McLEAN, Va., Jan. 26, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Freddie Mac (OTC: FMCC) today released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey® (PMMS®), showing average mortgage rates climbing as the housing market ended 2011 on a high note. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 3.98 percent reversing its previous three-week trend of setting all-time record lows. Despite the jump, this marks the eighth consecutive week the 30-year fixed has remained below 4.00 percent.

News Facts

• 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaged 3.98 percent with an average 0.7 point for the week ending January 26, 2012, up from last week when it averaged 3.88 percent. Last year at this time, the 30-year FRM averaged 4.80 percent. 
• 15-year FRM this week averaged 3.24 percent with an average 0.8 point, up from last week when it averaged 3.17 percent. A year ago at this time, the 15-year FRM averaged 4.09 percent. 
• 5-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) averaged 2.85 percent this week, with an average 0.7 point, up from last week when it averaged 2.82 percent. A year ago, the 5-year ARM averaged 3.70 percent.

A blistering new audit of the California High Speed Rail Authority released Tuesday has found the project’s business plan to be “increasingly risky” due to skyrocketing costs, shaky ridership projections, and lax oversight.

Building on a sweeping report it issued in 2010, the State Auditor today reported that the Authority has still been unable to detail where it intends to get all the money it needs to pay the cost of the first phase of the program, now expected to total as much as $117.6 billion.

“It relies heavily on securing tens of billions of dollars of federal funding,” the report says,” yet fails to present specific steps for acquiring these or other funds.”

And if the money can’t be raised, the report says, the Authority hasn’t presented a viable alternative plan for what to do with whatever it may have already built at that time.

This lack of detail, and a failure to clearly present operating and maintenance costs the Authority’s transparency, according to the report.

Elizabeth Alexis, co-founder of  watchdog group CARRD, said the new draft business plan, released a few months ago, was a step in the right direction but left many important issues unresolved.

“The report highlights new issues with the Business plan, oversight, contracting, Parsons Brinckerhoff (the Program Manager) and ethics violations,” she said. “It brings to light new information about concerns we have had in the past with inadequate conflict of interest disclosure and the independence of the ridership peer review committee.”

The report also again honed in on the perennial Achilles’ heel of the project: ridership projections.

“The Authority has not fully addressed questions about the accuracy of the model’s long-term projections,” the report says, upon which the plan’s revenue projects, and ability to solicit private investment, are founded.

The Auditor also took issue with the project’s oversight, which it says has been compromised by being placed in the hands of contractors. This led to more than 50 errors or inconsistencies in monthly reports examined by the Auditor.

“It presents a picture of an agency that is simply not ready to move forward with construction,” said Alexis.

Palo Alto City Council Members sent a clear signal Monday night to AT&T: it’s time to cut through the static and move forward with expanding cellular service, despite appeals from residents.

More than one hundred Palo Altans packed Council Chambers to speak out on the telecom giant’s plan, with many locals expressing outrage over the technology’s health, noise and visual impacts.

Those concerns were trumped, however, by a majority of supporters, and the will of the Architectural Review Board. The Board voted unanimously in December to send the plan to the Director of Planning and Community Environment, who approved it.

Council Member Gail Price, who motioned to uphold the Director’s decision in the face of five filed appeals from residents who live next to proposed antenna sites, said the service is necessary here, in the center of Silicon Valley.

“In Palo Alto we’re very self-conscious about being at the center of the high-tech world,” she said. “By approving this proposal, we’ll be able to better provide the wireless technology that we need.”

The plan will allow the first 20 of a planned 80 distributed antenna systems (DAS) to be installed atop telephone poles throughout the city. Since AT&T in part owns the poles, and therefore the right-of-way, they are entitled to install technological upgrades as needed, according to state and federal law.

Should the city have fought the plan, AT&T may have filed suit, as they did in San Carlos, where an out-of-court settlement allowed the company to move forward with a similar plan.

Nonetheless, residents put up a spirited charge.

“Our block does not have a coverage problem, and we are not in a dead zone,” said James Riker, one of the appellants. “AT&T should put the antennas where they’re needed and where they’re wanted.”

The other appellants included Paula Rantz, Stacey Bishop, Richard D. and Charlene Maltzman, Sumida Riker, Tench Coxe, and Masao and Eiko Sumida.

John Williams, who lives across the street from one proposed location and is a Verizon customer, said the antenna would affect his property's value.

“If somebody had the choice between living in front of these things and a place where they didn’t’ have to look at it, they’d choose the place where they didn’t have to look at it,” he said.

A slight majority of speakers remained in favor of expanding cell service, however, with one resident—a retired Lockheed engineer—saying the antennas would actually be better for ones health.

