New Link: Oregon 2011 Legislative Measures , "Housing" Search.

I have added a new link in the right pane, OR 2011 Legislative Measures, "Housing" search. 

Search returns all legislative measures in 2011 Oregon legislative session with keyword "housing".  I think search should return results in date order, but in the search results you can sort that for yourself AND change the keyword to something else in the box that currently shows "housing" as the keyword. 

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog. 

New Link Added: Subsidyscope.

Added to right pane, and HERE.

A "Framing Paper" HERE explains the goals of this new site from Pew Trusts and the Sunlight Foundation. The kinds of subsidies that will be tracked at this site are:

"1. Direct Expenditures, including direct transfers of money, goods or services,
such as cash grants or the donation of government surplus. (This does not include
contracts for goods and services which are covered in a separate category below.) 2. Tax Expenditures, which lower the taxes certain parties pay the federal government by allowing special tax exemptions, deductions or credits.
3. Risk Transfers, which convey financial risk to the federal government through insurance agreements, loans, loan guarantees and similar instruments.
4. Government contracts for which the government pays more than fair market value for a good or service or provides a preference for certain types of businesses. For instance, the federal procurement system includes preferences for alternative fuel vehicles, and minority owned businesses."

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

Novogradac Tax Credit Podcasts Added to Links in Right Pane.

Every Tuesday the well established San Francisco based Novogradec and Company does a podcast about tax credits. Primarily, but not exclusively, most podcasts appear to include discussions about Low Income Housing Tax Credits.

There are a variety of formats and methods to subscribe or download these podcasts; the newly added link in the right pane "Novogradec Podcasts" well get you to a page where you can make your choices including the selection of individual podcasts.

Senate Consideration of Housing Bill: How to Use Link Tools to See What Was Said.

Yesterday, the Senate began debate on the GSE/FHA Reform bill. I recorded the C-SPAN Senate proceedings to my DVR while I was in Salem for a hearing and watched snippets last night. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Republican Senators Shelby and Martinez (former HUD Secretary) spoke up strongly in favor of the bill.

How to share with you what they said? Fairly simple.

In the right pane of the blog notice the link "C-SPAN Congressional Video Search".This morning I used the link to find all instances where Mel Martinez spoke yesterday HERE; and for Senator Shelby HERE. (I selected the date, the Senate, and selected the Senator from a long list of Senators who spoke yesterday).

Note that when you click on individual segments for an individual Senator or Representative, you will find not see the video, but ALSO a written transcript of their remarks which can be copied/pasted into an email, a presentation, other document formats , etc.

(To illustrate another use of this search tool: HERE is a search result using these selections, "House" "2008", Blumenauer, and "Housing"; there are four search results found).

Oregon Housing Blog Calendar Added to Site.

I have created a Google public calendar for the Oregon Housing Blog. You can view upcoming events by either

1. Scrolling to the bottom of my main posting page, or
2. By clicking the "CALENDAR, Oregon Housing Blog" link in the right LINKS pane.

I will try to include links to registration materials for those events that require registration and the address and a map to the event.

First events posted

• May 16th, Salem: Division of Finance and Corporate Securities Mortgage Loan Clinic.
  
• June 19th, Salem: Oregon Homeless Summit featuring address by Governor Kulongoski.

Two Links Added

I've added two new links to the right pane.

CSPAN Congressional Video Search
Cool new tool that allows search by date, congressional member , or bill number and then provides links to video and a written transcription. Appears to be currently limited to video from the floor of the House and Senate , so hearings video are likely not included. Check out January 17th and you can see video on HOPE VI debate, including Earl Blumenenauer's strong support based on the success of Housing Authority of Portland HOPE VI project, HERE.

HOPE Now Alliance
This off shoot of the Financial Services Roundtable is the private organization attempting to come up with a coordinated industry approach to increase the volume of loss mitigation measures taken so as to reduce the number of sub prime mortgage that go into foreclosure. Site includes press releases and policy papers.

SAVE: First 150 Blog Posts as PDF.

An easy to use PDF file , with the headlines of the first 150 blog posts from July 2007-Mid January 2008. File is HERE.

Each headline has a clickable web link that will take you to the full post.

USA Spending Link Adds New Research Options.

While it has its limits and issues this new link in the right panel allows one to search for either grants or contracts by organization or by state in varying levels of details.

Its best to figure this out by trying several searches and once you do you will find that you can drill down by agency, program, name of organization, and geography including state, county , and place.

HERE is one example of a list of HUD programs, you can click on any one of them and download varying levels of detail about funding for that program.

And HERE is a listing of more national FY 2006 Housing Choice voucher funding actions that total more than $13.7 BILLION that I downloaded into a single Excel file (7 MB's+ in size) after clicking the Housing Choice voucher program from the list referred to above.( A separate worksheet in this document shows the more than $168 Million in HUD voucher funding for Oregon).

While there are errors and omissions that make these databases less than perfect , they are still better than anything previously available.

Links Added: Portland Metro Asking Prices, and Beta of REO Inventory Data.

HousingTracker.Net has a couple of interesting sites I have added to links in right side panel.

First site HERE uses RMLS data to show asking prices for Portland metro area, includes both current and historical data.

Second site HERE is a BETA showing REO inventory for Portland Metro area, with current and historical data. Data for this BETA site is not the total inventory but that available from lenders listed. Site does show breakout of Mortgage Broker originated REO (from Countrywide) and government RE0 (from Fannie, Freddie, FHA, and VA).

(Similar data is available for other metro areas from HousingTracker.Net).