Gov. Sam Brownback’s administration is putting some pressure on Kansas Realtors, urging them to contact legislators to support the governor’s income tax proposal.
The proposal includes eliminating the home mortgage deduction, which the Kansas Association of Realtors has opposed since it was announced in January. The group thinks that would hurt an industry still struggling to recover from the recession.
The Associated Press reports that Chad Bettes, chief of staff for Revenue Secretary Nick Jordan, sent the email from his personal account to six real estate friends who are also members of the Kansas Association of Realtors. Bettes asked them to contact their legislator and told them what specific points should be mentioned.
The bill is still working its way through the Legislature.
WICHITA –Productivity grew again in the fourth quarter, at an annual 0.9 percent rate. That reflects growth of 3.7 percent in output and 2.7 percent in hours worked. For the year, it was up 0.4 percent, which was considerably below the layoff-driven 2.3 percent increase in 2009 and 4.0 percent increase in 2010. Productivity growth tends to set a ceiling on the amount of hiring that companies will do. As it approaches zero, companies will tend to stop seeing profit growth.
I pay a lot of attention to what Steve Murray says.
Murray, the editor of Colorado-based Real Trends, a real estate analysis firm, is ready to call it: The American housing market is back.
Here’s the latest evidence, from Murray’s weekly update:
“In advance of the REAL Trends Housing Market Report coming out later this week there is abundant evidence that housing sales both written and closed jumped substantially in most markets around the country. A meeting last week with the CEO’s of the Trendsetters, 12 major regional firms, indicates that sales jumped in double digits in 10 of the twelve markets with some markets showing twenty percent increases.
In just one market, Denver, nearly 40 percent of all listings on the MLS were placed under contract in February. Sales were up in double digits over both last February and from January 2012. Essentially homes priced under $300,000 (approximate) are nearly gone as soon as they are listed.”
Investment bank Morgan Stanley’s co-head of North American fixed-income capital markets is expected to make a court appearance Thursday on charges that he stabbed a New York City cabbie.
William Bryan Jennings was charged with a hate crime earlier this month after allegedly stabbing the cab driver, who drove Jennings from New York to his Connecticut home. Reports say Jennings also refused to pay the fare.
According to an industry report, Morgan Stanley has placed the executive on leave.
WICHITA — The city of Wichita recently jumped on board with the local movement to give tax incentives to homebuyers if they buy new homes. Derby just announced a plan. Maize, Bel Aire, Kechi, Goddard and Garden Plain, I think, have already started a program. To be clear, this isn’t aimed at helping homeowners. This is aimed at helping developers and builders who are overextended, and on the hook for specials and taxes on lots and houses that aren’t selling. It’s a matter of self-defense: if these homes and lots go into tax foreclosure, the city taxpayers have to pay for them. City managers of some of the towns that have done this for a while say it is having an impact, but, really, how much are you going to move the needle with a tax rebate of a few thousand dollars a year that doesn’t kick in until a year after the purchase?
It might be a killing two birds with one stone for the small towns — growth, plus getting taxpayers off the hook for the new roads and sewer lines — but Wichita is so large it risks distorting the housing inventory. If you’re trying to bail out developers and builders — and that’s a topic for another blog about these bastions of the free market– why don’t these cities just give them a one year grace period on taxing these homes and lots. They already have a statutory three-year delay before they go to tax foreclosure and I know many developers are taking advantage of that to preserve cash. Wouldn’t that get to the heart of builder and developer cash flow problems and not add to the area’s already overbuilt inventory?
WICHITA – There were plenty of shaking heads Tuesday morning at City Hall over an inaccurate Wall Street Journal editorial claiming that Wichita voters “defeated” the Ambassador Hotel project and Wichita City Hall in a referendum vote last week.
Even members of Americans for Prosperity, the architects of last week’s successful challenge to the $2.25 million Ambassador guest tax, were chuckling Tuesday morning about this errant national characterization of last week’s referendum.
Because even viewed in the kindest light possible, Wichita voters didn’t come close to defeating a “sweetheart deal” when 61 percent of them said no to the $132,000 annual slice of the guest tax pie to Paul Coury’s Ambassador. In fact, several local, state and federal financial incentives remain in play, without which the 117-room boutique project wouldn’t approach reality.
Unquestionably, Tuesday’s vote was a message to downtown proponents to carefully exercise those incentives in the future. What the vote clearly wasn’t was a defeat for public-private partnerships.