One reason highway safety numbers are improving (traffic deaths fell by 8.9% in 2009): better-built cars with more safety features. Not all those safety features come as standard equipment, though. So if you’re shopping for a new car or a used car, buy one with these three essential safety items:

Electronic Stability Control. This system uses anti-lock brakes to control spins and slides that can start rollover accidents. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety estimates that electronic stability control (or ESC) cuts fatal single-car crashes by 51%. “ESC is the most important safety feature most drivers have never heard of,” says Institute spokesman Russ Rader. Beginning with 2012 models, all new cars will be required to have stability control as standard equipment. On 2010 models, 88% do. But for 2007, the percentage was just 56%. So if you’re looking for a used car, check an auto information site like Kelley Blue Book to see which models come with stability control.

Side air bags. These air bags protect heads and chests against side-impact crashes, which cause one-third of traffic deaths. They’re now standard on 77% of new cars, but were standard on just 48% of 2007 models. If side air bags are optional on a new car you want, (they cost $490 on the 2010 Jeep Wrangler, for instance), get them.

Rear view camera. Offered especially on SUVs and pickups, a rear view camera shows the driver what’s directly behind the vehicle. It helps avoid backover accidents, where small children most often are the victims. The camera typically comes as part of an expensive option package, but not always. For instance, on the SUV Toyota 4Runner, the backup camera option is $525. If you have small children, or your neighbors do, you really should consider getting this safety feature.

And keep an eye out for three new safety technologies starting to come on the market:

Lane-departure warnings that buzz or vibrate if you’re drifting out of your lane

Adaptive cruise control, available on some Mercedes-Benz models, which judges how close you are to the car ahead and adjusts the brakes and throttle to keep a safe distance.

Night vision, available on BMW 5-series and 7-series and Audi A8 helps spot deer or pedestrians on dark, curving country roads.

Though now just in luxury brands, these devices–like past safety advances–likely will spread to lower-cost cars in coming years.
By Jerry Edgerton

The former performer reportedly pesters zoo passers-by for booze
A Russian chimpanzee has been sent to rehab by zookeepers to cure the smoking and beer-drinking habits he has picked up, a popular daily reported on Friday.

An ex-performer, Zhora became aggressive at his circus and was transferred to a zoo in the southern Russian city of Rostov, where he fathered several baby chimps, learned to draw with markers and picked up his two vices.

“The beer and cigarettes were ruining him. He would pester passers-by for booze,” the Komsomolskaya Pravda paper said.

It added he has now been transferred to the city of Kazan, about 500 miles east of Moscow, for rehabilitation treatment.

I’ve been tracking what people are saying about the shadow real estate inventory that many economists, real estate professionals, and bankers are frightened of. Seems there’s some debate if the shadow inventory, will stymie the housing recovery.

First the definition of shadow inventory is up for debate. Depending on who you’re listening to it can mean many different things. The different definitions are some of what’s causing people to debate the subject.

What is Shadow Inventory?
Definition 1 – Foreclosed but not listed. Some analysts say the “shadow inventory” is the homes which the has bank foreclosed on but not sold. These are homes that are not on the market but owned by the bank (REOs not listed on the market).

Definition 2 – Homes in the foreclosure process as well as delinquent mortgages where foreclosure proceedings are imminent.

Definition 3 – All homes delinquent, short sales not on the market, REOs not on the market, and anything in the foreclosure process.

Definition 4 – All of the above plus modified loans (as they have a large percentage of failing anyway, pay option-arms about to be reset, and lots sitting idle with builders in trouble.

I’m going to go with Standards & Poor’s definition which most similar to Definition 3, all delinquent loans, not just REO’s.

If you go with this definition, then naturally your focus is to look at delinquency rates which are widely published. So to say we have no way of knowing the true size of the shadow inventory is false. The mortgage banker’s recent survey with data ending in the 4th quarter shows that 9.47% of all loans are delinquent. Yikes! That’s a scary number; however the number was down slightly when seasonally adjusted. Also according to this recent survey 50% of all past –due mortgages were 90 days or further past due. This is the highest number in the history of the mortgage banker survey. Usually you’d see a large glut of 30-day past-due balances, which becomes smaller at the 60-day mark, and there would be smaller yet number of 90-day balances (assuming homes were being liquidated with efficiency).

