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Posting by MIT News below is excellent  b y Peter Dizikes, MIT News Office September 15, 2011

Home prices in many of the world’s most famous cities run to well over $1,000 per square foot. By contrast, MIT architects have produced a decidedly more affordable alternative: the first prototype from the Institute’s “1K House” project, an effort to see if low-cost homes for the poor can be constructed for $1,000, total.

The prototype, called Pinwheel House, was designed by Ying chee Chui MArch ’11, a graduate of MIT’s Department of Architecture, and has been constructed in Mianyang, in Sichuan Province, China.

“It’s part of the responsibility of an architect, to create these spaces for people to live,” Chui says. “It’s from the heart.”

Chui first designed Pinwheel House in 2009 as part of the design studio — essentially a class — that launched the 1K House effort. The project is particularly focused on affordable housing for areas hit by natural disasters, such as the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan. This prototype turned out to be more costly, at $5,925, but is still very inexpensive in relative terms.

The idea to attempt building $1,000 homes was first conceived by Tony Ciochetti, the Thomas G. Eastman Chair at MIT’s Center for Real Estate, and inspired by One Laptop Per Child, the foundation headed by MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte that brings low-cost computers to children.

“There is a huge proportion of the world’s population that has pressing housing needs,” says Ciochetti, who first got the idea for the initiative after seeing a family of four emerge from a tiny mud hut while he was traveling through rural India. Like One Laptop Per Child’s aim of developing $100 computers, Ciochetti adds, the idea of the $1,000 house is intended as a challenge to designers: “Can you build affordable, sustainable shelter for such a large population?”

Pinwheel and courtyard

Chui’s house is one of 13 plans that emerged from the first 1K House design studio, in 2009. It features hollow brick walls with steel bars for reinforcement, wooden box beams, and is intended to withstand a magnitude 8.0 earthquake.

The Pinwheel House prototype was more expensive to build partly because it is larger than Chui’s original design — about 800 square feet, rather than 500 square feet. The smaller version of the house could be built for about $4,000, says Chui, now an architectural practitioner in New York City. That figure could be still lower if a large number of the homes were built at once, she adds.

In any case, the central design concept of Pinwheel House is the same: It has a modular layout, with rectangular room units surrounding a central courtyard space. “The module can be duplicated and rotated, and then it becomes a house,” Chui says. “The construction is easy enough, because if you know how to build a single module, you can build the whole house.”

Yung Ho Chang, a professor of architectural design at MIT who helped oversee the 2009 1K House design studio, thinks the prototype has fulfilled the promise of Chui’s design. “The house Chee built has good ventilation and good light,” Chang says.

Chang, for his part, is originally from China, and runs an independent practice there, Atelier FCJZ. He was attracted to the 1K House project, in part, by the shortage of good housing in some parts of his native country.

“After the earthquake, this project came as a natural thing to do,” Chang says. “It’s not just about how cheap the house is, but if it’s decent. When you look at living conditions in parts of China, India and Africa, they don’t meet the basic standards of what we think of as real housing.”

From $1K to $10K?

The 1K House project has proven successful enough, and attracted enough attention, that Chang is overseeing a related MIT design studio this fall, along with a number of outside collaborators. This one aims to create a series of home designs, intended for Japan, which would cost $10,000 to build. Participants in the studio include architects and designers from Tokyo University, the Japanese architecture firm Tsushima Design Studio, Atelier FCJZ, the Japanese retailer Muji, and Vanke, a real estate development firm in China.

“The idea of the 1K house is very much about how could we, as architects in research institutions like MIT, work on world poverty,” Chang says. “This semester, the mission is more about how design could reach a bigger percentage of the population, in the middle class.”

The new design studio also aims to create homes that could be built inexpensively following natural disasters, such as the earthquake and tsunami that struck northern Japan in March. Rebuilding in such situations, Chang says, often entails three stages of construction: the creation of temporary shelters, then stronger temporary homes sturdy enough for winter weather, and then permanent replacements for damaged or destroyed buildings.

During that process, Chang says, “there are a lot of resources wasted, including energy.” Alternately, he suggests, inexpensive and simple houses built from an existing template could let countries rebuild more quickly with practical, permanent structures.

The use of inexpensive housing for rebuilding is, in part, why architects in Japan are now engaging with the project. The initiative “is an important step in the realization of rapid/permanent community building,” says Andrew Wit, an architect with Tsushima Design Studio, responding to questions by email. After disasters, he adds, “the government very quickly builds shelters to house all of those affected by the events, but these cheap housing types have very short lifespans and are also made at very low quality standards … But the [MIT house project] asks if it is possible to utilize new technologies and processes for the quick creation of housing equal to or higher then the typical quality standards which are currently seen in Japan.”

Plenty of hurdles remain before any home can be manufactured for $1,000 or less. “If it were easy, somebody would have done it,” Ciochetti says.

But ultimately, Chang hopes, convening further studios in the vein of the 1K House project will allow more designs to move from the drawing board and onto solid ground. “The inexpensive laptop got to be more than an idea, it became available for children,” Chang says. “I hope one day we’ll be in the same position.”

