Housing: Best time to buy in four years
March 07, 2008
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Home values have declined across the country, giving homebuyers the best buys they've had since 2004.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- It may be the best time to buy a house in more than four years.
Home prices have dropped so quickly and so far that valuations - the difference between what a home should cost and its actual price - are the lowest they've been since 2004, according to a report.
The Cleveland-based bank National City Corp. (NCC, Fortune 500), together with financial analysis firm Global Insight, revealed Tuesday that more than 88% of the 330 housing markets surveyed showed price declines and improved affordability during the last three months of 2007.
Housing rescue: What you need to know
"Housing valuations are almost back to long-term norms," said National City's chief economist, Richard DeKaser. He called current affordability "the best in the past four years."
But DeKaser cautioned that home prices could fall even further.
"This isn't to say home price declines are over," he said. "We could move below historic norms. By the end of 2008, housing markets could be broadly under valued."
Prices still improving
There are still 21 housing markets, or 6% of those surveyed, that are severely over valued, including Atlantic City and Madera, Calif. That's down from 56 overvalued markets at the peak of the housing bubble in 2006.
The report compares actual median home prices with what the authors determine are proper home values based on population density, relative income levels and interest rates, as well as historically observed market premiums or discounts, to determine whether markets are over or under valued.
The report also factors in market intangibles that make some areas more desirable places to live, and more expensive.
"Declines are no longer confined to once-frothy markets," said DeKaser.
The survey covered home valuations during the last three months of 2007, but DeKaser pointed out there's reason to believe that valuations are even more favorable for buyers today.
Price declines have continued into 2008 and interest rates, although they have inched up lately, have been steady or lower compared to late last year. There have even been wage gains; personal income rose 0.5% in December. Soaring foreclosure rates have added inventory to many housing markets, depressing home prices further.
The biggest gains in affordability occurred in California, Michigan and Florida, which are areas that have also been some of the hardest hit by foreclosures. Those states registered 43 of the 50 biggest price declines.
Bend, Ore. currently tops the overvaluation list. Home prices there were judged to be about 59% higher than their fair-market value. Miami, despite a median home price decline of 5.7% last year, is the most overvalued big city, by 44%.
All the best bargains were found in Louisiana and Texas. Houses in Houma, La. were under valued by 31.2%, according to the report. Dallas was the most undervalued big city, by 30%.
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Interview With Alex O’nan Of Interstates, part one (includes music mp3s)
March 02, 2008
Hey folks, I love to listen to music from non-mainstream artists. Check this group out!
"Tell a friend to tell a friend!!!"
Train conductor. Videographer. Drummer. Electronic music-maker. Sojourn worship leader: Alex O’nan is all these things, as well as being a committed husband and a dedicated brother and servant in the Sojourn community. In the next three articles, we’ll peep in on a conversation between interviewer Will Kotheimer and Alex, as they discuss, among other things, Alex’s passion for train conducting and the fascinating films he makes on the tracks, his use of video footage as part of live music performance, his part in the long-time instrumental rock band Of Asaph, the hilarious rap project “Goldsmith Frenchfry,” the development of Sojourn’s music ministry from the early days of our young church up till now, and Alex’s new band, a partnership with friend and old band-mate Kyle Noltemeyer, called Interstates — an exciting blend of live music, electronic beats and video.
Interstates is a truly unique musical artist headed in exciting directions, including a partnership with Nadus Films to create a film series about Sudan, a vision for recasting some of Sojourn’s worship songs “Interstates-style” along with an upcoming new album and cross-country tour now that they have just signed a recording contract with the label The Record Machine and launched a new website, interstatesmusic.com.
Here is the first part of Will Kotheimer’s conversation with Alex. Enjoy, and come back later for the continuation.
WK: Of Asaph - what was it like? When did you start the band?
AO: It was in April 9, 1999. I was cleaning out my desk recently and I found this business card that I’d kept for all these years. I can remember Brian Holton and I, we came home from practice one night and said, “Of Asaph was founded on this day,” and so I said, “Write it on this business card so we won’t forget the date.”
WK: What was it like, putting together your first song? Did you guys have any idea what you were doing?
AO: No. It was very exciting. Brian Holton and I lived in Shelbyville and we were getting into a lot of the Louisville hardcore music, and the band Guilt was one of our favorites - little did I know growing up as a kid, my family knew Kyle Noltemeyer’s family and Kyle was in Guilt.
Guilt had broken up, and this was about two years later — they were about to have a reunion show. So I thought, if there’s ever a time I need to introduce myself to Kyle, it’s now. I had my mom call his mom, and she got his phone number so I called him. It was very awkward … “Hey Kyle, this is Alex Onan, remember me?”
