in January were still 21.4 percent lower than they were at the peak of the housing boom in June 2006. In California, the losses were much worse. Homeowners lost more than half the value of their homes when prices fell. Today, California prices are still 34.8 percent below the peak level. California prices haven't even recovered half of what was lost."

There's another reason today's sharp increase in prices differs from the days of the housing bubble: There are real fundamentals behind them. It's not pure speculation. Jed Kolko, Trulia's chief economist, noted that solid job growth in California's coastal areas are putting more buyers in the market, allowing sellers to raise prices because of demand. At the same time, housing inventory is lower than it has been in a decade, another element that typically drives prices higher. (But that should ease as more homeowners become confident about trying their hand at selling.) Plus, Samuelson added, government regulations are preventing another housing boom based on unqualified buyers being able to snag mortgages they couldn't afford in the first place.

So for now, what's happening is just a strong recovery, not a bubble. Still, it is rather surprising how fast prices are bouncing back in California. Click through the gallery below to see the seven cities where list prices are rising the fastest.

See more:
In the 10 Best Cities for Jobs, Hot Housing Markets, Too
10 Best Cities to Own a Home
5 Best Cities to Sell a Home Right Now

More on AOL Real Estate:
Find out how to calculate mortgage payments.
Find homes for sale in your area.
Find foreclosures in your area.

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Source: http://realestate.aol.com/blog/2013/03/28/california-housing-bubble/

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Going, going, gone - dodo bone up for sale in London

LONDON (Reuters) - A rare four-inch fragment of a dodo bone will go on sale in Britain in April, around 300 years after the flightless bird and icon of obsolescence was hunted to extinction.

Auctioneers Christie's said on Wednesday it was hoping to raise as much as 15,000 pounds ($22,600) for the piece of a bird's femur.

The last sale of dodo remains the auction house could find took place in London in 1934 - and it was expecting considerable interest from a highly specialised band of collectors and enthusiasts.

"It is so rare for anyone to part with these prized items," said James Hyslop, head of Travel, Science and Natural History at Christie's auction house in South Kensington, London.

"From its appearance in "Alice in Wonderland" to the expression 'dead as dodo', the bird has cemented its place in our cultural heritage," he added.

The Western world first heard of dodos in 1598 when Dutch sailors reported seeing them on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius.

Less than 100 years later, the birds had disappeared. Most experts say they were probably hunted down by successive waves of hungry sailors, and the pigs and other large animals they brought on to the island.

No complete specimens have survived - and scientists have been pouring over fragments of remains for years to try and reconstruct what the dodo might have looked like.

The famous image of a squat, comic, short-necked bird, immortalised in John Tenniel's illustrations for "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", is widely thought to be wrong.

Christie's did not say whether the thigh bone, part of an unnamed private English collection, would provide any fresh clues.

The auction house said its bone was almost certainly excavated in 1865 at Mare aux Songes in Mauritius during a dig by natural history enthusiast George Clark.

The bone is one of 260 lots in a Travel, Science and Natural History sale held by Christie's in London on April 24. The items are open to public viewing from April 20.

Other items on the block include a fossilised egg from Madagascar's equally extinct elephant bird, more than 100 times the average size of a chicken egg, as well as scientific instruments, maps and globes.

(Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/going-going-gone-dodo-bone-sale-london-171659592.html

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Judge to hear Arizona immigrant driver's license ban suit

By Tim Gaynor

PHOENIX (Reuters) - Lawyers will ask a federal judge on Friday to prevent Arizona from denying driver's licenses to young illegal immigrants granted temporary legal status by the federal government in the southwest state's latest court clash over the Obama administration's immigration policies.

Civil rights groups filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Phoenix last November against Arizona Governor Jan Brewer and two state transport department officials on behalf of five immigrants from Mexico who qualify for deferred deportation status under President Barack Obama's program.

The suit challenges the legality of an executive order issued by Brewer in August that denied young migrants licenses, saying that the federal government program did not give them lawful status or entitle them to public benefits.

The lawyers say that Brewer's order is preempted by the federal government's authority to regulate immigration and violates the constitutional rights of the plaintiffs. They will seek to have the measure enjoined while the case is pending.

"We want the judge to block the governor ... from continuing to discriminate against these students," said Victor Viramontes, national senior counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, one of the groups that brought the suit.

The court battle is the latest for Brewer, a Republican who has become a major antagonist of Obama's Democratic administration and its immigration policies.

About 40 states and the District of Columbia have confirmed that they are granting driver's licenses or plan to do so for undocumented youths who received a short-term reprieve from Obama under the program in June.

'DEFENDING ARIZONA LAW'

While Republicans in some states have opposed drivers licenses for illegal immigrants, only Arizona and Nebraska have said outright that young immigrants are not eligible.

Under Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, immigrants who came to the United States as children and meet certain other criteria can apply for a work permit for a renewable period of two years. They also can obtain Social Security numbers.

An estimated 1.7 million youths are potentially eligible for the program, of whom about 80,000 live in Arizona. As of mid-February, about 200,000 applicants nationwide been granted deferred action, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

They are considered to be lawfully present during that period, although they do not have full legal status. But Brewer maintained that the president's policy did not "confer upon them any lawful or authorized status and does not entitle them to any additional public benefits."

