Recently, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality has been closely monitoring a dioxane plume that is making it's way towards the Huron River, Ann Arbors primary drinking water source. This is a major concern for residents of the area due to the toxicity of dioxane to humans. The agency is scrambling to minimize the potential risk of exposure.

Back in 1966 Pall Corporation- a global manufacturer of filtration products, dumped large amounts of dioxane into the environment. This went on for nearly 20 years, at that point the damage was already done. Unfortunately, due to state laws the DEQ cannot force Pall Corp to do a clean-up. Thus leaving the area polluted and at risk of the chemical spreading into our ground water.

It is unsure where or how the plume will spread, but local officials are growing increasingly concerned about dioxane reaching Barton Pond, primary drinking water source.

Officials from the Department of Environmental Quality discussed the situation with city officials and residents at a meeting of the local Coalition for Action on Remediation of Dioxane. They are pushing towards stricter policies regarding clean-up. 

Pall Corp is working towards releasing a plan of action for the clean-up, but at this time no remedy has been put into place. The DEQ continues to work on establishing stricter laws.

Meet St. Joseph, the patron saint of real estate. For hundreds of years, people have invoked his power to help sell their homes.

Normally known to look after families, fathers, expectant mothers, immigrants, travelers, craftsmen, engineers and working people in general, St. Joseph the Worker might be most popular as an aid to real estate transactions, which could come in handy in this slow market.

To use the statue, Home sellers are told to bury it upside down with the feet pointing toward heaven. It can face the home being sold, or a new home. Some like to plant the statue near the For Sale sign or in the backyard. After burying it, serious sellers are told to say a prayer daily in front of the statue.

Condominium or co-op owners place the statue in a flowerpot near the entryway. After the property changes hands, sellers are instructed to remove the statue, to be displayed for good luck in their new home, or leave it buried to protect the home that just sold.

Over thousands of people have experienced the success of St. Joseph and selling their home, it may be time for you to invest in one

You can purchase this statue online by visiting http://www.st-josephstatue.com or any local store that sells religious items.

Mice - Rodent Control Around Your Home

As much as homeowners enjoy the shelter and comfort of their home, mice, rats, and other rodents do, too. Not only do rodents make a mess, they can carry and spread diseases, contaminate food, and cause property damage.

The first step in keeping rodents out of the home is prevention. Rodents commonly enter homes, garages, sheds and other structures through small cracks and openings. Even a dime-sized hole is large enough for a mouse to get through. Common entry areas include behind stoves and refrigerators, around where water pipes enter the home, attics and crawl spaces, basements, and laundry drains. Outside the home, look for openings around windows and doors, gutters, and places where wiring, plumbing, and gas lines enter the home. Small holes can be stuffed with steel wool, which rodents cannot chew through, and caulked into place. Larger holes may require patching with metal, hardware cloth, or lath screen.

Removing food sources is another key to prevention. Pantry foods should be stored in metal or heavy plastic containers with tight fitting covers. Food-soiled cookware and dishes should be washed and kitchen surfaces cleaned soon after use, and pet food should not be left out overnight. If food waste is kept inside, it should be stored in a metal container until it can be disposed of outside in a rodent-proof trash can. If homeowners enjoy feeding wild birds, feeders should be located away from the house as spilled bird food is a real treat for rodents. There are bird seed mixes available that have been treated with hot pepper – unappealing to rodents and other mammals but birds are unaffected by it.

If rodents are present, it is extremely important that they be removed properly prior to sealing holes and gaps. Snap traps are the most effective method of catching rodents; follow the manufacturer’s instruction for best results. It can take several days for rats to respond to a baited trap. According to The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, snap traps are preferable to live or “humane” trapping, which can cause stressed rodents to urinate and increase possible exposure to disease. Once a rodent is trapped and killed, it should be wrapped in newspaper and disposed of in the trash. Any rodent – dead or alive – should not be handled with bare hands; use disposable rubber or vinyl gloves. Rodents are carriers of Hantavirus and other viruses and bacteria that can cause serious, even deadly, diseases in humans. A person can become exposed to Hantavirus while sweeping or cleaning up rodent droppings as particles become airborne and are inhaled. In addition, fleas, mites, or ticks may be present on the rodent, providing an additional carrier for the spread of disease.

