The correct wedding favors can be difficult enough to find, seeing how they should reflect not only the occasion but the couple and all their guests, but for individuals in alternative~ lifestyles for instance open marriages it may be highly challenging. On the one hand, traditional wedding favors don’t seem to honor the most special aspect of such a marriage – namely, that it’s open and the couple isn’t exactly shy about the fact – but on the other hand most folks want to remember a marriage, not a social statement.

Of course, one might easily retort that marriage by definition is a social statement to begin with – but the institution is so frequent and nearly universal that it’s no “statement” at all, not in the sense of a declaration beyond the obvious.

Wedding favors are also statements, in effect, a kind of message from the couple to their guests. They symbolize what the couple wishes the guest to remember of the wedding, and even how the guest should view the couple. So how to go about choosing the right takeway gift, the right momento?

Ultimately, it depends on the couple, of course. The overwhelming vast majority would no doubt prefer innocous ceremonies and by extension sourvenirs – even private affairs that make the official proclamation of their marriage blend into the vast background of all marriages occurring in their culture. Hence the double difficulty encountered by those in alternative family arrangements where nothing seems to recognize, much less celebrate, their beliefs.

What to do, then? Fortunately, many such individuals, people who select and also proudly proclaim their unusual unions, are really creative and eminently capable of designing their own distinctive parting gifts for their guests. But as modern society becomes ever more permissive, it is only a matter of time before enterprising individuals start catering to this niche market with particular goods that not only recognize their particular flavor of marriage but even honor it.

Ah, summer – baseball, backyard barbecues, and swimming pool resurfacing. That’s correct, swimming pool resurfacing. Once an occasional chore every other year, it is now practically a once-every-other-decade spring or even summer pastime (for those who like to wait until the very last minute) – all thanks to the new do-it-yourself fiberglass pool resurfacing in a can made possible by modern chemistry.

Pool resurfacing done right means fiberglass in this day and age. Swimming pool resurfacing is an essential aspect of swimming pool ownership, just the sort of renovation that’s made periodically to counter the effects of corrosion. Regardless of whether constructed of gunite, concrete, plaster, or wood (especially wood), swimming pools will deteriorate over time to the point that a complete resurfacing isn’t only advisable but required.

Thankfully, as previously mentioned, modern technology has made it possible for the finest kind of resurfacing, fiberglass resurfacing, to be performed entirely by oneself safely and fairly quickly. Best of all, it’s as permanent as any job handled by licensed contractors but much less expensive.

Fiberglass pool surfaces have a proven track record of more than three decades now as a durable coating that happens to also provide other benefits, such as reduce operating coasts. Fiberglass is a material that bonds very well with existing surfaces, giving pools a nice sheen that makes them appear to be brand new.

This wondrous product is now available in simple cans like paint, easily applicable and requiring no sand-blasting. Approved for both commercial and residential use, do-it-yourself fiberglass resurfacing will need much less maintenance than even marcite or vinyl pools. Furthermore, with the right care you won’t need to worry about your swimming pool’s surface for another twenty to thirty years or more!

Less prone to staining. Beautiful shiny protective shell. All easily applied and ready for duty within one day. That’s pool resurfacing in the 21st Century. Now that’s progress!

Arsène Lupin III is a formidable thief capable of cracking all the safes in the world. A fictional character introduced by the mangaka (Japanese for “comicbook artist”) Kazuhiko Kato, better known as Monkey Punch, in the 10 August 1967 issue of Weekly Manga Action, Lupin is supposed to be the grandson of another fictional character, Arsène Lupin, a French gentleman thief and detective created by Maurice Leblanc, the best-selling early Twentieth Century pulp fiction author. As the world’s number one thief, in addition to safes Lupin is also a master at disarming traps and alarms. His escapades have proved him quite a talented driver and pilot as well, and he is an expert shot – with a pistol, no less.

For all his abilities, however, Lupin has a doltish, even idiotic look. Yet they belie his ferocious reasoning abilities and social charms; Lupin is able to get past folks with about the same ease as when negotiating safes, particularly booby-trapped ones.

