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State legislators began the second special session of the year at noon today to consider a tax cut on modular houses to spur housing redevelopment on the Gulf Coast. Lawmakers began by saying a prayer and taking role. Both the House and Senate will meet in committees this afternoon to work on a proposal.
Republican Gov. Haley Barbour called the session to lower the sales tax on modular houses from 7 percent to 3 percent.
House Democratic leaders doubt buyers will save any money from the tax cut saying that contractors actually pay the tax, not consumers.
Barbour disagrees and estimates the savings to top $4,000.
Modular houses are built in a factory and assembled at the buyers lot. The home can be complete in a month, compared to the year-long wait for a traditional-built house on the coast.
Boulder, CO (PRWEB via PRWeb) October 26, 2006 -- Attendees at the recent Log Home & Timber Frame Expo in Denver were among the first to see a full-scale model of the Ponderosa, one of the exclusive modular cabin designs now available from Spirit Cabins. This innovative collection has been receiving great interest from buyers looking for high quality, attractively priced vacation homes, studios and guest cottages.
Early arrivals at the home show were treated to an unrehearsed, real-time demonstration as the log cabin arrived at the show grounds and one construction manager led a team of enthusiastic but inexperienced volunteers to quickly transform it into a comfortable home, complete with a front porch, cozy lighting and cool drinks in the fridge for guests. Soon visitors were filing through, admiring the real dormer windows, custom finishes, solid hardwood cabinets and pine doors imported from Finland -- and few left without a catalog.
Samantha Kissel reacts to the temperature of the water after stepping out of her disabled truck Saturday in front of a house on Taylor Avenue on the Southeast Side. Many Evansville streets flooded once again as heavy rains that began Friday continued into the weekend. So far this has been the second-rainiest September on record. .
FREMONT, CA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- October 26, 2006 -- @Road, Inc. (NASDAQ: ARDI), a global provider of next-generation solutions for Mobile Resource Management (MRM), today announced its results for the quarter ended September 30, 2006. Total revenues for the third quarter of 2006 were $25.2 million, an 8% sequential growth compared to $23.2 million for the second quarter of 2006. Hosted revenues for the third quarter of 2006 were $21.2 million, and licensed revenues for the third quarter of 2006 were $4.0 million. Net loss attributable to common stockholders for the third quarter of 2006 was $3.6 million, or $0.06 per diluted share. For the nine months ended September 30, 2006, total revenues were $73.1 million, an 11% increase compared to $65.6 million for the same period in 2005.
Take a stroll through a Canadian Tire store, and you'll see how friendly the giant retailer has become with celebrity designer Debbie Travis. The line of Travis-branded home decor products has expanded to include new tabletop and decor accessories, bathroom fixtures and lampshades. But perhaps the most significant addition is a line of affordable modular furniture that homeowners can customize to suit a room's function and their own storage needs. Each piece comes in a maple-coloured laminate finish, which can be painted to match any of the four "moods" into which Travis divides her collection. Prices start at about $40 for a one-door cube. There are also occasional items, such as the solid-wood serving cart ($129), designed for the "Nostalgic" mood. For more information, go to http://www.canadiantire.ca.
A quarter of all housing in Immokalee is considered substandard. Sloping floors, broken windows and leaking roofs are common in many rental units. It won't get fixed overnight. So say Collier County and state officials who spent this summer weeding out some of the worst units before farmworkers flood the eastern Collier County town for the harvest season. Elected leaders hoped to remove the housing stock while units were empty. County commissioners set aside $75,000 to hire four more state health inspectors in May. State inspectors shut down nearly 500 beds in about 240 units in Immokalee, including a longtime flophouse, from July through September. Code enforcement efforts led to 25 structures being demolished, county officials said. “I think we can make a difference and do it well but it needs to be steady and ongoing," said Nancy Frees, head of the health department in Immokalee who has been working in the town 25 years.
General Motors. Corp.'s first gasoline-electric hybrid vehicle aimed at the mass market joined the Saturn lineup this past summer. It's the Saturn Vue Green Line, derived from Saturn's popular five-passenger, gasoline-only Vue sport utility vehicle. The hybrid drivetrain uses a 170-horsepower, 2.4-liter, four-cylinder gasoline engine for primary power and a small electric motor to boost acceleration, as well as to increase fuel economy by about 20 percent. This essentially allows the vehicle to have the pep of a six-cylinder, but with even better fuel economy than that of the regular four-cylinder Vue. That gives the Vue Green Line EPA fuel-economy ratings of 27 miles per gallon in the city and 32 mpg on the highway, compared with ratings of 22 city/27 highway for the 2.2-liter four-cylinder Vue (with automatic transmission) and 20 city/28 highway with the Honda-built 3.5-liter V-6.
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