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John Adams Mortgage has an interesting new Program you might wish to explore.  If nothing else, you get a free Amex Gift Card.  See below for details and click here to Apply

Also, you can go to www.LendAnnArbor.com to get a list of the Area's best Lenders and Banks.  

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"The Heavy Ball." It's a mythical term. "His ball was so heavy it was like hitting a bowling ball." Most tennis players and coaches have had the experience of playing an opponent whose ball seemed unusually "heavy".

Maybe the ball seemed to get on top of you before you could respond. Maybe the ball felt like it was going to rip the racket out of your hand. Maybe it felt like the ball would by pass your strike zone altogether and bounce over your shoulder or even your head.

Everywhere I go in tennis I hear different versions of the same story. This player or that player had the "secret" of the heavy ball. It was Don Budge, Bjorn Borg, Tomas Muster, or Pete Sampras--or some legendary local college or pro player that you or I never heard of. "This guy hit the heaviest forehand I've ever played against."

So "heavy ball" is a term with a lot of connotations for a lot of people. But does it have any real meaning? Is there in fact any such a thing as a shot that is really "heavier"? If so can we understand it, quantify it, and/or teach it?

If the heavy ball does really exist, it must be some combination of speed, spin, and shot trajectory. But what combination? Is it something that's just natural for a few gifted or lucky players? Is there a way to intentionally maximize the weight of your shots?

In this section of Tennisplayer, we've set out to investigate these questions in a different way. Thanks to new filming and analytic technologies, it is now possible to measure the shot signatures of the top players and to distinguish how they play by the quality of the ball they produce.

Over the last several years, researchers from Advanced Tennis Research(AdvancedTennis.com) have been investigating these factors of ball speed, spin, and trajectory, and beginning to put the pieces of the puzzle together. A big part of the story is the evolution in technologies that makes this possible. And that's part of the ongoing story we plan to tell

Ball Speed

We'll start with ball speed, and the groundbreaking research Advanced Tennis scientists began on the speed of the ball in 1997 and 1998. This was the first quantitative study to measure the speed of the ball in pro tennis, beyond what the radar guns told us about the initial velocity of the serve. We not only studied the speed of the serve, but also of the groundstrokes, the returns and the volleys.

Although it's absolutely invisible to the human eye, virtually every shot in pro tennis lost half or more of its speed by the time it reached the opponent's baseline.

In the first article we go into detail about how we developed this information, what the results were, and what it might mean for players looking for an edge.

Ball Spin

After looking at the study of ball speed, we'll go on to look at the first ever study of the actual spin rates in pro tennis. In 1997, we filmed at the U.S. Open using a new high speed digital camera technology that filmed at 250 frames per second. This was the first time that live professional matches were ever studied by a camera that was fast enough to actually "see" how the ball spins.

How fast was a Pete Sampras serve really spinning? How about an Andre Agassi forehand? Our camera allowed us to answer these questions. During the course of 5 days, we built up and extensive data base of several hundred spin events with top professional players.

We found for example that there was no such thing as a "flat" first serve in the pro game. In reality, a 120mph Pete Sampras serve was actually spinning at an average of over 2500rpm.

We also found that although many people believed that Andre Agassi's forehand was hit with "heavy" topspin, it was actually spinning at about 1800rpm, less than half what some of the European players were developing.

We also saw for the first time what happened to spin during the bounce on the court. Surprisingly, we found the friction between the ball and the court created as much topspin as the initial hit (and sometimes more), something which had important implications for the creation of the "heavy ball."

These studies of speed and spin opened a window on the literally invisible world of ball dynamics. They also raised almost as many questions as they answered. 

We were able to put real numbers to spin and speed in pro tennis for the first time--key components in trying to understand the heavy ball. But how did speed and spin actually interact?

