What happened to the American Chestnut tree? It was wiped out by blight from a fungus, Cryphonectria parasitica. The fungus was first discovered in Bronx Zoological Park, Bronx, NY in 1904 and spread throughout the entire range of the American chestnut reaching our mountains and destroying most mature tress by 1930s and just about all by the 1950s. The fungus was introduced by Japanese Chestnut trees imported into the United States in the late 1800’s.

There are two organizations working to restore the American chestnut to the forest: the American Chestnut Cooperators’ Foundation (ACCF) and the American Chestnut Foundation (ACF). The ACCF intercrosses 100% American chestnut trees selected for native resistance to the blight and seeks to develop a tree with natural resistance. The ACF has been working on breeding hybrids of American and Chinese chestnut trees since 1983. Trees are selected from each generation based on their ability to resist the fungus and have the characteristics of the American chestnut. The early hybrids were 50% American and 50% Chinese chestnut. Today there are trees that are 94% American. The goal is to have trees with no Chinese chestnut characteristics except resistance to the blight. (more…)

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A recent analysis of American commuting habits confirms what many weary workers already know: Commutes are getting longer. More Americans than ever are leaving home at 5 a.m. to 6:30 a.m. to beat the traffic. The number of workers who drive more than an hour to work rose more than 50 percent from 1990 to 2000, a study released last month by the Transportation Research Board found. One way to escape gridlock is to work from home. You’ll get more sleep, and you may be eligible for some tax breaks. The home-office deduction lets you deduct a portion of your mortgage interest or rent, utilities, insurance and even repairs to your home.

People who work from home because their employers don’t want to provide them with office space are eligible to deduct some of their home-office expenses. If your employer does provide you with an office or a cubicle, you don’t qualify, even if you work from home most of the time, says Keith Stanton, an enrolled agent in Nashville. Once you’ve established that you’re eligible for the deduction, you’ve got another hurdle to clear. Your home-office expenses are categorized as miscellaneous expenses on Schedule A of Form 1040. Those expenses must exceed 2 percent of your adjusted gross income (AGI) before you can deduct them, says Mark Luscombe, tax analyst for tax publisher CCH. (more…)

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The development of Laurelmor, located on 6,000 acres of land between Boone and Blowing Rock NC, has been the source of much controversy since the company first announced its intentions to create a property of 1,500 single-family residences catering to high-income earners. The minimum income earned by an individual purchasing a Ginn property is around $125,000 per year, Jim Matoska, executive vice president of Ginn Real Estate, said.

Concerns about the development’s impact on the Boone NC region include the possibility that it will drive up home prices in an increasingly unaffordable area and put strain on the area’s already limited natural resources, such as water. To ease some of those concerns, Ginn Resorts agreed to donate about 45 percent of the Laurelmor property to the Blue Ridge Rural Land Trust. According to a Ginn press release, this was “an unprecedented partnership agreement between a real estate developer and an environmental organization.” (more…)

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The value of a 40-acre wooded lot lies in the eye of the beholder. To farmers, woods have little value compared with the cropland they till. But a hunter or bird-watcher may be willing to pay thousands of dollars for a tree-lined property in the country. The growing demand for recreational land is fueling a rise in the value of wooded lots.

Real estate companies putting farms up for sale now have the option of dividing the land into sections and marketing it separately to different categories of buyers, Halderman said. The seller can make more money by selling woods for recreational use and marketing tillable land as farm ground, he said. This approach won’t work for every wooded property, Dobbins said. Recreational land buyers are looking for specific features, including trees, wildlife and ponds or rivers. The size and location of the property also affect its marketability, he said. (more…)

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For many of us, our house is our biggest cash reserve, and raiding that piggy bank made financial sense for years because interest rates were low and rising home prices kept replenishing the bank. Now, with rates up and prices soft, is there any reason to tap your home equity?

Opening a home-equity line of credit is no longer a slam dunk for three reasons. It’s not cheap money Even though rates may drop in 2007, in recent years they’ve been going up, up, up. At today’s average rate of 8.7%, the interest-only monthly payment on a $100,000 HELOC is $725 vs. $387 when rates hit their lows nearly three years ago. You could owe more than you own Lenders have made it possible to borrow 100% of your home’s value. During the housing boom, for instance, many buyers who were stretching to afford a home financed the down payment with a HELOC. Do that today and if prices fall, your home loans could add up to more than your house is worth. If you have to sell (and pay a realtor 6% or so), the difference will come from your wallet. (more…)

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In the next couple of years, a combination of rising mortgage interest rates and falling home values could sink thousands of homeowners. Being over your head means owing more than the house is worth. It’s an especially risky situation for people with interest-only mortgages and pay-option adjustable-rate mortgages because they don’t build equity unless they choose to. Some might be able to refinance or get through hard times by living frugally. Others will have to sell their houses, possibly at a loss. Still others will lose their houses to foreclosure.

If you have an interest-only or pay-option ARM, assess your situation and, if you conclude that you are in jeopardy, act quickly. “I don’t think burying your head in the sand is a viable option,” says Neil Garfinkel, an attorney with Abrams Garfinkel Margolis Bergson in New York City. Two groups of borrowers should look ahead. The first group consists of homeowners who are making the minimum payments on interest-only mortgages. Not all of these folks are at risk. The ones who should especially watch out are those who bought homes in the past year or two in markets where house values are falling, and who made no down payment or a minuscule one. (more…)

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Picture this scenario: You’ve lived in this country for the past 15 years, earned a decent wage, raised a family, always paid your rent, utilities, cell phone bills and other expenses on time, month after month. But you made little or no use of the conventional banking and credit systems — avoiding bank loans, credit cards and debts in general. Now you go to apply for a mortgage to buy your first home and get smacked with this sobering news: Sorry, but there is not enough information in your national credit bureau files to score your credit. We’ve got to either charge you an interest rate well above prevailing rates — 9 percent or 10 percent in a 6 1/2 percent market — or simply reject you altogether.

Growing numbers of lenders and mortgage brokers have begun offering alternatives to traditional credit scores. At the convention of the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals this month, a new guide was released listing hundreds of brokers and lenders who use the Anthem system of non-traditional credit reports and scores as supplements to FICOs. Anthem, developed by First American CREDCO, the credit data subsidiary of Santa Ana-based First American, evaluates whatever information on an applicant may exist in the files of the national bureaus — Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. Then it mixes in information collected by CREDCO from other sources. These include regular child-care payments, telephone, electricity and other utilities payments, current and former rent payments, plus personal credit data from businesses that do not report to the bureaus — small local retailers that extend credit, payday lenders, rent-to-own companies and the like. (more…)

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