IS IT TRUE we are hearing that the Evansville Thunderbolt marketing campaign designed to attract a large opening game day crowd may be short of its goal? …as of a couple of days ago Ticketmaster data reveals that the combined tickets sales and free comp tickets for the opening day game was around 1744 patrons?  …knowledgeable sources are telling us that opening day game attendance may be very disappointing ? …we hope that their predictions are wrong?  …research shows that the Evansville Icemen opening day game attendance for the last 5 years averaged about 8,500 sold and comps tickets?  …it looks like it might be time for the Evansville Thunderbolt management to share some of his marketing responsibilities with the extremely talented and qualified staff at VENUWORKS?

IS IT TRUE the new publicly subsidized Downtown Hotel and Convention Center is slated to open later this year around the same time the new Hyatt Place Hotel project will start construction?  …the Hyatt Place $18-million project didn’t receive any city subsidy?  …we wonder why the Mayor didn’t arrange a similar deal with the soon to be opened Downtown Hotel and Convention Center?

IS IT TRUE in Sept of 2015, the unauthorized transfer of the $12,500,000 from Riverboat Fund to the General fund  had not occurred the adjusted cash balance as of Sept 30, 2016 would had been a NEGATIVE $22,425,075 instead a NEGATIVE $12,497,025?  …we wonder why the only CPA on City Council didn’t bring this up this during the budget hearings?

IS IT TRUE EPD Officer Jeff Worthington is running for re-election to the EVSC Board unopposed? … we are hearing that some individuals are talking about doing a write-in ballot campaign against Mr. Worthington in the upcoming school board election?  …all we can say is this could be a developing story?

IS IT TRUE we wish the local print media would stop posting that County Commission candidate Sean Selby is an only child?  …the real fact is that Mr. Selby has 3 brothers?  …what does this have to do with the County Commissioner race?  …according to the local print Mr. Selby is head of a one man technology consulting firm that he operates out of his home?  …we wonder why Mr. Selby working out of his home in a business that has one employee has to do with the  County Commissioner race?

IS IT TRUE we promised to make an announcement concerning a subscription charge for City County Observer in 2017?…because of you, our readers and our advertisers the CCO had a phenomenal year in 2016? ….in 2016 we were able to live within our economic means, meaning that we started the year with no debt, ended the year with no debt, and paid all of our bills on time?…if the City of Evansville conducted itself in a similar manner financially as the CCO there would be no need for them to make any rate or tax increases?  …it is with extreme pleasure that we announce that the subscription rate for the CCO for 2017 is exactly ZERO (0) because we lived within our economic means since the day we started the CCO?

EDITORS FOOTNOTES: Todays READERS POLL question is: Do you support the decision of the local FOP filing a “Legal Injunction”  against the city concerning their Healthcare benefits?

Please take time and read our newest feature articles entitled “BIRTHDAYS, HOT JOBS” and “LOCAL SPORTS” posted in our sections.

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Cory Little’s resignation is effective immediately.

He has been facing the recommendation of termination after that October 10th crash.

Police arrested Little in Posey County afterward.

It happened on Saint Wendel-Cynthiana Road after he hit a garage.

Investigators say he failed several sobriety tests.

Little had been relieved of duty and was on paid administrative leave.

He joined the Evansville Department in January and was still in the field training portion of his employment at the time of the arrest.

The NCAA accused Louisville of four violations stemming from its investigation.

The NCAA’s letter says Pitino failed to monitor staffer Andre McGee.

Pitino disputes that finding, saying his tendency is to over monitor his staff.

If anything, the coach says he is guilty of trusting someone to tell him what was going on.

The NCAA’s letter is the result of Katina Powell’s book, Breaking Cardinal Rules: Basketball and the Escort Queen.

Powell says McGee paid her $10,000 for strippers to perform 22 shows, many of them happening in the players’ dorms from 2010 to 2014.

Return of House Flipping Eases Affordable Housing Crunch in Some States
October 18, 2016 By Tim Henderson

A “For Sale” sign hangs in front of a home in Atlanta. As the construction of affordable single-family houses fails to keep up with demand, the number of houses being flipped is increasing.

© AP Photo/John Bazemore
The number of flipped houses is at a six-year high. But while such rapid turnover helped fuel the housing crisis a decade ago, advocates and analysts say the current wave is helping to ease a shortage of affordable housing in some parts of the country.

The resurgence of flipping, or selling a house less than a year after buying it, comes as the construction of affordable single-family houses fails to keep up with demand, as builders concentrate on multi-family housing.

In some states like Florida and Nevada, which have large stocks of cheap, foreclosed houses, flipping is boosting the housing supply for homeowners and for investors who want to rent out the properties. The renovated homes are helping to bring downtrodden neighborhoods back to life, while making homeownership possible for some first-time and low-income buyers.