Her spokesman, Matthew Benson, said state law requires individuals to have "federally authorized presence" to qualify for a license, and Obama's action did not amount to that.

"Governor Brewer is intent on defending Arizona law, and is confident the court will uphold the state's action," Benson said.

Brewer signed a controversial bill cracking down on illegal immigrants into law in 2010, setting up a clash with the Obama administration. The law's centerpiece that requires police to check the immigration status of people they stop if they suspect they are in the country illegally was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in June.

The hearing comes as Obama is pushing Congress to pass him a bill overhauling the U.S. immigration system, granting millions of illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, as well as tightening security on the Mexico border.

Bipartisan groups in both chambers of the U.S. Congress are close to completing work on a draft bill.

(Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Eric Walsh)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/judge-hear-arizona-immigrant-drivers-license-ban-suit-100319638.html

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Try-Before-You-Buy App Demo Platform AppSurfer Lets You Test Apps On Facebook; Debuts An Android App Of Its Own

AppSurfer, an Indian startup working to bring Android applications to the browser so users can "try before they buy," is today launching an Android application which lets users browse, test, then install the applications they like. The startup has also added a number of new features to its platform since its debut last fall, including support for tablet apps, accelerometer support, and the ability to share app demos to Facebook.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/q4wKPbkmb8s/

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Jarret Stoll: Dating Erin Andrews, Luckiest Man on the Planet

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/03/jarret-stoll-dating-erin-andrews-luckiest-man-on-the-planet/

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Google reportedly halts print editions of Frommer's guidebooks

Were we really expecting a different outcome? Several months after Google bought Frommer's to bolster its location efforts, Skift hears that the iconic travel guide maker has completely stopped publication of print editions as its focus swings to the online realm. Authors say that many of their scheduled Frommer's books now won't be published; a few say their contracts were simply delayed, but the usual raft of guides that would show at this time of year just haven't materialized. We've reached out to Google to confirm what's going on, although the writing may have been on the wall when the bookstore disappeared from the Frommer's site in September. If true, many travelers will have to either switch to rival guides or use Google's digital parallels to learn what's interesting in a strange new land.

[Image credit: Caitlin Regan, Flickr]

Filed under: Internet, Google

Comments

Source: Skift

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/_FCvkAhZf_8/

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Women leaders in business - Fortune Management & Career Blog

FORTUNE -- Businesses across the world need to become more welcoming to women. Arguably, United States-based companies should be leading this charge. They aren't.

U.S. companies are lagging behind not just progressive Scandinavians but also businesses in emerging markets. Companies in countries just now shaping their economies have higher percentages of women business leaders than in the U.S.

Not only does the U.S. lag behind several emerging market countries in terms of female leadership on company boards, but the gap extends to other executive roles. According to a 2013 report by Grant Thornton, only 20% of senior corporate leaders in the U.S. are women. Other G7 countries didn't fare so well either -- take Japan (7%) and the United Kingdom (19%).

MORE: Wall Street wears the pants at Sears and J.C. Penney

The country with the most women in high places? China. Over half of corporate leaders in China are women. Estonia (40%), Vietnam (33%), and Botswana (32%) rank in the top 10.

"I'm surprised that they're making as much progress as they are," says Erica O'Malley, a partner at Grant Thornton.

How are these nations making such progress?

First off, national cultures that may appear conservative on the surface are in fact more complex. In a 2012 paper called "Cultural constraints on the emergence of women as leaders," authors Geoffrey Leonardelli and Soo Min Toh, both associate professors at the University of Toronto, explore the effects of cultural rigidity related to female leadership. So-called '"tight" cultures punish members of the group from deviating from cultural norms. In general, culturally inflexible countries do not support women leaders.

But there are exceptions to this tendency. Namely, when countries with traditional gender norms implement government mandates or top-down rules about gender equity in business, they tend to take hold. For example, in 2011, Malaysia's cabinet approved a law mandating that companies based in the country include one-third female representation on corporate boards within the next five years. The punishment for failure is harsh: Companies that don't make the cut risk being delisted.

But this is America. U.S. companies don't respond well to government mandates to change the status quo. And that status was solidified in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. America's second industrial revolution was fueled by steel, coal, and oil and designed by men.

The world has since changed, but cultural norms stick around long after they're relevant, especially given the tendency of people in power to surround themselves with people who think like them.

MORE: The 50 greatest business rivalries of all time

Emerging markets don't face that problem in the same way. Many are undergoing their very own industrial revolutions right now, and even culturally conservative countries by 2013 standards probably look like socially progressive free-love fests compared to the buttoned-up division of labor prevalent in turn-of-the-century America.

Emerging market economies also have more opportunities to hire women since they are growing, O'Malley says. "If you look at more traditional-valued countries who you think would struggle with putting women in leadership rules, they're also the growth countries, so they're creating new jobs." As these nations are developing their business cultures, women are entering the workforce in high places from the get-go.

The U.S. has less of a clean slate, and will have to quickly come up with an alternative to top-down government mandates to encourage the appointment of senior-level women at corporations. "It would not be a good business strategy to sit and wait," O'Malley says.

Source: http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2013/03/22/women-business-leaders-us/

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