“Yeah, what’s going on man?”
“I just realized that you’re in the band Guilt and I like them.”
You know, just real awkward conversation. He said, “Yeah, you going to the show?” and, “Well, see you there.”
To make a long story short - we met at the show, again. And after that we’d occasionally talk.
Brian and I had been playing little garage bands up until this point and we started playing on our own and like I said we were getting into that hardcore stuff from Louisville and some of that more math-rock type stuff. He was in college and I was a senior in high school. We spent a long time after school playing music together and it was instrumental because neither of us could sing. He was playing guitar and I was playing drums. We would just try to write the craziest rhythms that we could think of, so to tie this all together, we took a tape of songs we were working on to Kyle and asked if he would play with us and he agreed (after a little arm twisting).
But after we got together and started writing stuff, it just naturally happened. And then the whole car ride home with the founding of Of Asaph on the business card. And after that it was just a very meaningful experience and Of Asaph played a huge role in my maturing as a drummer, but also as a person with me knowing Kyle, cause Kyle’s a little bit older than both of us, and he was already married and neither of us were dating anyone. Just a lot more experienced.
Hear Of Asaph perform “This Is How I Write”
WK: Of Asaph was founded on math rock influence?
AO: That’s what Brian and I were into and I don’t think Kyle was really listening to anything but he was drawing on his…I would say Guilt. It’s hardcore, but the newer stuff had definitely some influence with interesting time signature and signature changes. So I think with Brian and I being into that and Kyle sort of coming out of that, it just naturally came out in that way.
WK: Why did Of Asaph disband?
AO: We haven’t. I don’t think we ever will. I think it’s going to be this ongoing thing. I think in the early 2000’s we maybe played six shows a year, and that was the most we ever played. And so our playing of shows is extremely sporadic.
Brian moved away to Danville, KY, which is just a few hours away but still that’s not very conducive to practicing regularly and writing music. You never know, in three years he could move back, or we could just decide we’d like to play a show.
WK: But without Brian it’s not the same band. Lots of other bands would be like, “Let’s just get another bass player.”
AO: What was cool about Of Asaph: it was more like three really good friends getting together and playing music instead of a band getting together. So it was really easy to get together and play music. We were motivated because we were good friends and wanted to spend time together.
WK: Not because of ambition.
AO: It was totally not about playing shows or recording music, or getting a record deal. I guess it was seven or eight years that we played together.
WK: Tell me how you got started in video and its relationship to your music. What inspired you?
AO: What inspired me…this was pre-Of Asaph. We were one of the first, and I don’t say this to sound like we were “innovative” or anything, we were just this way by default. We were one of the first instrumental bands, that I can remember, playing in Louisville. We couldn’t find anybody who could sing. We tried out four or five different singers and it just didn’t work - the music was definitely better by itself.
And we thought that people would not be interested at the live show, that we should have some sort of video footage playing. I think Brian had been to a Rachel’s show a couple of months before and it was really influenced by them because they have a couple projectors going. So we took my dad’s old video camera down to the train tracks in Shelbyville and we just waited for trains to go by and we’d get these weird angles, so basically we just had this collage of trains passing through Shelbyville.
It was horrible, it was not very good footage and I took this maybe 13” television with a VCR built into it and set it in front of my kick drum at the first Of Asaph show and had this video playing. I think since then we’ve learned that a little TV screen - it’s just not aesthetically pleasing to watch and most people probably couldn’t see it.
So now I just see a lot of cool things at work (as a train conductor) and I want to capture them and I think I would capture them regardless of if I was gonna use it for Interstates videos. There’s just a lot of neat things as you go through the countryside and see how the shadows are cast onto the ground. Beside the train you just have this huge shadow cast upon the ground.
One of the songs, the song of benediction, is all shadows of a train going on the ground and its this really flat part of the state between Bowling Green and the Tennessee border. It’s extremely flat. You can see for miles and miles and miles and in the video I put my head out the window and you can see almost the entire train, and the shadow on this farmland.
Hear “A Song of Benediction” by Interstates
And there’s a new song, it’s about a car wash, and it was cold outside and the warm water from the car wash was making the windows fog a little bit and it was low sunlight so the sun was coming through and you just have these spinning orange-sponge-flappy things. And the way the sun was lighting them was very neat looking.
WK: And you can use the angels of the dashboard windshield to frame it.
AO: Exactly.
WK: I’ve seen those. I was wondering, did you have any inclination, any clue at all when you were shooting the first video that you would end up being a train conductor?
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