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The American Dream

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Or so I've been told. I don't know, I just think it's so tacky. Why invest so much in maintenance-free until landfilled in a few years later plastic? Maybe I am so infatuated with log cabins and rough-cut wood siding.

Friday April 24, 2026 — Suburbs

Chinese Cars Go American With ‘Brutish’ SUVs and Trucks – WSJ

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Chinese Cars Go American With ‘Brutish’ SUVs and Trucks – WSJ

BEIJING—China is embracing styles of passenger vehicle typically associated with the U.S.—the big SUV and brawny pickup truck.

At the Beijing auto show, which kicked off Friday, Chinese electric-vehicle brands such as Xpeng, Aito and Li Auto showed off the kind of three-row sport-utility vehicles American families often buy.

“Chinese people love big cars,” said Clifford Kang, vice president of Seres, which makes the luxury-focused Aito brand. “A car is one thing to show status.”

While Chinese cars have been getting bigger for some time, this year’s show put the spotlight on the trend. The EVs local brands specialize in used to work better with smaller cars, but that is changing as the technology improves.

How Many Homes Do Corporate Landlords Really Own? – The New York Times

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How Many Homes Do Corporate Landlords Really Own? – The New York Times

While real estate analysts typically define large institutional landlords as those who own at least 1,000 properties, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act aims to place purchasing restrictions on landlords with at least 350 properties. But even with the lowered threshold, only about 140 institutional investors in the U.S. meet the criteria, accounting for 0.59 percent of single-family homes. To spot large landlords’ effect on housing, squint and zoom in: Their ownership of single-family homes tends to be concentrated in certain regions. The markets where landlords with 350 or more properties own at least 3 percent of single-family homes are all in the Sun Belt. In Atlanta, such investors own about 4 percent of all single-family homes — the highest rate in the country. A tighter focus on the four Atlanta ZIP codes with the most large-scale owners reveals that they own 12 percent or more of the single-family homes.

Manufactured Housing is very odd the state’s assessment records

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Manufactured Housing is very odd the state’s assessment records. Some towns assessors don’t use that code at all, preferring to either leave the housing style field blank or describing such structures as Ranch style. For example, Coeymans doesn’t have a single building that is Manufactured Housing but Cario has several hundred. In some towns its inconsistent – varies widely by property – probably whoever was assessor at the time.

But then again, assessment records are riddled with errors. If you look at the City of Albany assessment records, only two buildings were built before 1850, a fact that doesn’t take long to disprove.