When not practicing his art – he seems to steal a lot more for the challenge than for any personal gain, frequently discarding treasures or not caring if he should lose them after first conquering the quest of acquiring them – Lupin enjoys fishing, gambling, and dating beautiful women – not necessarily in that order!

Giving rigor to the dubious proverb about honor among thieves, Lupin will frequently foil other criminals who are engaged in activities of a violent, murderous nature. In fact, most of his adventures involve not only the police, epitomized by his nemesis Inspector Zenigata, but genuinely sinister characters of deep malice.

Immensely popular and voted amongst the Ten Most Iconic Anime Heroes, Arsène Lupin III has been ubiquitous in three television series, five feature films, almost two dozen television specials, and several original video animations and videogames.

With media attention usually targeted on foreclosed homeowners, this article will take a brief look to consider the effects on homebuilders such as Isaac Toussie.

Embittered homeowners who have been foreclosed upon have taken to trashing the property before getting kicked out, with anecdotal estimates by real estate agents putting the number of such vandalized properties at up to half of all such units. But given all the media coverage of foreclosed homeowners, it’s time to take a look now at how the same crisis is affecting homebuilders like Isaac Toussie. After all, many of the small-time businessmen had to take out loans in order to finance their housing developments. Of course, there are no such developers out on the street, and their cases, unfortunate in themselves, are not anywhere near comparable to that of homeowners who have nowhere to go at all. But it’s helpful to see how things can turn out for businessmen and women caught up in the same economic typhoon, and how responses can differ – or not.

For example, many small homebuilders have had to dip into personal savings just to keep their companies afloat, a familiar situation to many homeowners. Buyers were disappearing with cash deposits of several thousand left on the table, proof that local residential property markets had turned ice-cold. Even more unfortunately, many homebuilders have proceeded since then to file for bankruptcy protection, with vast sums owed not only to their lenders but also their subcontractors and workers. But still worse yet, these small-time builders have often financed their businesses with so-called recourse debt which allows banks to seize homes, cars, and other personal assets in case of default – again, quite a familiar scenario comparable to that faced by many homeowners.

Such scenarios have increased and are now considered widespread across the country. Many a builder has been left with unsold units and land, falling behind on interest payments and facing foreclosures. And in a very bad sign of the extent of the destruction involved, even very large homebuilders are in trouble, with legendary builders such as Levitt & Sons, founders of Levittown, New York on Long Island, famous for epitomizing postwar suburbia, forced into bankruptcy like some small ill-fated start-up.

It’s gotten so bad that once solid partnerships and friendships have frayed as an every-man-for-himself mentality creeps into the proceedings. Contractors and subcontractors have had to take out liens on the property they build in order to protect themselves. And it is in this respect that the experiences of homeowners and homebuilders differ: the latter have almost no hope of any governmental assistance whatsoever, despite being affected by the same subprime mortgage industry shenanigans that’s made owning a home so suddenly burdensome.

Legal Disclaimer: Be advised that such information as has been presented so far only constitutes mere opinion and should under no circumstances be misconstrued for professional advice of any kind whatsoever! Always consult those properly licensed and/or otherwise qualified when it comes to making business decisions of any financial importance.

Are you currently an eBay consumer? if that is so, you might have considered obtaining a used Macbook there. But before you purchase your next Macbook on eBay here are some helpful tips.

Take your time previous to shopping:

There is no need to hurry into anything. This is a sizable purchase and you should take the time to analyze your used or refurbished Macbook deal. You will want to make sure you are genuinely getting a deal and that it is precisely what you are looking for and do not forget to calculate in the shipping costs.

Searching for the right seller:

Look for sellers with quite a lot of positive feedback. Be careful of sellers with bad, low, or no feedback.

Read through the description:

Read the description very carefully. Make sure all the components that you will need, such as the power cable, are listed.