“This flipping activity could be seen as a social good if it’s bringing houses up to standards and putting them back on the market,” said Steven Swidler, an Auburn University professor who has studied flipping.

But he also warned that flipping can help drive up already-rising housing prices. “In other areas,” he said, “it could be putting it beyond the price points for affordable housing for some people. It’s all about location, location, location.”

A total of 51,434 single-family homes and condos were flipped in the second quarter of 2016, up 14 percent from the previous quarter and the highest number since 2010, according to data from ATTOM Data Solutions. The number of flippers, including individuals, amateur investors and businesses, reached 39,775, the highest level in nine years.

In Tampa, Florida, Memphis, Tennessee, and Visalia, in California’s San Joaquin Valley, one in 10 homes sold in the quarter was flipped. Florida, Tennessee and Nevada are the states with the highest rates of flipping, with 7 percent or more of homes sold within a year. And in many of those places, the homes being flipped are selling well below the rest of the market, a sign that they are helping to fill a shortage of affordable housing.

Nationwide, 5.5 percent of single-family homes and condos were flipped, a small increase over the second quarter of 2015, but still well below the peak in 2006, when 9 percent of sales were flips.

In some high-priced places such as New York City, housing advocates complain that flippers are reducing the supply of affordable housing and driving out low-income residents and sometimes the middle class.

But in other areas of the nation — parts of Florida that have been plagued with foreclosures, for instance —flipping can be part of the process of getting affordable housing back on the market, said Hector Sandoval, a University of Florida economist who has studied flipping in the state.

“Bringing these houses back to the market is good in general for the neighborhoods where they are located,” said Sandoval. “It increases the supply, which means prices can’t go too high, and they should be affordable, at least for the middle class.”

Meeting Demand
In Nevada, today’s flippers have found a niche fixing up foreclosed or abandoned housing that may need much work and then selling it to investors who are willing to recoup profits slowly by renting, said Swidler, the Auburn University professor who analyzed the way home flipping in Las Vegas contributed to the housing meltdown of the last decade by driving up prices.

About 7 percent of sales in the state were flips in the second quarter of 2016, and the rate is about the same in Las Vegas. But today’s flippers are not the same as those who helped drive a speculative frenzy 10 years ago.

“Conditions are different now. You can’t just buy a house and expect to make a profit,” Swidler said. “In many cases [flippers] have to go in there and replace wiring, put in new refrigerators. Some of these places had holes in the walls. It took extensive work to renovate them.”

More amateurs and individual investors are flipping houses, drawn by reality television shows and a burgeoning housing market, said Daren Blomquist, senior vice president at ATTOM.

Nationally, home prices have been rising since 2012, and the increases are even steeper in some areas with high levels of house flipping, like Tampa and Nashville. But with housing prices rising faster than incomes in many parts of the nation, rehabbing foreclosed houses has the potential to return affordable housing at a time that it’s urgently needed.

In Florida, flipping has been revived by a steady supply of foreclosed housing and a demand for affordable housing that’s making once-marginal neighborhoods near Tampa more appealing to buyers of renovated homes, said Christopher McCarty, director of the state Bureau of Economic and Business Research.

Rising rents also are encouraging small investors to buy renovated houses and rent them out, McCarty said, especially along the state’s central I-4 Corridor from Tampa to Orlando.

House prices have grown more than 19 percent in the Tampa area since 2015, to $209,000, the largest increase in Florida. The median purchase price for a flipped house was $93,000 and the median selling price was $150,000, according to ATTOM’s report.

Peter Lee, a real estate agent and investor in Tampa, said unemployed carpenters and other construction workers sidelined by the housing bust and slowdown in new construction have found a new line of work renovating homes in the area.

The buyers might be landlords looking for rentals, first time buyers or retirees from the Midwest, he said, all of whom find the prices affordable. “You’re giving them a shiny renovated house for $100,000. They’re in heaven.”

Tennessee has the second-highest rate of house flipping, at 7.2 percent. House prices have gone up nearly 20 percent in Memphis in the last year, and nearly 7 percent in Nashville. The typical flipped house in Nashville was bought for $114,500 and sold for $175,900, well below the area’s median home price of $258,000.

Rae Sovereign, an affordable housing activist in East Nashville, said the city is facing an affordability crisis as developers tear down houses to build new rentals. But flippers have played a generally positive role, she said, fixing up battered and sometimes foreclosed homes.

“I don’t have a problem with people who want to fix up a house for a profit but still make it affordable,” she said.

Rae said a flipper bought her house for about $40,000, gutted it and rebuilt the interior, then sold it to her for $131,000 six years ago. Today she thinks it’s worth about $235,000.

For Sale sign in Atlanta

The resurgence of flipping is not helping to ease the affordability crisis everywhere.