“Cell phones get hotter and hotter in your pocket in a weak signal area,” explained Russell Torrey. Without a good signal, he said, phones will increase their power usage to 100 milliwatts as they hunt for signal. With adequate cell phone towers, the power consumption drops to 10 milliwatts, he said—which would be well below the safe limit.

“Cell phone towers are good for your health,” said Torrey, emphatically.

The planned antennas will each be paired with a battery box that will power the antennas in the event of a blackout. The color, placement, and design of these boxes were also subjects of great debate Monday night, but remained part of the approved plan.

The battery units could be helpful in the event of a natural disaster, said Gail Price.

“Emergency preparedness is a primary concern of this council, and this proposal dovetails with that nicely,” she said.

Mayor Yiaway Yeh did not vote on the measure because he recused himself, citing a potential conflict of interest related to a property he leases.

It's a tool used by house flippers all across the nation. Stagers know its power. Real estate agents push its importance. What is this not-so-well-kept secret of real estate? A kitchen can sell a house.  

A kitchen is the heart of a home. This is true all across the globe. The old saying that the "stomach is the way to the heart" carries a lot of truth. Kitchens are where we spend much of our time and most of that is with our families. It's the room where we nourish our bodies and our spirits.  

Kitchens are integral to entertaining and in today's age of open floor plans, they're a focal piece of many family rooms. It's because of this that kitchens play such an important role in the buying and selling process.  

This one room is the showpiece of the house. You'll see it every day and your guests will see it during most visits. This means buyers want homes with up-to-date kitchens.  

Kitchens, however, can be one of the most expensive rooms to renovate. These projects can also be the most labor and time intensive of all home renovations. It's not just a new layer of paint.  

Instead you find a complicated array of flooring, tiling, cabinets, and counters. This means buyers may want a home with an up-to-date kitchen but they aren't willing to tackle this problem themselves. Most buyers want a kitchen that is ready to use the day they move in.  

What do buyers look for in up-to-date kitchens? A lot of this depends on what price range your home is in.  

The main thing to remember as a seller is to not price yourself out of your market. If homes in your neighborhood are selling for $100,000 with tidy, but not luxury kitchens, then this is no time to upgrade to granite, travertine, and marble at the price tag of $40,000+. You simply won't find a buyer.  

Scope out the competition. Use open houses in your area or MLS listings to find out what your competitions' kitchens look like.  

Do area homes have new solid wood cabinets and granite counters in today's designer colors? You'll be wise to consider making the same move. Are they including new stainless steel appliances and add-ons like dishwashers, wine-coolers, and trash compactors?  

Are you in a higher-end neighborhood? It's time to think high-end. Your older home may have a highly functional kitchen, but a buyer will take one look at your formica counters and white appliances and become lost in the stress of how much money and time it would take to remodel. If you don't want to put in the time yourself to make upgrades then you'll have to make concessions in the price.  

Don't become overwhelmed, though. Sometimes a kitchen update can mean doing just a few minor changes. Change the paint color to a warm, neutral tone. Get rid of any clutter. Update your appliances, paint your cabinets, change the pulls, or get a high-end looking counter for a fraction of the cost (faux-granite or lower end granite). You might even save a bundle by doing much of the work yourself.  

The bottom line is a kitchen can sell a home. Do a little research and find out what your kitchen needs to make it competitive with area listings.

If one believes regional projections, Palo Alto will have to build 12,500 new homes by 2035 to accommodate job growth and meet California's ambitious green goals.

Count the City Council among the skeptics.

Over the past two years, city officials have been pushing back against the planning scenarios put forth by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), the agencies charged with implementing in the Bay Area the state's landmark greenhouse-gas-reduction law, Senate Bill 375. The agencies' aim is to comply with SB 375's lofty goal of achieving a 15 percent reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions between 2005 and 2035. A key part of the plan is encouraging cities to build housing near jobs and transit corridors, thereby reducing traffic.

But what if the state's population projections are way off? And what about cities that don't have the land or resources to plan for the required housing? Palo Alto officials have been asking these questions for months and have yet to receive answers that satisfy them. They have challenged ABAG and MTC's growth estimates and, last month, requested that growth projections by the state Department of Finance undergo a peer review.

The regional agencies are relying on state projections showing that the Bay Area will need to accommodate an additional 903,000 housing units and 1.2 million jobs between 2010 and 2035. The agencies have released three alternative scenarios, two of which would require Palo Alto to plan for more than 12,000 housing units, while the third one, known as the "outward growth scenario," transfers more burden to smaller cities and pegs the Palo Alto number at about 6,100.

The projections have irked council members, however. Councilman Greg Schmid, an economist with a penchant for strategic planning, has emerged as the council's staunchest skeptic. In November, Schmid surveyed a variety of growth projections made before 2005, including ones from UC Berkeley academics and from UCLA's Anderson School of Accounting, and found many of them (including the Department of Finance's) to be far too optimistic about growth rates. He cited a report from the Public Policy Institute of California that included population projections of all key demographic forecasters. The consensus forecast from this group, he noted, was 40 percent higher than the actual outcome.

