Lawyers and Business Executives in the News™

Home Costs Stay Beyond Reach of Many

Irina J. Drill is the managing partner of Lindborg & Drill LLP, and a featured guest on the "Insider Exclusive's" "LA's Most Influential Women Series" TV Show. Ms. Drill's practice is primarily devoted to the representation of owners, contractors, developers and construction managers in all facets of construction law, including the litigation and mediation of construction and commercial claims, business litigation, real property-related matters and the counseling of clients in claims avoidance and mitigation techniques. Ms. Drill is skilled in working with clients and opposing parties to resolve matters as efficiently, expeditiously and economically as possible. She has successfully represented clients in complex construction disputes and is knowledgeable in presenting complex construction claims to judges and mediators. Hence her interest about how the U.S. housing market will struggle with too much supply and falling prices for a while yet, but its biggest problem is that homes are too expensive for too many families, according to a report released Monday. "It is too early to determine when the housing slump will end," the 2007 State of the Nation's Housing report from the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies says. "House prices are only beginning to soften, loans most at risk are just starting to hit their reset dates, and credit standards have tightened." You can reach Ms. Drill at 818 637-8325, or email idrill@ldllp.com

Housing slump creates buyers' advantage

Irina J. Drill is the managing partner of Lindborg & Drill LLP. Ms. Drill's practice is primarily devoted to the representation of owners, contractors, developers and construction managers in all facets of construction law, including the litigation and mediation of construction and commercial claims, business litigation, real property-related matters and the counseling of clients in claims avoidance and mitigation techniques. Ms. Drill is skilled in working with clients and opposing parties to resolve matters as efficiently, expeditiously and economically as possible. She has successfully represented clients in complex construction disputes and is knowledgeable in presenting complex construction claims to judges and mediators. Hence her interest about how the advantage is shifting to buyers in many previously high-flying housing markets, as homes take longer to sell and prices level off or begin to fall. Modest annual declines have been seen in cities such as San Diego, Boston, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Honolulu, according to first-quarter data on existing single-family homes compiled by the National Association of Realtors. Meanwhile, price gains of just 1.4 percent or less were reported in New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C. Those numbers have left many people trying to "time" the market to take advantage of the slump. But experts said that can be risky because there is little consensus on how long the current doldrums might last.You can reach Ms. Drill at 818 637-8325, or email idrill@ldllp.com

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

Some of us can still remember that Depression-era tune that uplifted our spirits during some very trying times in our lives. Yt, when one ventures in search of a new home it might as well be the Depression as far as affordability is concerned. California is currently flirting with an affordability index in the neighborhood of 16%. This means that only 16% of Californians making the median income in this state can afford a median priced home, which ranges in excess of $400,000 these days. In the past, this index has been in excess of 30%. What does this mean to the average home purchaser? It certainly means a new attitude toward considering a home purchase. Some have thought in terms of increasing the density of occupancy and are sharing their purchase with two or three other families to share the housing costs. Another method is by lying to obtain a loan, as to the amount of income that the buyer has, and just trying to hold on by your bare teeth. The eventual result of this disparity of income and the high price of housing will be an unprecedented amount of foreclosures that this country will experience in the next few months. Don’t blame this on the buyers, necessarily. It is fomented, somewhat, from the greed of lenders who are anxious to get a high return on their investors’ dollars through imposition of miscellaneous charges and the like, which push yields into the stratosphere. Developers are not even considering feasibility studies before they start building -– they just build. Loan underwriting – assessing the risk of lending – has turned into an exercise in science fiction. This deadly formula for failure brings to mind the words of Emily Dickinson: "Success is counted sweetest by those who ne’er succeed."