Anita Acacio- Preventing Foreclosures

Pick any major city and you’re certain to find lots of traffic. Big city traffic is how you flow in and out of most cities, it’s a threat to life and limb when crossing streets and since it’s often a molasses-like mass of belching vehicles, big-city traffic is the surest way to enrich local cab drivers when going crosstown, uptown or nowhere at all.

It now turns out that New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg — a guy who takes the subway to work — wants to reduce Manhattan traffic in his fair city by instituting what’s called “congestion pricing.” The idea is to charge $8 a day for auto users who want entry into the heart of Manhattan, thereby reducing vehicular traffic volume, cutting pollution and raising money which can be used to better public transit.

One study by the Global Strategy Group, a political polling organization, shows that if you charged $8 per day per car for access to the city from 60th Street south to the Bowery at the tip of Manhattan, then traffic would be cut by 50 percent.

Another 10 percent of those surveyed said they would neither drive nor use mass transit, which means they would work at home. However, 17 percent said they would have to drive regardless of the charge because public transport was not realistically available to them.

Is congestion pricing a solution to the nation’s crowded cities? It is a magical cure that would raise money for local governments while cutting pollution?

Actually, congestion pricing already exists in both London and Stockholm, and the programs are said to be hugely popular. (The program in London costs £8 daily, more than $16 in U.S. currency.)

The electronic pass programs now used in many states to collect highway tolls without stopping traffic could also be used for a congestion pricing program: If you commute you would get a transponder for your car. Once you pass a detector at a given access point your account would be charged for the day. At the end of the month your total bill for access to the city would be paid automatically by credit card. If you did not have a transponder, then you would have to move through a toll plaza and pay in cash. (In Israel, Highway 6 is all electronic — there are no toll plazas and you can only enter with a transponder.)

Congestion pricing would produce a number of winners:

 
• If you owned an apartment inside the congestion zone, unit values would rise because there would be less pollution, reduced noise and no cost to enter the area. 
• If you lived in an area with easy public access to downtown then property values would go up. As an example, Astoria in the borough of Queens is 15 minutes from mid-town Manhattan by train. 
• Congestion pricing would encourage more people to car pool, thus cutting the impact of the daily fee while getting more cars off the road. 
• There would be exceptions for cabs, buses and delivery vehicles. 
• Less traffic would speed the flow of vehicles into the city, in itself a result that would reduce pollution. 
• There is a security aspect to congestion pricing in the sense that vehicles with transponders can be tracked. Think of the commercial systems which allow you to press a button for roadside help or if you’re locked out of a car.

 

While congestion pricing has its benefits and has proved to be successful, it also has some drawbacks.

First, congestion pricing is a financial burden. The cost of commuting is a big deal to most drivers and making it more expensive is essentially elitist: If you operate a hedge fund, an extra $8 a day is irrelevant; if you’re a computer programmer working in a downtown office tower, then an extra $1,600 or so a year in after-tax costs is a visible and real expense.

Second, having ripped up trolley car rails in most areas, congestion pricing would condemn many people to costly and unreliable public transit systems. Commutes in many cases would be longer and would still require cars to get to and from transit access points.

Third, if large numbers of people in a given area needed to commute but the area had poor public transportation, home values would drop because there would be higher driving costs.

Will congestion pricing come to your city? Despite some drawbacks, it’s an idea which is likely to be adopted in a number of major metro areas — think of New York, San Francisco and Washington as places to start. With improved public transport you could certainly see congestion pricing in other major metro areas.

Alas, the art of dodging traffic will never be the same if congestion pricing becomes real, a loss for the more athletic and fun-loving among us.

Written by Peter G. Miller

An update on kitchen remodeling reveals you could be spending a lot more and getting a lot less when you do-over your home’s social center.

Consumer Reports “Kitchen-Planning Guide” now includes a new feature, “Great Kitchens For Less,” a dissertation on spending less and getting more when you remodel or just swap out old appliances with new. With findings and recommendations based on independent laboratory tests, pricing comparisons and cost analyses, the Consumers Union publication says the hype on stuff you can buy for the kitchen is often just that.

It’s not surprising kitchens get the hard sell.

Kitchens are the social gathering spot for the family and guests and new technology is turning it into the home’s command center.

That’s not all.

Remodeling kitchens is a value added proposition because a large portion, if not all and sometimes more of the remodeling cost becomes added home value.

Finally, upgrading major appliances today comes with both an energy conservation boost and convenience boom.

“Whether you’re updating your appliances or planning a full remodel, seeing past the hype can be tough when everything looks so good,” the magazine reports in an overview that names names and includes an everything-you-wanted-to-know approach to kitchen remodeling and financing, as well as the appliances, furniture, materials and accessories that go into a job, large or small.

