| Housing and Economic Development Solutions

Tax Reform and Resort Communities: Why the Housing Market Isn’t About to Crash

Posted on January 2, 2018 by billhettinger

By now we’ve all read the predictions about the big declines coming to many housing markets in 2018 as a result of the recently passed tax reform bill. The tax bill caps the deduction of state and local taxes (including property taxes) at $10,000 per year, eliminates the deductibility of interest on second homes, and caps the deductibility of interest on new mortgages greater than $750,000, while at the same time raising the standard deduction for a married couple from $12,000 to $24,000. The general consensus is that the increase in the standard deduction is

Workforce Housing Creation is About Making the Number Work

Posted on June 8, 2017 by billhettinger

While looking through the list of workforce housing articles in my Google Alerts yesterday, I came across one from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel titled “Palm Beach County looks to revamp affordable housing program.” While I routinely review the workforce and affordable housing articles Google provides, this particular article hit home. The gist of the article is that Palm Beach County had passed an inclusionary zoning ordinance in 2006 but there has not been a one affordable single family home constructed in the 11 years since the law was enacted and the county commission is now

Reflecting on 2016: Housing Supply is Once Again Not Keeping Up With Housing Demand

Posted on December 31, 2016 by billhettinger

As we end 2016, I can’t help thinking back seven years to 2009 to a conversation I had with some folks at the National Association of Home Builders. We were talking about the tight credit standards the Fed was imposing on banks for anything that had to do with housing and difficulty builders were having finding money for land development. Seven years ago, the country and the world were in throngs of the great recession caused in large part by the collapse of housing markets that had been fueled by easy money and irrational exuberance.