With fewer loans at the 30-day mark, it seems the glut of sub-prime loans is being flushed through the system but only so slowly that it is creating the large inventory (the 90-day past due loans). The government and banks are trying loan modifications, short sales, and foreclosure work outs to reduce these properties flooding the market. Unfortunately distressed assets are distressed assets, especially when they have negative equity.

Standard & Poors sees this shift in lender strategy as temporary as lenders will realize that these toxic assets are unredeemable in most cases. Therefore these homes, estimated at 33 month’s supply or 5-7 million, will eventually hit the market. If they do, home prices could head lower because of increased inventories. The saving grace for the market could the limited new home construction, recent loss in builder confidence, a growing economy, and continued political pressure on banks to keep foreclosure as a tool of last resort.

Nothing to Worry About?
Some believe the shadow inventory isn’t a big concern. Steve Cook of Real Estate Economy Watch points out that total housing inventory is at a 7.8-month supply, slightly up, but overall way down over 1 year ago. “The huge shadow inventory of 1.7 to 7million properties first forecast more than a year ago has yet to materialize-and may be a myth,” said Cook recently in blog post challenging the shadow inventory concerns. I tend to agree. Although my credentials aren’t as serious as Standard & Poor’s rating system, there is great pressure on the banks to work with owners to work out, modify, short sell, or salvage these loans in some way. Side note; a friend of mine recently modified his loan from 7% to 2% for the next 5 years and had his payment sliced in half. The odds of him paying this back are good. Market absorption is continuing to happen as well. In my market, Memphis, inventories are down 30% from the peak, so it’s hard to comprehend prices dropping much further.

I think inventories are set to rise in the upcoming months because foreclosures are expected to peak this winter . I’m looking closely at mortgages headed into delinquency for the first time to gage how much time the crisis has left. Those and past-due loans headed into serious delinquency are in decline. This summer will be critical for the market as the government intervention is nearly over. If the builders continue to hold off building, the market should absorb much of the shadow. Some markets have further to correct of course, but I think we’re unlikely to see home prices drop more than another 5% nationally. My last caveat is this; banks are getting smarter. They were dumping properties for next to nothing a year ago and now that they’ve used their free passes for Wall Street, they’ll be making more prudent pricing decisions for the homes they’re marketing. Shadow inventory yes. Should we dig bomb shelters and buy survival seeds? NO. Continue to accumulate real estate (today) at or near the bottom.

Ryan Hinricher

I scream, you scream, we all scream for Free Ice Cream~!!!!

BEN & JERRY’S
Free Cone Day
March 23, 2010
12:00pm – 8:00pm. Scooping fun and funky flavors for FREE again with surprise celebrity scoopers. Ben & Jerry’s, the company that broke the mold for business showing you could make a profit while giving back to the community, is proud to celebrate its 31st annual Free Cone Day.

Dunkin’ Donuts is offering FREE coffee on Mondays in March! Choose from a medium hot or iced coffee.
One per person per visit. Participating locations only

Want a free sample of their Turbo coffee delivered to your home?
Click the image below

Get a free pastry on the morning of Tuesday, March 23 with the purchase of a handcrafted beverage.

Come to participating Starbucks on Free Pastry Day, March 23. Choose a delicious pastry to pair with your beverage and that tasty item is free.

Better yet, it’s free in another sense – free of all this stuff we removed from our recipes:

No artificial flavors
No artificial dyes
No artificial trans fats
No high-fructose corn syrup

To get your free pastry, go here: http://starbucks.com/FreePastryDay and print out the coupon and present it to your barista. Or simply show them the coupon on any mobile device.
But Free Pastry Day ends at 10:30 a.m. – so don’t miss out!

The Internet has taken a toll on print media, from newspapers and magazines to the telephone book. Now university yearbooks are also taking a hit.