Notable in the exhaustive report is the potential for big money savings in the “10 Most-Hyped Products And What To Buy Instead” side report.

“Mistakes can be costly as well as disappointing, because the most loudly hawked products are often the most expensive,” according to Consumer Reports.

Here are some examples:

Don’t let a new identity theft study confuse your approach to warding off the crooks. No matter the source of the pilfering, the fundamentals of ID theft prevention apply.

A new study indicating who is likely to steal your identity shifts the blame from people you know to those who are more likely to be strangers.

In its “Identity Fraud Trends and Patterns”, Utica College’s Center For Identity Management & Information Protection (CIMIP) tracked Secret Service arrests and convictions of offenders and found that identity thieves used these methods of operation.

 
• ID thieves used the Internet or some other technological device in the commission of the crime approximately 50 percent of the time. Among those who did not use technology, tactics like dumpster diving and change of address forms were used 20 percent of the time. 
• ID thieves snatched information from service, retail, financial industries or other corporations in 50 percent of the cases in which the point of compromise could be determined. A family member or friend was the point of compromise in only 16 percent of those cases. 
• ID thieves used their place of employment to gain access to information 43.8 percent of the time among those who worked at retail outlets including stores, car dealerships, gas stations, casinos, restaurants, hotels, hospitals and doctors’ offices. Private corporations were the scene of insider ID theft in about 20 percent of those cases.

 

The study is in contrast to reports from Javelin Strategy & Research, which has studied the issue from the perspective of victims, rather than the crooks.

“Online Banking and Bill Paying: New Protection from Identity Theft,” a study released several years ago by Javelin Strategy and Research, a consultant for financial services, payments, and commerce sector companies, analyzed findings from Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and U.S. Postal Service reports, as well as its own studies.

That study said ID theft stems from a paper trail — 40 percent of all ID fraud starts with the theft of a wallet or a purse; 14 percent of the time when someone sets up a new account it’s done with information the perpetrator took out of a mailbox.

Javelin also said the most likely culprits are friends and family.

James Van Dyke, responding to the Utica study, said he didn’t see a conflict with his firm’s results because the Secret Service takes on high-dollar cases — the median loss in the Utica study was $31,000.

A recent Gartner Inc. survey of victims found the average loss to be about a tenth as much, $3,300.

Van Dyke also says smaller investigations are handled by local or state police.

It doesn’t really matter how or by whom identity is stolen and used illegally, the experts says. Consumers are advised to guard all the possible approaches to personal information.

Written by Broderick Perkins

Mortgage fraud is forcing lenders to scrutinize the paperwork and today’s home loan applicant must be better prepared to run the mortgage application gauntlet.

30 to 70 percent of early mortgage payment defaults are likely linked to borrower misrepresentations on the mortgage loan application, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s”2006 Mortgage Fraud Report” released last year.

Lenders already tightening underwriting standards by demanding higher credit scores and fewer credit report blemishes, are also going over statements on applications with a fine tooth comb.

“While it would be naïve to assume that we could narrow the cause of every foreclosure down to one single factor, this FBI information clearly indicates that borrower fraud plays a significant role in the record number of defaults and foreclosures we’ve been seeing over the past couple of years,” says Jay Meadows, chief executive officer for Fort Worth, TX-based Rapid Reporting, a fraud prevention company serving the mortgage industry.

Lying on a mortgage application is against the law and today, given the greater level of scrutiny, the practice will get your home loan request rejected.

Getting past the eagle eyes of mortgage underwriters means being prepared, complete and forthright. A well-prepared application also speeds the approval process.

Putting a fresh coat of paint on your home will prolong the life of its skin, pump up the value, and revive its curb appeal, all important additions, especially when it’s time to sell.

The benefits you’ll get assumes, of course, the job of slathering on the latex or oil-based paint is professionally performed.

The pros make it look easy, but that’s because they’ve been at it for quite a while. Painting your home isn’t a do-it-yourself job unless you’ve got the know how, the proper tools and enough time off from painting the town red.

When hiring a professional, ask relatives, friends, co-workers and others you trust — and who’ve recently enjoyed a successful paint job on their home — for references to qualified, licensed home painters in your area. A specialist in exterior painting has more square feet of exterior painting under his or her belt. A home painter who works inside and out, can be just as professional.

Even when you hire a licensed professional, however, you should still play a role in choosing the colors and making sure the job gets done right.

The Rohm and Haas Paint Quality Institute and Jackie Craven, About.com’s resident architect, offer these tips for a solid house painting job.