Schmid also noted in his report that the Department of Finance used projections that are far higher than those used by the U.S. Census Bureau.

"Even as late as the end of 2009, on the eve of the decennial census, estimates by the California Dept. of Finance (the organization responsible for the numbers that are used for all state allocation formulas) remained strikingly high at 14.1 percent, which was 1.5 million or 44.7 percent above the contemporaneous and more accurate Census Bureau's Current Population Estimates," Schmid wrote.

The dispute is more than an academic debate over statistics. Though ABAG and MTC can't force cities to accept their projections, they can withhold transportation grants from those agencies that don't comply. Palo Alto officials have been cooperating with the agencies by identifying areas of the city that could accommodate growth. Much of the new housing would cluster around California Avenue, Palo Alto's designated "priority development area." Other transit-friendly parts of the city, including portions of downtown and around El Camino Real, are also seen as ripe for growth and the council is scheduled to consider in the coming weeks whether to designate them priority development areas as well.

Under the regional proposal, development of these areas would be bolstered by state grants. The agencies plan to allocate about $66 million in grants to Santa Clara County, with 70 percent going to "priority development areas." Palo Alto, which seeks to upgrade its biking network and renovate the streetscape at California Avenue, is banking on grants to make its vision a reality. At the Dec. 5 council meeting, Councilwoman Nancy Shepherd said she doesn't want to "walk away from transportation dollars because we desperately need them."

But while the council has been working on identifying growth-friendly areas, members have consistently argued that Palo Alto has nowhere near the capacity for new housing that the agencies require to meet the goals outlined in their Initial Vision Scenario.

The council's dilemma may sound familiar to those who followed the city's three-year battle against high-speed rail -- another project that members supported in principle but then turned against because of concerns about how it's being implemented. Much like with high-speed rail, the council formed a new committee last month to focus on regional housing allocations. The committee is scheduled to hold its first meeting Thursday, at which point it will consider whether to designate El Camino Real and downtown "priority development areas," making them eligible for transportation-grant funds.

In a recent interview with the Weekly, City Manager James Keene predicted that Palo Alto would take the lead in the regional conversation over housing allocation, much as it had in taking a skeptical stance toward the increasingly controversial rail system.

Shepherd also compared her frustration with ABAG's statistics to her experiences with the California High-Speed Rail Authority.

"I'm worn down with high-speed rail already with trying to come up with reasonable questions, with trying to put together clear data and trying to get people to respond ... to a lack of credibility with the numbers we're using," Shepherd said at the Dec. 5 meeting. "And it sounds like we're walking right back into this again with these ABAG numbers."

At the same meeting, Councilman Larry Klein was one of several members who said the city should demand a better explanation of how the Department of Finance had come up with its numbers. The projections, he argued, need to be subject to more public scrutiny.

"I think we have to really not accept it (the state projection on future jobs) and say, 'Let's have some public discussion of where the numbers come from," Klein said.

Shepherd joined Klein in praising Schmid's report and said the numbers used by the regional agencies give her "great concern" because the city is asked to do a lot of work to accommodate the housing projections.

Curtis Williams, the city's planning director, highlighted a number of concerns in a report last month. Economic projections, he wrote, "appear to be substantially overstated" and the regional housing projections are too high and are "driven by unrealistic employment projections."

"The basic goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions is not well-served by overstating projections, which then require even more extensive resources and more dramatic land use and transportation changes than would be required with more realistic estimates," Williams wrote.

The city's challenge to ABAG is expected to intensify in the coming months as the regional agencies proceed with choosing a preferred "Sustainable Community Strategy" alternative for the Bay Area. The regional agencies plan to perform an environmental analysis on the strategic document over the coming year and adopt it by April 2013.

Williams noted that under regional projections, all three scenarios would achieve roughly the same greenhouse gas reductions (about 8 percent for the first two, slightly below 8 percent for the "outward growth scenario"). But the implications of which scenario is chosen would be very significant for cities like Palo Alto.

"We're probably going to make the point that doing all this heavy concentration is a burden to cities like Palo Alto and it's unrealistic," Williams said. "At the same time, the increment of improvement in greenhouse-gas emissions isn't that significant and that perhaps it would be better to leave some flexibility for the cities to do something else to reduce greenhouse gases."

Move over buddy...

A young man squashes another man's attempt at sitting next to him, declaring that the seats are too close for comfort. The second man tries to persuade him to change his mind with no luck. Defeated, the man camps out by the stairs. It's an uncomfortable scene, even though it never escalates. Another man huffs at me as I enter a nearly full train and approach the chair beside him that holds his bag. The pregnant pause he takes before reaching towards his bag does not cause me to walk by, and this persistence seems to surprise him.