The University of Virginia is very big on tradition. Students there don’t use the word “campus,” because the school’s founder, Thomas Jefferson, preferred the word “grounds.” The most popular dorm rooms on grounds are tiny chambers built in 1820, heated only by a fireplace.

“There are so many traditions that when you come in, half of the orientation period is learning what they are,” professor and UVA alumnus Larry Sabato says.

So it came as a shock when the university learned its student-run yearbook, which had been published since 1888, could no longer cover its costs. In a survey, fewer than half the student leaders thought the yearbook should be saved — a view shared by senior Patrick O’Grady.

“It’s a shame to see it die, but I wouldn’t have bought one anyway. I only know probably about 1 percent of our class, so who wants to see pictures of people you don’t even remember?”

“Everything is so technological that people just don’t have a desire for a 400-page book that’s going to sit on a shelf and collect dust.”

Michelle Burch, last year’s co-editor, says the staff tried to generate interest — sending e-mails, handing out fliers, even putting ads on Facebook.

“When we realized that we couldn’t even get people to come and take pictures, there’s no way people are going to buy a book that they’re not in,” she says.

At other universities, the story is much the same. Rich Stoebe, with yearbook publisher Jostens, says about a thousand colleges still print a yearbook. That’s down from about 2,400 in 1995. But Stoebe doesn’t blame the Internet.

“Virtually every high school and K-12 school prints a yearbook of some type, even though online social networking has been around for a number of years,” Stoebe says.

He suggests that the economy is a factor, with books costing up to $100 each. Also, students feel less loyal to graduating classes that are bigger and more diverse than ever before.

Whatever the reason, the decline of college yearbooks upsets many who love history. Whitney Spivey, a graduate student at the University of Missouri, where the yearbook folded in 2006, spent all four of her undergraduate years working on the yearbook at Virginia.

“Every book is kind of like a little time capsule, and the hairstyles change, and the fashion changes, and there are social movements, there are wars,” she says. “At UVA, women and minorities are incorporated into university life, and you see this sort of progression of time and history, and I think it’s just interesting to look at.”

And some yearbooks have become quite valuable, because they contain an early poem by Edgar Allan Poe, drawings by William Faulkner or a picture of the young Brad Pitt, for example. There’s even a company, E-Yearbook.com, that has put thousands of old yearbooks online and charges people to search them. So why not skip the publisher and put today’s college yearbooks on a Web site in the first place?

“When we’re interviewing students who are applying for editor of the yearbook, we actually ask them, ‘In a world of MySpace and Facebook, why is a yearbook still relevant?’ ” says Kelly Furnas, who advises the yearbook at Virginia Tech. “Their answers are very telling. First they say, ‘Who uses MySpace?’ and I think that’s important. No matter how popular an electronic service may be at this point in time, its existence can be somewhat fleeting.”

And, of course, you can’t hand write best wishes in the back of a Web site.

by Sandy Hausman

I know the census might seem a bit tedious, but I was SHOCKED to find out how much each person counted is worth to the city they live in! Please fill it out and send it back on time– it’ll only take a few minutes of your time, but its effects will last an entire decade~!!!

By M. Margaret Bates
For some people, the United States Census is a too long, too cumbersome questionnaire that is a once-a-decade hassle.

That attitude, however, can be very harmful to our cities’ futures. The census is an opportunity to improve the quality of life for all of our residents for years to come. As an elected official for Lauderhill and immediate past president of the Broward League of Cities, I want to bring to everyone’s attention how the census affects our cities.

The Census Monitoring Board found that just one uncounted person in 2000 meant the loss of an estimated $1,300 in funding, which would be $1.3 million less in funding if just 1,000 people did not complete the census.