Ask questions:

If you are unsure about anything, ask questions. Be sure to ask any questions prior to bidding on the item. Remember once you bid you are bound to the bid.

“Multimedia” and “virtual reality” used to be big buzzwords throughout the second half of the ’90s, before the “dot bomb” when internet start-ups were going up like crazy and the stock market couldn’t get enough of them, throwing money at almost every one in a confident shotgun style.

And now those days are long gone, having moved onto the next big bubble (which was, by the way, subprime mortgages, something that’s still a problem the world over), but virtual reality and multimedia have only become better and better – though full sci-fic implementation is still quite some way off. That’s because a lot is involved in full sensory duplication, though for many, the “rated-G” audiences of families on a vacation package, say, something like the New York Skyride by serial entrepreneur Zalman Silber would be just fine (it is, briefly, an IMAX-like helicopter fly-over of famous city sites synchronized to motion seating). But in research and development labs around the world, all the biggest names in consumer electronics are busy figuring out how to apply declassified military technology in a relevant way to ever more immersive videogaming and other kinds of entertainment.

Two trends appear ready to finally come to fruition: 3D and kinetics. First, three-dimensional technology is one of the most heavily researched fields in home electronics, and it seems poised for a prime-time debut in the form of astonishingly advanced television screens that require no 3D glasses to view 3D imagery. Secondly, the multiple billion-dollar videogaming industry has been crucial in developing kinetic controls, whereby user commands are conveyed not through a physical interface but through the user’s own body movements. These two advances are being marketed right now by some of the biggest names in the business, famous labels such as Nintendo and Microsoft, companies that have a proven record of success in most of the things they do. A far cry from the likes of Zalman Silber!

Besides entertainment, the most obvious other uses for these technologies would be in real estate as well as education. Teaching subjects like chemistry and physics will surely be revolutionized by the implementation of intuitive user controls and interactive 3D graphics that do not require a special interface. Wholesale property investment already makes significant use of virtual reality by providing 360-degree views and video walk-throughs of real estate to prospective buyers from around the world. Using virtual tours over the internet, prospective buyers can figure out from the comfort of their own homes whether an actual site visit is warranted, though property is also often bought just on the basis of the virtual tour!

GSM cellphone devices are the most widely used in the world. Reports suggest that the standard comprises some 80% of all cellular phones in use around the world. And while GSM smartphones are a all-pervasive feature of initial world countries, it is their position in far less “civilized” areas that best illustrates the reach and effect of modern communications.

Think about Somalia: a large, desert country on the eastern horn of Africa which in the past 20 years has been wracked through civil war along with famine. Bombed out bullet riddled cities dot the barren landscape where for thousands of years, nomads have roamed the desert herding goats and camels across hundreds of miles from pastures in the wet season to sell in the dry period. Even practical measures of distance here do not stick to the metric or imperial standards used by the rest of the world.

Nomad calculate distance simply by units called a Gedi: the distance a browsing herd animal can travel in one day, which changes every season relying on the physical strength of each herd. Even working automobiles are rare here, let alone something sophisticated as a GSM mobile phone. And yet the simple application of GSM cell phones, which we under western culture have long taken for granted, has proven unbelievably practical to this nomadic lifestyle.

For decades, Somali herdsmen have followed an annual pattern. By the end of the year once the dry season arrives, they migrate from the more fertile fields elsewhere in the country, across the desert, to coastal cities where they can market their stock in the markets to traders from the Middle East and somewhere else. Keeping their animals in pens inside the cities while they arrange a sale is incredibly costly, as they must consistently feed and water their herd with stores provided for by local merchants at obscene costs. They have no alternative. However, GSM cell phones have permitted them to forego this course of action.

A Somali nomad, a man wearing hand sewn clothes which he has likely worn for all of his life, carrying a staff in the traditional posture – horizontally over his shoulders, his arms resting atop – a person who sleeps on a mat of thatched grass under the stars, beside a fire he constructed by his own, can now simply make a phone call and arrange the sale of his herd in advance. As opposed to lingering in the city for several days, expending what meager wealth he has on preserving his herd there, hoping his sale can get back his losses as well as turn a profit, he can now simply set up to have a buyer ready for him as soon as he arrives. Such high technology might seem incredibly unnatural in Somalia, but it’s application is flawlessly suited to the needs of a nomad.

