Land Surveyor Weblog, Knoxville TN

Jan. 26 (Bloomberg) — Sales of new U.S. homes unexpectedly declined in December for the first time in four months, capping the slowest year on record for builders.

Purchases of single-family properties decreased 2.2 percent to a 307,000 annual pace, figures from the Commerce Department showed today in Washington. The median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of economists called for a rate of 321,000 home sales. Last year marked the worst year for the industry in records going back to 1963.

Continue to Bloomberg

They keep telling us that things are getting better, but my reality reflects otherwise.

I want to know where to get one of these bumper stickers.

Make Welfare as hard to get as a Building Permit

Everyone who has been through the process can identify. H/T Legal Insurrection

Many times, when one does a “cut and paste” between various documents there are hidden line breaks which make the result look terrible. You can fix the whole thing manually, or you can use this tool to remove them. I have used it after OCR scanning as well. The tool has proved to be very handy to me on many occasions. A real time saver. Thanks so much to the creator.

“We only want to help you.” Public servants or totalitarian masters? You decide. First up, we have a family harassed by the government over their small vegetable garden.

Nanny-State Madness: Woman Faces Jail Over Veggie Garden | Breaking news and opinion on The Blaze.

Next, we have Cedar Falls government demanding universal keys and unlimited access to an entire community’s private property at their discretion. It is “necessary” they are told, for the “public good.”

City Government demands all keys to properties belonging to Cedar Falls residents.

Traditionally, property ownership was said to include a “bundle of rights. That was then. This is now. Once the constitution is off the table, so are your rights.

Update:

Additional coverage on VeggieGate from The New American.

Please consider that trees are a renewable resource. When a tree is cut, more trees are planted. Disposition of private property is fundamental to all rights. ~30 percent of U.S. Land is owned by the federal government, with more falling every year. However, even the USE of that land which is still privately owned is heavily restricted in many ways. There is a current ongoing war against capitalism and private ownership. Refusing to print an email means giving in to anti-business and anti-human sentiment. Be part of the solution. Print this email, help create a job. After all, it’s your printer, your paper, your electricity, your ink, your computer… and, as a reasoning human being, you are guided by your own intelligence. — Ned D. Ferguson, Professional Surveyor

“There are rights which it is useless to surrender to the government and which governments have yet always been found to invade. These are the rights of thinking and publishing our thoughts by speaking or writing; the right of free commerce; the right to personal freedom” — Thomas Jefferson

I do care about responsible use of the environment. However, the environment was created to serve man, not man to serve the environment. Every breath taken, every morsel eaten, every scrap used for my benefit is no affront.

No one has incentive to protect and preserve property like private owners, as these photos attest. Meanwhile, those dependent on government are… disappointed.

Bank owned home sales comprise 34.5 percent of the market. Nationwide, home prices have fallen 11.5 percent in the past 9 months.

The housing recession is completely government created, due to saturating the market with “sub-prime” mortgages. Now, big government keeps telling us that they hold the key to the solution. The only good news is that this pain is necessary to return a reasonable price equilibrium to the government-distorted market. Perhaps when this dip is over we can start to see a real recovery. The absolute worst thing politicians can do right now is implement another government “stimulus” program to prop up prices. Such an approach will only waste more taxpayer dollars and temporarily postpone the inevitable.

I keep hoping, as so many of us do,  that the economy is getting better. The news relative to housing is bad.

“New data just out from Zillow, the real-estate information company, show house prices are falling at their fastest rate since the Lehman collapse.”

Housing prices are expected to continue to fall at a pace of 1 percent per month till sometime in 2012. An 8 percent drop in prices is expected for the year — same as last year. The number of homeowners in an “upside down” equity position has shot to 28 percent.

I love the way the surveyors feature so prominently in this commercial showing Panama Canal construction. That’s Leica equipment. I know — I’m easily amused. Forgive me, surveyors don’t get much media play.

Automation and/or new technology always seems to be putting someone out of a job – at least that has been a common complaint since the Luddites of England smashed the infernal machines which threatened their livelihoods. The reality is, however, that new technology does not make us poorer; it makes us richer – as is always the case when productivity increases. More goods and services made with fewer hands is the key to wealth creation. Those who strive to turn back the clock would only impoverish us.

The advent of machine-controlled grading has a few surveyors worried. I will hasten to point out that many of these same surveyors use GPS and robotics to increase productivity and eliminate new personnel in their own businesses. Oh, the irony.

Smart surveyors will embrace new technology and use it to their advantage. New = opportunity. Houston Neal at Software Advice, a website that reviews heavy construction software, has some good ideas how surveyors can win in the automation environment by embracing their obvious roles as experts. Take heed, my friends.