Here are some important facts:
April 1, 2010, is Census Day: Residents will receive their census packets now through the end of March and must return them via mail by Census Day, April 1.
The 2010 Census questionnaire can be completed in 10 short minutes and asks only a few simple questions, like name, marital status, gender, age and race. Census employees will visit any resident who does not complete the questionnaire between April and June.
Be Counted: Stand up and be counted. Since the census determines seats in the House of Representatives, an accurate count guarantees Florida has appropriate representation in Congress.
Local, state and federal governments also use census data to distribute funds for services like public safety or building roads and bridges.

Valuable Information:
Census information helps determine dollars for programs like child care and hospitals. The data shows important information like areas of population growth, which can help determine new school locations and needed dollars for educational programs.
Businesses also use census data to determine areas of expansion. Some businesses look for bustling communities in need of services like supermarkets, and others are interested in growth like shopping centers and new housing.

The 2010 Census is easy and ultimately important to the future of our communities: An accurate count can give our cities the chance to grow and thrive. For more information, please visit http://www.broward.org/census2010.

Home Buyer Workshop

hosted by
Cynthia Weber Vice President of Retail Lending, Guaranteed Rate

and Tammy Kilen Realtor, Direct Performance Real Estate Partners

These two proven experts will share valuable information and answer your questions!
* Time is running out to receive your federal tax credit! *
* Take advantage of historically low interest rates! *
* Is it time for you to refinance? *
* Have you been pre‐approved? *

Guaranteed Rate Office
7250 Peak Drive • Suite 210
Las Vegas, NV
Tuesday • March 16, 2010
6:00 pm
Q&A • Professional Advice • Refreshments
FREE however RSVP is required
Cynthia Weber 702.217.1472
cynthia.weber@guaranteedrate.com

Receive $1000 off Closing Credit Coupon just for attending!
As per this CBS Moneywatch.com news clip, Now is the time to buy

This week home mortgage borrowers got the latest word on how much they owe compared to the actual value of their real estate – and the numbers are only getting uglier.

First American CoreLogic, a company that gathers data on millions of mortgages that have been packaged into securities for investors, reports that nearly one in four home loans nationally is now larger than the actual value of the home that backs it. In other words, one-quarter of all home loans are underwater!

In just the last three months of 2009, plummeting home prices and accumulating debts pushed 620,000 more homeowners into negative territory.By far the worst off are borrowers in Nevada, 70 percent of whom now owe more than their homes are worth. Not far behind is Arizona, where more than half of borrowers are underwater, and Florida, where 48 percent are in for more than their homes’ value. New York is weathering the storm the best, with just 6.3 percent of borrowers owing more than their homes are worth. (New Yorkers who own should be thankful for their perpetual housing shortage, since it helps keep prices strong.)

For most homeowners, negative equity is just a temporary setback – like watching your stock portfolio dip below where it was when you bought it. Eventually, odds are the values will recover.

But the new numbers show that for an increasing number of homeowners, negative equity is becoming a way of life – and that means living on the edge of foreclosure. Negative equity sharply increases the odds that a homeowner will decide to “walk away” and stop making mortgage payments. And even if a homeowner is eager to avoid foreclosure, owing significantly more than a home is worth usually makes it impossible to refinance or sell the home. If that owner loses his or her job and can’t find another, or needs to get out of an adjustable rate mortgage, a future foreclosure is likely.

Plummeting home values aren’t the only reason homeowners are sinking more deeply into the hole. Borrowers hold hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of Option ARMs, which allow borrowers to pay less each month than it would actually cost to pay off what they owe on the mortgage so what they owe actually grows. Most borrowers with Option ARM mortgages have only been making those minimum payments. Interest rates are low right now, so some are managing to make a dent in their loan balances anyway. But as rates rise, which they inevitably will, these borrowers are poised to fall farther and farther behind – and when they fall too far below the total amount of principal they owe, their monthly payments are programmed to jump sharply.

In the coming two years, according to Amherst Securities Group, borrowers will see these payment spikes on more than $150 billion worth of Option ARM mortgages. That means that they’ll be forced to start spending more each month, and start catching up with what they actually owe on the house. And if they can’t? That’s when the sheriff comes calling.

The good news: nearly half of all homeowners with a mortgage still have equity in their home. Which side of the picket fence are you on?