I suspect many a real estate mogul got their start playing the board game classic Monopoly. It has a new look this year. This time rather than just houses and hotels, players can also build industrial buildings, railroads and sports stadiums, many in 3D versions in the center of the board.

This being a game, players can also put up bonus buildings that protect their properties or ?hazard buildings? that lower the value of opponent?s properties. Not sure what the real world equivalent of those would be, maybe a night club.

Parker Brothers launched Monopoly during the Great Depression and it was a huge hit in those tough times. This year though, going bankrupt and losing property seems a little too close to home.

Environmentally-friendly construction practices have gotten a lot of hype over the past few years but do they really pay off as an investment? A new study found that tenants in green buildings experience increased productivity and fewer sick days. The research also found that that green buildings have lower vacancy rates and higher rents than non-green counterparts.

The study, conducted by the University of San Diego and commercial real estate broker CB Richard Ellis Group, found that tenants in green buildings such as the Behnisch Architekten-designed Unilever offices in Hamburg above are more productive based on two measures: the average number of tenant sick days and a productivity change. Respondents reported an average of 2.88 fewer sick days in their current green office versus their previous non-green office. About 55% of respondents indicated that employee productivity had improved.

Based on the average tenant salary, an office space of 250 square feet per worker and 250 workdays a year, the decrease in sick days translated into a net impact of nearly $5.00 per square foot per year. The increase in productivity translated into a net impact of about $20 per square foot. The study also showed that green buildings have 3.5% lower vacancy rates and 13% higher rental rates than the market.

The work was based on surveys of 154 buildings under CBRE's management, totaling more than 51.6 million square feet and housing 3,000 tenants in ten markets across the U.S. The study defined a green building as those with LEED certification at any level or those that bear the EPA ENERGY STAR ® label.

Another report out in the past week concluded that constructing new green buildings or retrofitting existing structures with energy efficient air conditioning, solar panels and the like will support 7.9 million U.S. jobs and pump $554 billion into the American economy over the next four years. The study, by the U.S. Green Building Council and Booz Allen Hamilton, determined that green construction spending currently supports more than 2 million American jobs and generates more than $100 billion in gross domestic product and wages.

The economic impact of the total green construction market from 2000 to 2008, the study found, was $178 billion. It created or saved 2.4 million jobs and generated $123 billion in wages.

The U.S. Green Building Council certifies LEED buildings and obviously has an interest in the movement, but Rick Fedrizzi, chief exec of the group said something remarkably down to earth in releasing the report: ?Our goal is for the phrase ?green building? to become obsolete, by making all building and retrofits green ? and transforming every job in our industry into a green job.?

Can't argue with that.

He?s back. After seeing his New Jersey casino empire slide into bankruptcy for a third time, real estate baron Donald J. Trump has returned to the table.

As part of a deal cut with bondholders and announced today, Trump will receive a 10% stake in a newly recapitalized company, which owns three casinos in Atlantic City that carry the Trump name.

In exchange Trump and his daughter Ivanka, both former board members, agreed to drop a lawsuit they had against the company. Trump will be free to use his name on other gambling ventures, just not in five neighboring states.

Trump left the board of Trump Entertainment Resorts in February. It is struggling under $1.7 billion in debt. "I have always felt a tremendous responsibility to New Jersey, and especially to Atlantic City," he said after cutting this new deal.

Others parts of Trump?s empire?wobbly though it may be?continue to grow. The Trump Waikiki hotel opened this week in Hawaii and the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat just recognized his Trump International Hotel and Towers in Chicago as the sixth largest building in the world thanks to a new way of measuring skyscrapers. Previously they were measured starting with the front entrance, but since many buildings have multi-level entrances, the new standard is the lowest pedestrian entrance.

I once told my colleague Dean Foust, who was writing an article about the Hooter?s restaurant chain, that a planned Hooter?s casino in Vegas was a sure thing. ?I?d invest in that,? I said. Scantily-clad women, beer, gambling, what could go wrong?

Alas, the latest results for 155 East Tropicana, the entity that owns Hooter?s Las Vegas, shows that in Vegas there are no sure things. The company lost $14.5 million for the first nine months of this year on revenues of $35 million. Among the results, a 20% decline in food and beverage sales. That?s a lot fewer chicken wings.

A Securities and Exchange Commission filing says the company has received a notice of default from its lenders and is actively trying to restructure its $147 million in debt.

The filing says ?the company does not believe that cash on hand at September 30, 2009 of $5.6 million and expected cash flows will be adequate to meet the total financial obligations.?

Hooter?s Las Vegas suffered problems fundamental to all bad real estate investments?a second-rate building in a crummy location. Half its 696 rooms were closed in the third quarter due to plumbing issues. And as Union Gaming analyst Bill Lerner notes, road construction in front of the off-the-Strip property discouraged walk-in visitors.