An exam glove is utilized by medical professionals to conduct examinations without contaminating the sample or patient as well as themselves. Most such exam gloves used to be made out of rubber latex, but the chances of allergic reactions has made the likes of neoprene and nitrile, the materials of choice for numerous modern medical exam glove. It’s almost impossible to tell them apart at first glance, yet each presents its own unique characteristics that make some individuals prefer one over the other.

The standard exam glove these days is made of synthetic rubber that tends to cost much more than natural latex alternatives, a concern in these recessionary times when even famous hospitals like Saint Vincent’s in the Bronx, New York can shutter due to financial difficulties.

In addition, something like nitrile rubber has inferior strength and flexibility when compared to natural rubber, though it’s more resistant to oils and acids. Neoprene, on the other hand, resists burning far better and will frequently be found in the weather stripping applied to fire doors as well as in the examination gloves of a healthcare provider.

Exam gloves were first instituted with William Stewart Halsted’s 1890 practice of using rubber gloves that protect healthcare workers from skin exposure to carbolic acid, a necessary sterilizing agent. Carbolic acid, or phenol, was adopted originally by Sir Joseph Lister for use in antiseptic surgery, but skin irritation lead to the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company’s invention of a rubber glove that could withstand the organic compound.

Interestingly, latex gloves are still much preferred in surgery these days because of the fine control and greater sensitivity they provide. The one exception to this fact is the polyisoprene glove, but these are over twice as expensive as their natural latex counterparts, and as mentioned previously, hospitals have now turn into really cost-sensitive environments.

Though the existing economic hardship has also disrupted Connecticut realty, industry experts like Isaac Toussie believe that there’s no danger of oversupply in Connecticut mainly due to the state’s inventory levels being rather stable, probably because of Connecticut’s housing escaping the kind of speculation other places have seen. Such a happy case is probably also on account of the fact that Connecticut hosts some with the most expensive land anywhere in the country after California, with over three percent of them priced around a million dollars as of the turn of the century. Southwestern Connecticut lies within the greater New York City metropolitan region, but areas further away, such as those communities in the northeast, are better described as luxury retreats for the monied classes, given median home values in the multiple of millions.

There can be a lot of “upside” to Connecticut realty. Condominium inventory in Connecticut are actually at steady ranges despite the financial downturn of late, which is really an extremely positive sign that bodes well for the overall real estate market there. Connecticut land ought to be fine pretty soon. Investing in commercial properties there is frequently a good bet even in this economy. Slow but steady growth has marked the history of Connecticut property for a while. In truth, in spite of the current financial meltdown these days, the State of Connecticut has not witnessed a lot of overly dramatic shifts.

The Danbury Fair, the state’s largest shopping mall, is a case in point. Founded in 1947, it has three levels, forty-seven shops, and nearly four hundred thousand square feet of retail space. Industry experts like Isaac Toussie feel that once the New York City Metropolitan Area recovers, retail outlets like this one in Connecticut will follow right along. Indeed, three of the state’s eight counties, which also happen to house most of the population, make up the Tri-State Region of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

In spite of such proximity to a world-class metropolis like New York City, it should be noted that Connecticut was never that hot a real estate market, so it shouldn’t be surprising that Connecticut has endured the housing scandal and its subsequent crisis much better than many other states. Indeed, once-industrial and then dilapidated Waterbury now attracts newcomers, most notably Orthodox Jewry, a welcome development that has brought new life to the local economy.

Certainly, Connecticut has in fact done well compared to states like Florida, Nevada, and even California, for sales are already reported to be running at about 70% of 2008 levels, and though median prices have moderated they are at least not nose-diving! Yes, mortgages are harder to come by, but a lot of this is on account of the long-overdue correction of slipshod lending practices in the first place and is actually, in the long term, a positive development for Connecticut’s economy.