A quiet title action is a lawsuit designed to handle clouds on title. In English, that is a way to handle removing disputes, like easements for instance a neighbor built a shed that is 4 feet on your property and they want it as their own property. It can also be used to transfer the property in a new person’s name. For instance a parent dies and the property needs to be vested in a name of their children to be sold. Quiet title can do that. It can also be used as Mr. Keane did to remove liens security on the home. You notify the Trustees, the original broker or lender that did the loan and any other recorded parties of interest, accept MER. By not notifying MERS the real owner can’t come forward and that is the real surprising part of the case that Judge Glenn Iwasaki accepted the argument that MERS was not a real beneficiary just a paper one with no interest in the property. Wikipedia defines Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS):

Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS) is a privately held company that operates an electronic registry designed to track servicing rights and ownership of mortgage loans in the United States.^[1]
MERS asserts to be the owner (or the owner’s nominee) of the security interest indicated by the mortgages transferred by lenders, investors and their loan servicers in the county land records. MERS maintains that its process eliminates the need to file assignments in the county land records which lowers costs for lenders and consumers by reducing county recording revenues from real estate transfers^[2] and provides a central source of information and tracking for mortgage loans.^[3] MERS’ role in facilitating mortgage trading was relatively uncontroversial in its early days a decade ago but continued fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis has put MERS at the center of several legal challenges disputing the company’s right to initiate foreclosures. Should these challenges succeed, the US banking industry could face a renewed need for capitalization.^[4]

Now attorney Keane definition of MERS Is:

MERS is a tax evasion broker which has deprived local governments of essential funds by collecting fees otherwise necessary to property record trust deeds and assignments of the same.

My opinion is MERS is:

A company specifically designed by the large lenders, mortgage insurance companies and title insurance companies to collude to make it impossible for an outsider to find out who actually owns the security instrument and note on a home with MERS as the beneficiary. My evidence is who owns MERS, click the link MERS Owners it looks like a Who’s Who of the mortgage securitization system. I can’t think of a really good reason to keep the info private unless you were going to create an impenetrable smoke and mirrors system to shield any fraud, by way of mortgage securitization or foreclosure procedures. I agree it also takes money out of the counties by not paying for recording of assignments of trust deeds usually 3 to 8 pre-loan’s life. At $20 to $60 a loan pre-recording that a lot of money since 1996 for every county; if the county doesn’t get that money they raise the taxes on the home owners because the county need the same amount of money to run every year. No money form assignments more money from home owner in property taxes.

Mr. Keane did get the 3^rd district Court Judge Glenn Iwasaki to agree MERS is not a legal beneficiary in a security instrument and that is a break through. We’ll see how it goes on for here if they banks run there same playbook they will go to a federal Judge to overturn that precedence without a hearing the next time it is made. In the end the trustee With Drew and the original lender stipulated they had no interest the 2^nd mortgage was releases along with the trust for the 2^nd mortgage who answered the complaint. Since the first mortgage had no recorded real beneficiary that was it a default Judgment with Prodigious for the home owner. From start to finish April, 28, 2010 to Aug, 30, 2010 Judge Order of judgment quieting title took 4 months. So In Salt Lake City for a Quiet title action and a favorable Judge who knows? You still have the Note to deal with under the commercial code laws of the state.

More importantly servicers have started 1.4 Million trial modifications on the program, but have canceled 719,487 because of insufficient documentation. That is roughly half the modifications and an additional 69,000 were still in the trial mode over 6 month: Even though the program calls for only a 3 month trial payment period. Only 519,648 loan modifications were converted to permanent modification for the nation a far cry for the 3 million families promised by president Obama’s Administrations. What has the public got for the 50 Billion invested in the HAMP program started in March 2009. As is seems very little difference has been made for the $50 billion investment in the program authorized by Congress in 2009.

The American public has been given just another political grandstanding gutless program by our politicians and a theft of public funds earmarked for our home owners foreclosure prevention programs.

Pretty much the same in the avenues area as the county.  Absorption rates over 8 month mean decreasing prices!   That not good news going into the winter and no help in site form the government on incentives to get more home owners in the market!  Looks like the market will continue to be drive n by Short Sales and Foreclosed bank owned property!

Prepared By:

Tom Winand

Spotted Home LLC

801-403-9774

This report was generated automatically by the Wasatch Front Regional MLS on 11/10/2010 at 01:18 PM

Form what I predicted last summer of 10 to 12% this year were on pace for that.   It looks like it my be right on track for 12% with winter coming.  Were going into the worst time of the selling season and we have no tax credit and no help to see in the future.  With foreclosures or the short sales driving the prices down no decrease in that inventory.  We have record foreclosure in Salt Lake county over the last 3 months.  I predict an addition 5% decrease in price per sqft by the end of the year. We just have nothing to prop up the housing sales market at this point for the foreseeable future.  Mortgage rates have no affect.  I see that trend continuing for the first quarter of 2011.  I  would look to bring out the old tax credit for housing at end of  March or beginning of April.  Buckle up it going to be a home buyer market for the winter in Salt Lake; large sale prices will be had by buyers this Holiday season if you can buy, do it!!!

That is Realty as is and my prediction.  I have been right so far.  We’ll with the acceptation of the stocks falling below 9,000 in the summer it only hit 9,500.  Look for Salt lake county price per sqft to hit the $84 mark by the end of February .