Even football great Dan Marino punted. His restaurant inside Hooter?s will be renamed the Mad Onion in December.

Maybe the frat boy crowd has less money to gamble. Or maybe people don't want to go to an establishment in Vegas that they can visit in their own home town.

In my own defense I don't think Hooter's management did a great job marketing the casino. I once saw ads for it targeting families. Clearly not the right demographic.

The Milken Institute came out with its annual list of cities that are best able to create jobs. The top ten were culled from a list of the nation?s 200 largest cities. All have managed to avoid the worst of the economic meltdown driven by falling housing markets and job losses in manufacturing and global trade.

The 2009 top 10 performers

1. Austin-Round Rock, TX
2. Killeen-Temple-Fort Hood, TX
3. Salt Lake City, UT
4. McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, TX
5. Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX
6. Durham, NC
7. Olympia, WA
8. Huntsville, AL
9. Lafayette, LA
10. Raleigh-Cary, NC

Texas cities dominate the list. The free-marketers at the Milken Institute already love the Lone Star State with its lack of zoning laws and no state income tax. Communities such as Houston, Austin, Killen and not too far Lafayette, Louisiana never saw a big run up in home prices and they have the still strong energy sector supporting their economies.

The Milken folks noted that the biggest decliners on list included multiple cities in Florida and California where housing related jobs continue to disappear. Michigan cities are also among the nation?s weakest performers, with heavy losses in durable goods and automotive manufacturing.

Bloombergis reporting that condo owners of the still underconstruction Cosmopolitan Resort on the Vegas strip have sued the owner, Deutsche Bank, to get their deposit money back.

The suit illustrates the varying rules for getting down payments back even in projects with major problems. Deutsche Bank foreclosed on the $3.9 billion project. It?s offering buyers in the West Tower 74% of their deposit money back. Nevada law allows developers to keep 15% of a buyer's down payment.

In court filings, condo buyers claim they have suffered through construction delays that now prevent them from closing. Building interiors were modified ten times and problems with drainage require 24 hour pumping of water beneath the building. Buyers claim the delays have eliminated their ability to get loans because real estate prices have collapse so much.

My Mom always said buy a condo when it?s under construction because you?ll get a discount. Of course, those "pre-completion prices" come with a big risk.

Trillions spent on propping up banks, buying mortgages, tax credits and new programs designed to lower payments and prevent foreclosures. And yet a new survey from Move Inc., the parent of Realtor.com, says Americans are growing increasingly dissatisfied with how Washington is handling the housing mess.

The October 2009 survey found that the federal government?s approval rating by consumers on housing issues has slipped since March 2009. By a six-percent margin, Americans said they don?t think the government is doing enough to stabilize the housing market (48.2% compared to 42.2% five months ago). According to the survey, consumers still want low interest rates (31.4%) and action by the government to help homeowners prevent foreclosures (28.5%), the same two top priorities expressed by survey respondents in March.

The survey found that public participation in the programs to prevent foreclosures is much lower than anticipated. In March 2009, several days after the details of the Making Home Affordable program were announced; Move?s survey found that 17.6 percent of those interviewed said they intended to participate in the Administration?s program. Now only 8.8 percent said they actually did participate.

The number of consumers interested in investing in real estate has doubled since March. One out of eight (12.1%) homebuyers today plan to purchase a home as an investment property, compared to 5.6 percent seven months ago.

Fear of foreclosure is fading. In March 52.5 percent of all survey respondents said they were concerned that they or someone they know may face foreclosure in the next 6 to 12 months. That number dipped slightly to 45.1 percent in October.

The survey of 1,000 people was conducted the third week of October.

The real estate market continues to send mixed signals. Home sales are rising. They were up 11% in the third quarter from the same period last year to a 5.3 million-a-year annual pace.

The sales are coming thanks to a lot of financial incentives. Thirty year mortgage interest rates remain near record lows at 5.1%. Uncle Sam continues to write $8,000 tax credit checks to first time home buyers. ?The buying conditions this year are the most favorable on record dating back to 1970,? says Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors.

Nearly one-third of those sales though are foreclosed homes trading at distressed prices. They are dragging down prices nationally. The Realtors association reported today that prices fell in 123 out of 153 cities tracked in the third quarter.

What about the thirty cities where home prices rose? They are places better known for affordability and stability than surging prices.

The largest single-family home price increase in the third quarter was in the Cumberland area of Maryland and West Virginia at $122,100, up 19.2 percent from the third quarter of 2008. Next was the Davenport-Moline-Rock Island area of Iowa and Illinois, where the median price increased 14.3 percent to $115,600, followed by Oklahoma City, at $144,100, up 9.1 percent from a year ago.

