housing
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Isolated green buildings won't save the planet, TEDsters argue
Everyone in the green-buildings world already understands this -- if they're halfway informed and halfway honest. Who exactly are the writers refuting? Real-estate marketers.
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Mother Earth not invited to housing summit
No surprise here, but Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner & co. gave no mention to sustainability at Tuesday's summit on housing and what to do about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
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Senate bill would make energy-efficient mortgages mainstream
Heating, cooling, and electrifying a home costs money -- more than the average family pays for property taxes. Shouldn't homeowners pay attention to those costs? Shouldn't mortgage lenders? A bill backed by Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) would direct banks to start paying attention to energy.
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How Obama could make housing policy greener
On Tuesday, the Obama administration is holding a large summit on how to reshape federal housing policy and eventually offload mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which the government bailed out in 2008. It'll be a Very Serious event in which the health of the economy gets top billing and the health of the planet will be lucky to get even a passing mention.
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Walk Score team unveils Transit Score and two more apps
First there was Walk Score, the web tool that calculates how walkable a neighborhood is and ranks it on a 100-point scale. Today the same developers release Transit Score, an app that ranks how well-served a location is by buses and rail lines.
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How much do you spend on transport? New web app aims to show you
The cost of a home is easy to keep in mind. The cost of getting to and from it is not. A new web tool aims to shed light on transportation costs and nudge Americans away from sprawl.
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Why won’t Team Obama save a clean-energy program from Fannie and Freddie?
The Obama administration has taken modest measures to help rescue a promising clean-energy finance tool, but it hasn't put its top people on the case. If it did, there's reason to think PACE could be quickly restored.
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How to make Smart Growth affordable
If you live in a walkable, transit-connected neighborhood, you'll probably spend less on transportation. Perhaps mortgage lenders should take note. Here's how smarter mortgages could crack the Smart Growth housing premium.
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Smart Growth is great, unless it created the housing bubble
Did land-use regulation contribute to the housing bubble? New research finds that any limits on where homes can be built corresponded to both higher price gains and steeper price drops for residential property.