Having said all that, readers are still advised to consult those properly licensed and/or otherwise qualified when it comes to making business decisions of any financial importance as neither author nor publisher shall be held liable for such information as has been presented so far, which only constitutes mere opinion and should under no circumstances be misconstrued for financial advice of any kind whatsoever!

A prosperous individual like Zalman Silber is commonly admired for making a lot of money and giving it away. From a certain angle, that is the best of all worlds, to be a winner in life with access to the world’s luxuries while also doing good: to be admired for one’s material achievements as well as spiritual aspirations.

Yet for all the Zalman Silbers of the world, there is a world of difference between being and having. Many confuse having with being – the more they have, the bigger they are, as if a better person is produced by ever more goods. Yet real good comes about not from possession – or, even, good works – but from being, true being.

It is a hard thing to realize, as most of us take life very much for granted. We believe that to be is the simplest thing in the world – but we discount our own humanity in supposing that, plant-like, all we need is some light and water and we are all that we can be.

No, not even having a beachfront mansion with a helicopter out front and a yacht out back on your very own island makes you all that you can be. To be fully human, we must also understand deprivation, fear, want – we must experience life in all its totality.

We must empathize. For the act of empathy makes us most human – the exercise of our imaginations, the use of our unique ability to almost literally put ourselves in another’s stead.

And hence the difference between being and having. One sees this very clearly in a classroom, even in college, where most students scribble away furiously, taking down notes as the professor speaks. Yet how much are they really retaining if half their brains are busy recording what was said instead of being fully engaged in what is said?

Full undivided attention means exactly that. It is the total direct no-holds-barred personal experience of what is going on, what is being said – and what that means in all its implications. In the act of note-taking, however, one is necessarily forever playing “catch up,” with a significant amount of one’s attention focused on the act of recording – and editing, moreover: a necessarily “distancing” set of behaviors.

It is as if these students believe that the very having of some notes of the lecture constitutes knowledge itself – literally having knowledge – while the fact of the matter is that one best knows, most completely knows, in the direct experiencing of what is to be known.

This direct experience does not come from notes hastily jotted in a strobe light-like manner. It comes from being fully in the moment, as opposed to standing outside of it recording.

Since its development by Ericsson in 1994, Bluetooth technology is the go-to standard for joining stationary or mobile devices over shorter distances by way of short range, short wavelength radio transmissions. Essentially the most recognizable example to consumers are Bluetooth headsets, those small gadgets you see connected to people’s ears when it looks almost as though they’re speaking to themselves on the sidewalk. However, the technology has far more applications than just Bluetooth headsets.

Bluetooth borrows its name from the nickname given to the Danish king Harald Gormsson, who reigned over as king of Denmark from around 958 AD, and later also as King of Norway from about 970 until he was driven out by Germans a bit later. His nickname, “Blatand”, meaning Blue Tooth in English, is rumored to have come from many sources, two of the most popular being: His love of blue berries, which was so intense that his teeth were discolored blue (fanciful and unlikely), or that he had some kind of gum disease which converted his teeth and gums a bluish color (more likely for a tenth century Viking ruler).

Part of Harald’s legacy as a ruler was initiatives to unite many dissident tribes throughout Norway, Sweden and Denmark until a single king. These efforts at unification are the reason Bluetooth borrows its name from Harald: just as he’d united the tribes into a solitary working society, Bluetooth technology so unites electronic devices. In fact, logo for Bluetooth technology is a mixture of runes symbolizing the first two letters of his name: H and B.

Technologies like Bluetooth headsets work by chopping up data into fragments and then projecting that data in loads through up to 79 different channels. These packets of date are then sent out via short wavelength radio signals, which are then obtained by other Bluetooth compatible devices. The idea is that two, or even a number of Bluetooth devices can be synced up to work in cooperation with each other. Bluetooth headsets are actually among the best examples.