The biggest sales gain between the second and third quarters was in North Dakota, up 42.3 percent; followed by Rhode Island which rose 26.5 percent; and Pennsylvania, up 25.6 percent.

It's likely that buyers in rural areas that didn't see a tremendous surge in prices see the low interest rates and tax incentives as a good buying opportunity.

Here's the Realtors' Lawrence Yun's take.

?The wide range of market performance and reversals around the country, ranging from double-digit gains to double-digit losses in both sales and prices, underscores just how local real estate truly is,? Yun said. ?The wide changes and mix of numbers also indicates a market in transition, hopefully to one that is becoming more balanced and stable.?

The National Association of Realtors Web site has a nice Question & Answer section about the new credit

The Realtors' spokesman tells me that the new credit will start tomorrow, not today.

"We rechecked the effective date for the repeat buyer," spokesman Walt Malony said in an e-mail. "The effective date is 'after the date of enactment.'Today is date of enactment, so the fun begins tomorrow, Nov. 7."

Judging from all of your questions, tomorrow is going to be a confusing day for buyers, sellers, and the real estate agents, brokers, and attorneys advising them.

Update:Just spoke with somebody at Sen. Chris Dodd's office. According to the senator's banking committee staff, you can qualify for the credit even if you signed a purchase contract before today's date. The important thing is that you close on the home between today and June 30, 2010 (Your contract must be signed by April 30, 2010). Keep the questions coming, I'll try to answer as many as I can.

Dozens of you have written in with good questions about the tax credit. I'm working on finding answers, especially to one recurring question. To qualify for the $6,500 credit is it necessary to sign the purchase contract after the measure is signed into law today or can a homeowner who closes on a home after today also meet the requirements? I've asked the White House to clarify.

In the meantime, I just received a press release from CMPS Institute, a training, examination, certification and ongoing membership program for financial professionals who provide mortgage and real estate equity advice.

It clarifies a few things. Read on.

More Homebuyers Qualify for Tax Credit

Ann Arbor, MI November 6, 2009 ? Congress just passed an expanded version of the $8,000 first time home buyer tax credit that was set to expire on November 30. ?The new version of the tax credit has the potential to stimulate the housing market even more than the old version due to the fact that more people will qualify under the new rules,? said Gibran Nicholas, Chairman of the CMPS Institute, an organization that certifies mortgage bankers and brokers. ?Although the tax credit remains at $8,000 for home buyers that have not owned a primary residence in the last three years, it has been expanded to include a $6,500 tax credit for home buyers that have lived in their current primary residence for at least five consecutive years out of the past eight years. Under the old rules, move-up home buyers did not qualify.? Consider these three examples:

Example 1:
Jane purchased a home in 2002, lived there for 5 years as her primary home, moved out in 2007, and turned that home into a rental property. If Jane decides to buy a new primary residence today, she would qualify for the $6,500 tax credit based on the fact that she lived in the same residence as her primary home for at least five consecutive years out of the past eight.

Example 2:
Harry purchased a home in 2004, and lived there for the past 5 years as his primary home. If Harry decides to buy a new primary residence today, he would qualify for the $6,500 tax credit based on the fact that he lived in the same residence as his primary home for at least five consecutive years out of the past eight.

Example 3:
Nicole purchased a home in 2006, and lived there for the past 3 years as her primary home. If Nicole decides to buy a new primary residence today, she would not qualify for the $6,500 tax credit based on the fact that she did not live in the same residence as her primary home for at least five consecutive years out of the past eight.

The tax credit applies to homes purchased for less than $800,000 before May 1, 2010. ?If you sign a binding contract to purchase a home before May 1st, you would need to close on the transaction before July 1, 2010,? Nicholas said. ?It works kind of like a gift certificate that can be redeemed for cash. You simply file a form with the IRS right after you buy your home, and the IRS will send you a check for the full amount of your credit.?

The income limitation for single tax payers went up from $75,000 under the old rules to $125,000 under the new rules. For married tax payers, the income limitation went up from $150,000 to $225,000. ?This means that more people will qualify for the credit ? especially in parts of the country with higher costs of living,? Nicholas said. ?This should help stimulate parts of the housing market that may not have been impacted by the old version of the credit.?

There are many creative ways of structuring your home purchase transaction in ways that maximize the benefits of the credit. Here are a few examples:
· The credit applies to 1-4 unit homes as long as you live in one of the units as your primary residence ? you could live in one unit and rent out the others
· If two unmarried individuals buy a home, and only one of the individuals qualifies for the credit based on their income or past home ownership status, the individual who qualifies for the credit can claim the full credit. (Note: In the case of married couples, both spouses must qualify for the credit.)
· The credit applies even if you have co-signers on your mortgage loan