PolicyMap News

Honorary title would cover parts of Harden Street, Farrow Road

By ADAM BEAM – abeam@thestate.com

Columbia officials want to designate a stretch of Farrow Road and a stretch of Harden Street to honor Martin Luther King Jr.

The designation, which would cost the city about $20,000 for street signs and memorial plaques, would be honorary only and would not require anyone to change their address, said Chip Land, Columbia’s planning director.

They would be the first Martin Luther King Jr. streets in Columbia, which has a park named after the civil rights leader.

There’s also a Martin Luther King Boulevard in Hopkins.

Columbia officials plan to announce the designation at the city’s annual Martin Luther King Day celebration, which has been delayed a week until Jan. 26 so it won’t conflict with President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration.

“Every capital city in America, or most of them, have a street name designation after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” said City Councilman E.W. Cromartie “We want to make sure that we would honor that.”

Hundreds of cities across the country have named streets after the civil rights leader. Last year, at least two national media organizations highlighted how most of the streets that bear King’s name are in poor, high crime areas.

Columbia’s designation would be no different, as the Farrow Road/Harden Street corridor is one of the poorest in the city, according to PolicyMap, a demographic mapping service.

Click Here to read the full article.
This article by Adam Beam on The State on Wednesday December 24, 2008.

Wealthier neighborhoods that avoided subprime borrowing will be hurt in the new year as the downturn weakens even healthy markets

By Prashant Gopal

2008 was the year that subprime borrowers and speculators got hurt by the real estate crisis. 2009 could be when everyone else gets hit.

Until now, the nation’s most serious home price declines have been in low-cost markets that were dominated by subprime mortgages, and in overbuilt markets such as Florida, California, and Las Vegas, where residential values are sliding fast toward pre-housing boom levels.

The Commerce Dept. reported Dec. 23 that November new-home sales in the U.S. fell to their lowest level in 17 years, down 35.3% compared with November 2007. And the outlook is even bleaker. The same day, Credit Suisse (CS) forecast that more than 8 million homes will go into foreclosure over the next four years, or approximately 16% of all U.S. households with mortgages.

That’s because the big story in 2009 could be that, with the deepening recession and mounting job losses, serious housing troubles could infect wealthier communities and markets that were just beginning to stabilize this summer before the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on Sept. 15 sparked the most serious financial turmoil in decades. In fact, according to online real estate research firm HousingPredictor.com, based in Destin, Fla., housing prices nationwide will fall 12.5% next year, compared with an estimated 11.1% this year.

Housing and mortgage problems pushed the nation into a recession that could now amplify, draw out, and expand the reach of the housing declines.

Manhattan Hit, Too

Take Manhattan, for example, where condo and co-op prices soared years after housing bubbles in most other major cities popped. New York City’s real estate market was bolstered by residents who were still earning sky-high Wall Street bonuses and by a weak dollar that attracted overseas bargain hunters.

Now that the dollar has strengthened, the economic woes have spread to potential New York home buyers across the globe, and thousands of New York financial professionals are collecting severance. Manhattan apartment prices, as a result, have dropped as much as 20% since the summer, said Jonathan Miller, president and chief executive officer of real estate appraisal firm Miller Samuel. Miller’s analysis is based on contracts signed in recent months, rather than actual closings.

“Mid-september was a milestone,” Miller said. “That’s where you saw a pronounced slowdown in transaction volume.”

HousingPredictor.com is projecting a 19.4% decline in Manhattan home prices in 2009. And Moody’s Economy.com is predicting that condo prices in New York City, Northern New Jersey, and Westchester County will fall 29% by the fourth quarter of next year.

“Nationally, we think this recession is going to be worse than anything we’ve seen in 40 years,” said Marisa DiNatale, senior economist for Moody’s Economy.com. “If the economy gets that bad, then you will start to see foreclosures in Manhattan as well.”

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New PolicyMap Feature Simplifies Online Map Sharing

Online Mapping Tool Now Lets Users Embed, Share Thematic Maps on the Web

(Philadelphia) December 16, 2008 – PolicyMap, the online data mapping tool, today unveiled a new functionality that allows users to embed customized, data-driven maps into their own websites and blogs.  Through this new functionality, users can easily share thematic data from www.policymap.com on any website of their choosing.

PolicyMap offers quick and easy access to a wealth of market and demographic data for policymakers, professionals, and the general public. PolicyMap users can map and analyze by geography more than 4,000 data indicators related to demographics, real estate markets, education, employment, money and income, crime, energy, and public investments. These indicators are aggregated from a variety of sources including U.S. Census, Claritas, FBI, IRS, the Postal Service, and the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act.

For full directions on how to embed a map, visit: http://blog.policymap.com/?p=1520

The embedded map serves as a live link to a full-scale map on PolicyMap, which provides additional information such as a complete legend and details on the data used. The embed feature is available for free to all registered PolicyMap users.