A Bluetooth headset can be used to wirelessly converse with any Bluetooth enabled phone, so that discussing and listening can be handled through the small, individually distinct headset, while the phone itself (still inside your pocket or purse) handles all of its own capabilities – like sending and receiving the actual call. Similarly, Bluetooth can also be used as a means to communicate with video game consoles, much like the Playstation 3. Headsets can be used to communicate with the console, which in turn forwards the voice data received from the headset to servers for distribution to other players in an online game – and their voices are equally received by the PS3 and forwarded via Bluetooth to your headset.

To sell your company is one of the most gut-wrenching decisions you will ever face as an entrepreneur. Even without any sentimentality on your part – all the round-the-clock research, all the round-the-clock legwork, all that heavy lifting, now come to this, washing your hands of it all – the prospect of timing it all just right can be nerve-wracking. You’ll feel like some television game show guest, at a pivotal moment during you can opt to cash out or stay on for more.

Except it’s even worse than that! For there are a hundred and one factors involved once you wish to sell your company, so many different variables at play – just like when you first started up the business, come to think of it!

And if you have any venture capital on board, good luck; your investors will generally be the first to cash out and get their cut (unless they’re, rather more simply, buying out your share).

For example, let’s say you own a full one hundred percent of your business and want to sell your company but you haven’t yet looked into what it could be worth since you’ve been too busy basically growing the business (unless you’re one of these serial entrepreneurs who love to start up firms but hate to run them once things settle down).

You’ve now arrived at one of these so-called inflection points, a time when getting the company to the next stage of success involves considerable risk and a lot of time and money. If you were unlucky enough to have desperately needed investors, you’ll need to first double revenues and pray for stable market conditions to ensure that you are able to make as much money on a sale as you could have without those investors – who, remember, will want their cut first.

NY Yankees merchandise is a lot more popular than ever now that The Boss has left the stadium. Many are the opportunities – in fact, a lot more numerous than ever before, it would seem, as a casual glance around online and off suggests – to sell everything from an NY Yankees flag to a NY Yankees clock, only now with Steinbrenner’s own mug along with the team logo.

Indeed, a disinterested observer might even mistake him for the Yankees mascot, given the ubiquity of images since his passing! NY Yankees merchandise is a huge business, and it was Steinbrenner himself who made it so. Like no other club owner, he turned an already storied brand into a literal franchise, complete with its own cable television channel.

Steinbrenner revolutionized the business of baseball by being the very first owner to capitalize on other methods of making money beyond the games themselves. Under his stewardship, the NY Yankees went from a ten million-dollar outfit to one worth over a billion.

The business of the Yankees might now change under the helm of his two sons, particularly Hank, who is said to resemble his father very much in temperament. But merchandising deals are expected to proceed as they ever have, with a slew of goods bearing the famed team logo and cap insignia – and now, for a while yet at least, the face of the man who has been most often associated with the ball club for almost four decades.

Indeed, it would be fitting should he become a brand in himself now, as in some ways he almost was in life. Charismatic CEOs transcend their companies, and one wonders whether The Boss himself might be looking down on his most successful business venture this very moment, even as he was wont to do in life.

Throughout today’s noisy world of frequent distraction, very few people stop to consider the means through which they interpret all of this audible stimuli: the ears; and much less still take the proper steps to defend their ears when they should, even using so easy as plugs for ears. Obviously ear plugs sound like a ridiculous, not entirely needed precaution in most circumstances – and in a lot of situations, they aren’t required – but understanding the value of your ears is key to protecting them.

Ears are of course used for hearing and interpreting sound. Sound – which are waves of pressure traveling through a medium, whether it be air, water, or something else – is first “heard” when it is trapped by the external ear (which is the visible part on either side of our head, and what we first think when we think of “ears”). These pressure waves, or sound, are then filtered through the outer parts of the ear until eventually they interact with the ear drum and inner ear (those parts of the organ found inside of your skull), where they stimulate hair cells, sending nervous signals to the brain. These signals are then translated as sound. Yes protection supplies come in many different forms.