"Does he interact much with other humans?" I notice myself contemplating. He settles in his seat, hunches over his computer to watch a TV show. He seems pacified enough now.  Whew! As my commuter train riding in the Bay Area has just recently started after a bit of a hiatus from city living, these people who seemed to not be embracing communal living on the train catch my attention. 

My thoughts stumbled on a question, "Are social mores upheld less on the train, if so why?" Then I conjured up images of how these people may live. Most of the train stops are in the suburbs, which afford us space for those Lazy Boys, L shaped couches and California Kings. We can sprawl out, we are so rich in space we can feel alone even with others in the home.

George Carlin did a sketch on our increasing demands for expanding the space we inhabit; bigger homes, cars, and storage spaces. If Carlin, one of the masters in pairing social commentary with comedy spoke about it, than we know it has an element of absurdity to it. We are attracted to space. The commuter train puts "space people" in a world where space is lacking. Then we are asked to share the precious commodity with strangers! Uneasiness seems to follow along for the ride. 

How much space do we need? Is our ample personal space separating us further and further apart from one another? Can we get our spacious homes and still live happily among each other, even side by side, say?  Being in close proximity to people requires that we think more as a group than as individuals. Or maybe it does not require it, it just eventually happens if you get in the spirit of it. A train, unlike being in our separate cars, provides us with shared inevitabilities. If the train is late we all are late, we are not consumed with racing each other on the congested roads thinking that if we just get one car ahead we may beat the next light.  As our destinies are more tied and we seem less as a threat to each other's success (getting "there" on time) we can relax around each other, no?

So this human phenomenon of employing safety nets with the intention of safeguarding individual space on the commuter train has been a focus of my observations.  The plumped jargon hopefully underscores my thought that we should begin to see this urge to build a wall around ourselves as an unnecessary response to living among people. As described above, when people are resistant to the shared experience they are in the midst of they can display less than optimal expressions of humanity. That is to say behaviors that can be classified as rude.  Yet, blame is not the answer. With all the excess space we are now privy to, we need to reprogram ourselves to include living peacefully among people (even in close quarters). We need a reboot if you will, a realignment to encourage us to see sharing space with others as a welcome activity, to not get stuck in our own individual worlds. We can influence ourselves to think in terms of neighborhoods, fellow citizens/commuters, office mates: to appreciate other people's existence. Whether commuting, walking, dining or shopping we can think of each other as fellow community members rather than hurdles or inconveniences to our day's agenda. Life would not be better if we lived in isolation. 

Smile at people, say "hi," make room for one another. I love the saying, "anger is a gift-- you do not have to accept it." The other evening, getting onto the train, happy to escape the chilly rain of Northern California winters and to be heading home, I slid into a four seater section with an elderly woman and a suitcase that was inhabiting the entire four seats. I sat down on one of the aisle seats and quickly found myself on the receiving end of unpleasant grumbling from the woman which she dramatically paired with disapproving facial expressions.

Several stops later, she motioned to me that she would be getting off the train. I offered to get her luggage for her, she accepted and even uttered a thank you. My heart took a small leap! Had I changed this woman's experience with sharing space? Did she notice that having someone near her actually increased her experience rather than diminished it? Would she grumble less next time someone wanted to occupy a seat within three feet from her? I'm not sure, but as I travel along and come shoulder to shoulder with my fellow neighbors I am going to smile, share and maybe even say hi. I am sure I will meet plenty of others who will do just the same.

Starting Sunday, it will cost another cent to mail a letter via the United States Postal Service (USPS).

The new 45-cent price for Forever stamps goes into effect Jan. 22 across the U.S. The stamp price hasn't been increased in 2 1/2 years.

Highlights of the new single-piece First-Class Mail pricing include:

• Letters (1 oz.): 1-cent increase to 45 cents
• Letters additional ounces: unchanged at 20 cents
• Postcards: 3-cent increase to 32 cents
• Letters to Canada or Mexico (1 oz.): 5-cent increase to 85 cents.
• Letters to other international destinations: 7-cent increase to $1.05

Prices also will change for other mailing services, including Standard Mail, Periodicals, Package Services and Extra Services, according to the USPS.

However, Express Mail and Priority Mail prices won't be affected. First-Class Mail Presort mailers will go up in price, but the second ounce is free. Also, customers can get a special three-month pricing option for short-term PO boxes.

More information on the new pricing is here.

And new for all customers is a three-month pricing option to rent PO Boxes, perfect for people on the move and others who need a PO Box for a short time period.

The Postal Service doesn't get tax dollars for operating expenses. It relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations. The change in stamp prices is intended to increase the Postal Service's revenue.