Nearly 150,000 people have utilized PolicyMap since the site launched earlier this year. To date, PolicyMap has more than 8,000 registered users. Its varied subscribers include foundations such as the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, state agencies including the New Jersey Housing Mortgage Finance Agency, private entities like Comcast as well as nonprofit community organizations nationwide.

About PolicyMap

PolicyMap is an online mapping tool that makes it quick and easy to gather and analyze geocentric information. PolicyMap is a service of The Reinvestment Fund (TRF), a not-for-profit leader in the financing of neighborhood revitalization. TRF developed PolicyMap to empower decision makers with better access to credible market and demographic data. To utilize PolicyMap, visit www.policymap.com. To learn more about TRF, visit www.trfund.com.

Steps:
 

1. Create the map you would like to share and click on the “embed” button that appears below the map. A dialogue box will appear, allowing you to specify the size of the map you’d like to embed*.
2. Select the dimensions you want. A new dialogue box will open with the html code for your map. Highlight the code and copy it.
3. Paste this code directly into the html on your website or send the code to your webmaster.
4. You are now ready to share the map you created.
5. To save it for later use or to preview your map, open a text application (Notepad, Wordpad, Microsoft Word). Paste in the code you copied and save the file with the extension of .html.

*Note: The embedded map will not include the title or the legend. However, when you click on the image it will take them to the live map, which has all of the information.

Please attend our free online training sessions to learn many more features on PolicyMap: Training Calender

Bigger, Better Maps: Creating pdf and jpegs of your custom maps to incorporate into your own presentations and reports never looked better. PolicyMap now offers full-page printing and the ability to choose between printing in landscape or portrait. We’ve tried hard to make what you see in your printed material mirror what you are seeing on the screen you’ve created. We think they’ll look great in your presentations and proposals.

Printed portrait maps will now have over 50% more map shown. 
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By Evelyn Lee
Home sales in northern New Jersey have fallen behind places in southern New Jersey, according to a new analysis by PolicyMap, a data provider administered by The Reinvestment Fund, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit community development financial institution.Five of the 10 New Jersey municipalities that experienced the highest increases, by percentage, in median home sales prices between the first quarter of 2007 and the first quarter of 2008 were located in South Jersey, the analysis said: Bridgeton City, Atlantic City, Millville City, Glassboro and Ventnor City. Bridgeton City, with the highest percentage increase in the state, saw its median home sales price jump 43.10 percent from the beginning of 2007 to the start of 2008, according to PolicyMap.

Meanwhile, eight of the 10 municipalities with the largest decreases, by percentage, in median sales prices during the same period were located in northern New Jersey, the analysis said. West New York had the biggest percentage drop in median sales price, which fell 53.32 percent from the first quarter of 2007 to the first quarter of 2008.

“A couple of these areas that had the slowest growth [over the past few years] are faring OK and continuing to see an increase in sales price,” says Elizabeth Nash, data manager at Policy Map, who wrote the analysis. Meanwhile, “areas that had really fast growth are falling more quickly.”

But the analysis does not necessarily present an accurate picture of the state’s housing market, since it doesn’t take into account urban or suburban phenomena that may have affected home prices in the state’s municipalities, says Donald Scarry, principal economist at New Jersey Economics in Mount Laurel. Nor does it reflect the current economic situation. “Since the first quarter of 2008, the economy has changed dramatically,” he says. Now, “it’s an entirely different economy.”

Still, the analysis may indicate how the northern and southern parts of the state have been affected differently by the economy, Scarry says. “Philadelphia, since it’s not as large and doesn’t have as large a financial sector as New York, doesn’t have the volatility in bonuses and employment that has affected northeastern New Jersey and southwestern Connecticut,” he says. “That’s probably the phenomenon that’s going on.”

Click here to read this article by Evelyn Lee which appeared on NJ Biz on December 12, 2008.

With the first quarter of 2008 home sale data just in, it’s useful to examine how home sale prices have shifted throughout 2007 in a traditionally strong housing market: the state of New Jersey. Interestingly, many of the stark changes in number of sales and median sales price from early 2007 to early 2008 appeared in some unexpected places. Over the year, home sales in northern New Jersey’s hot housing market fell behind places in southern New Jersey both in terms of changing prices and number of sales.

Bridgeton, in the south, experienced the highest increase of 43% in median sale price from 2007 Q1 to 2008 Q1 in the state. Prices remained steady at around $80,000 from 2006 to the third quarter of 2007, and, after a dip, rose to $124,500 in 2008. Most sales in the first quarter of 2007 took place in the southeastern part of the municipality, but were more evenly spread throughout town for the next three quarters. The East Lake area consistently saw higher numbers of home sales throughout 2007. Claritas Demographics estimates and projections show a steady increase in median household income from 2000 to 2007 and from 2007 to 2012 on the eastern side of town. Claritas also projects an increase in the number of people on the eastern side of town, particularly around East Lake. If home sale trends are any indication, east Bridgeton appears poised to grow at a steady rate.

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