Thanks to the physically miniscule and fragile nature of the ear, it is very susceptible to physically trauma, which can even be triggered by the aggressive vibrations caused by excessive noise levels. Consider a speaker system or a subwoofer: the way the speaker cones vibrate as they emit sound is similar to the way the small bones and tissues of the inner ear vibrate as they are stimulated by sound. And just like a subwoofer or speaker can break under the stress of these vibrations at high volume, so too can the pieces of the human ear. Sounds experienced at places like construction zones or rock concerts are very easily able to damage the ear over long intervals of exposure. By simply blocking these kinds of sounds from entering the ear, ear plugs can prevent this.

Other than protecting your actual capacity to hear, the protection supplied by ear plugs also preserves another vital function of the ears that is significantly less noticeable: one’s sense of balance. Actually, balance is one of the two principal reasons that mammals generally have two ears (the other is that two ears enable us to locate the source of sounds by localizing them, related to the way two working eyeballs allow depth perception). Deep inside the inner ear are the organs responsible for determining one’s orientation to gravity, and a sense of balance.

Tiny fluid stuffed sacks send nerve signals to the brain which usually interprets these signals to create a sense of physical orientation against the background environment. Since the fluid inside these sacks is subject to the identical laws of gravity as the rest of the body, the brain can interpret their orientation the same way you might if you observed a soda bottle half filled. No matter what angle you look at it, you can determine a sense of up and down by seeing in which direction gravity pulls the leftover fluid inside the bottle.

When getting into anything, it helps to do a little reconnoitering of the facts, even for a professional developer such as Isaac Toussie. And for the correct socioeconomic context in which to put such data, it helps to reference governmental findings such as census reports.

New York’s median annual household income is almost forty-three and a half thousand dollars, compared with the national average of just under forty-two thousand a year. The state median family income also comes out ever-so-slightly ahead of the national figure at over fifty-one thousand versus just over fifty-thousand per annum. As might be expected, per capita differences show the same general ratios at almost twenty-three and a half thousand to over twenty-one and a half thousand, respectively.

Some more facts and figures need to be taken into consideration for a well-rounded appraisal of realty trend lines in New York, but these pertain more specifically to real estate: the median value of owner-occupied housing units is well over a hundred and forty-eight thousand dollars, almost thirty thousand dollars more than the national average of only over one hundred and nineteen thousand. Curiously, the asking price for housing units statewide compared to nationwide posted only a slight difference of about five thousand dollars, at well over ninety-four thousand dollars to only over eighty-nine thousand, respectively.

Average sales prices for homes in the Empire State have normally been between two hundred and three hundred thousand dollars for four bedroom units, the most expensive category of housing. However, extremely dramatic spikes and drops have been posted periodically, such that gains of up to over seven hundred thousand dollars were reached. Such surges and declines have not lasted more than a year, and because the drop-offs have only very rarely fell past previous baseline levels, they may have been viewed as simple market corrections instead of anything more ominous. In fact, other kinds of housing – that is, one, two, three, and even four-bedroom units – have held rather steadily for a decade, rising only gradually from an average of around one hundred thousand to no more than two hundred thousand almost ten years later. When considering just one and two-bedroom homes, prices have only appreciated around fifty-thousand dollars in eight years.

It can be surmised that New York’s residential real estate market is fairly stable on the whole. The recent economic woes afflicting the nation have certainly made an impact, but residential realty statewide seems to have weathered it fairly well, all things considered. After all, this is the capital of the world we’re dealing with here!

That means that New York City will forever be bustling with economic activity, and the state along with it in a rising-tide-lifts-all-boats manner. Local developers such as
Isaac Toussie consider home prices of half a million not at all unusual, and should be regarded as the “entry-level” price one can expect to pay, even for somewhat dilapidated structures in some of the city’s worst neighborhoods. Rents are probably even more incredible, with people actually leasing out their walk-in closets as rooms!