A study earlier this year by New York City’s Center for NYC Neighborhoods, a public-private partnership that promotes affordable housing, found that affordable housing was becoming harder to find in parts of Queens and Brooklyn where hundreds of homes were flipped last year.

On average, Brooklyn homes bought by flippers in recent years were affordable for families making $75,000 a year — near the typical income for the borough. But by the time they were sold, only families making $150,000 could afford the same house.

“Flipping reduces the quantity of affordable homeownership opportunities on the market by moving homes to significantly higher price points,” the study concluded. Typical profits were more than $500,000 per sale in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

Typical flipping profits topped $110,000 in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego, California, as well as New York, according to ATTOM’s data. The largest flipping profits were in the District of Columbia, where the typical flip netted $209,750.

Prices rose so quickly in the District of Columbia that the district housing authority evicted some low-income tenants and sold their apartments to finance other renovations. Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser promised last year to investigate whether the city’s own flipping practices were hurting her efforts to preserve affordable housing.

Curbing Abuses
Some states, including Idaho, Virginia and Washington, have laws that require house-flippers to register as contractors. In Washington, either the seller of a flipped house or a contractor hired to fix it up must be registered and have a $12,000 bond.

“This way the buyer has some recourse if there’s a fire from bad wiring or sewage in the dishwasher because of the plumbing. Those things happened,” said Shari Purves-Reiter of Washington state’s Department of Labor & Industries.

In Idaho, a contractor license is required to do rehab work on a house unless it’s the homeowner’s “primary or secondary residence.” There are enforcement problems because of that wording, said Bill Hatch, a spokesman for the state Division of Building Safety.

When flippers are questioned, “they invariably come up with something like ‘Oh, this is my secondary home,’” Hatch said. The best inspectors can do is to cite repeat offenders, he said.

s. Ritt was the managing editor of the Evansville Press and involved in many community projects during his half-century tenure with the newspaper. One of them was the New Blades ice show, an amateur event sponsored by the Press Youth Fund. The first show in 1957 drew a disappointing 4,000 spectators, but attendance in the next season soared to 11,000. Ritt and his wife, Julia, produced and directed the show until 1962, when it was disbanded. For their efforts, they were named Evansville’s Citizens of the month in 1963. Ritt retired from his newspaper career in 1974 and died six years later.

FOOTNOTES: We want to thank Patricia Sides, Archivist of Willard Library for contributing this picture that shall increase people’s awareness and appreciation of Evansville’s rich history. If you have any historical pictures of Vanderburgh County or Evansville please contact please contact Patricia Sides, Archivist Willard Library at 812) 425-4309, ext. 114 or e-mail her at www.willard.lib.in.us.

Judge Limits Expert Testimony In Simon Antitrust Suit

Dave Stafford for www.theindianalalawyer.com

Expert witnesses for Indianapolis-based Simon Property Group and a competing shopping center developer will be barred from testifying on certain subjects in an antitrust lawsuit against Simon, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

The litigation concerns allegations that Simon used unlawful means in 2006 to pressure tenants such as Ann Taylor into signing leases at University Park Mall in Mishawaka rather than at the newer Heritage Square a mile away in Granger.

Heritage Square developer Gumwood HP Shopping Partners discovered internal Simon emails in which executives discussed terminating leases for Ann Taylor stores at more lucrative malls if the women’s clothing retailer didn’t sign a lease at University Park. Some emails suggested that if Ann Taylor leased at Heritage, Simon would cancel the chain’s leases at shopping centers in New York and Miami, a tactic one executive described in an email as “Lose a pinky — take an arm!”

The anti-trust litigation was filed in 2011, with Heritage claiming Simon caused Ann Taylor to withdraw from a lease at its mall causing a snowball effect that cost it leases with other high-end retailers before the property reverted to the lender.

Judge Jon E. DeGuilio of the District Court for the Northern District of Indiana in South Bend Wednesday issued a 29-page order setting the parameters for expert witness testimony from economists on each side.

Both sides sought to strike the testimony of the opposing witnesses, and DeGuilio granted their requests in part and denied them in part.

The judge ruled Gumwood’s expert, economist H.E. Frech III, may not offer an opinion on whether Simon “tied” leases at University Park to other properties without evidentiary support. Frech may, however, testify about his opinions regarding Simon’s market power, but only in the Mishawaka, Miami and New York shopping center markets at issue in this litigation.

Simon’s expert economist, Michael R. Baye, may not testify about the necessary conditions Gumwood must establish for a tying arrangement to be considered anticompetitive. But DeGuilio ruled Baye may provide his opinion that the market in northern Indiana where the malls compete for tenants is larger and more diverse than Frech assumes.

The judge withheld ruling on the experts’ opinions on liability and damages and said those motions will be decided in a separate order.