The next step in the research was to measure speed and spin simultaneously, instead of in separate studies. To do this required a new, more elaborate filming protocol and new original motion analysis software, developed by Nasif Iskander.

Nasif was able to measure the speed of 10 returns hit by Pete's opponents, as well as 3 returns hit by Sampras.

In 2000 we were able to put these new tools into action. We were able to film and compare the ball dynamics of two of the best servers in the history of the game in live tournament play: Pete Sampras and Greg Rusedski. For the first time we were able to measure the speed and spin of the serve over the entire course of the flight. Greg Ryan performed the critical and painstaking task of putting the together to form our most complete picture yet of the heavy ball.

A critical advance in Nasif's software was the ability to measure the components in the spin of top players, for example, the level of sidespin and topspin in the deliveries of Sampras and Rusedski. In addition, Nasif developed a "shot simulator" that actually allowed us to measure how changing amounts of spin influenced the curve and the drop of high speed professional serves.

The results were again surprising. We found that there was in fact no such thing as a "topspin" serve, that the majority of spin in the deliveries of both players was sidespin not topspin. But a critical difference turned out to be the relative amounts of topspin.

These differences in the type and amount of spin had a significant impact on the quality of the ball they produced. And it had a significant effect on the total "heaviness" of the shot at the time of the return.

Since Advanced Tennis completed its initial studies of ball speed and spin, the technology has continued to evolve, making even more detailed and precise studies possible that can contribute to our understanding of the nature of the heavy ball in new ways.

Currently Advanced Tennis is engaged in a collaboration with Hawk-Eye technologies in London, the developer of the "Shot Spot," which has taken a prominent place in ESPN tennis broadcasts, reviewing line calls. "Shot Spot" is based on amazing technology developed by the brilliant young English scientist Paul Hawkins, who first applied it in cricket.

To the average television viewer, this is exciting because it allows for the potential "instant replay" review of the controversial calls which frequently have an impact on the outcome of matches (not to mention the fragile emotional psyches of the players).

But in reality the "Shot Spot" technology can tell us far more, because it is actually measuring the entire trajectory of every shot hit in professional tennis. This means Shot Spot can tell us the exact speeds of the shots of the top balls at any point in the flight of the ball, as well as the path each shot takes.

The one factor that Shot Spot cannot directly measure is spin, which requires an additional, even faster high speed camera trained exclusively on the flight of the ball.

In 2004 Paul Hawkins agreed to collaborate with Advanced Tennis in taking the heavy ball analysis to the next level. This meant that Shot Spot would allow us to combine their speed and trajectory data with our high speed spin data. Together we were able to film matches of Roger Federer, Andy Roddick, Marat Safin, and Lleyton Hewitt. This will allow us, for starters, to compare the spin Roddick generates on his serve to Sampras, or Federer.

Over time we hope the end result will be a comprehensive and even more accurate picture of what actually happens when pro players hit the tennis ball. Our goal is that by combining speed, trajectory and spin, we will be able to further unravel the shots of pro players and facilitate the quest for the heavy ball. So Stay Tuned.

It was a bit surprising to see 2015 end with a flourish of new sales contracts. We think the jump in sales activity was as much a result of mild weather as increasing buyer activity.  It would not be surprising to see that November and December sales were "borrowed" from the first quarter of 2016. Web site activity and property showings remain at similar levels as last year, which indicate we still have strong buyer interest, equal to the beginning of 2015, but not a wild market that the last 60 days might suggest. Looking back, 2015 was the year we began to move towards a more balanced market, with inventories finally rising across all market segments, faster in the upper-end but still rising in the lower price ranges as well. This past year saw value increases across all price categories, with the strongest gains in the under $250,000 segments. As shown by the Case Shiller Composite Report, the pace of increasing Home values slowed as available homes for sale increased. These national numbers mirror what we have seen throughout Michigan as well. So even with demand remaining strong, the increasing inventories will cause a cooling off of home value increases.  

This year should show similar value gains but on the lower end of the ranges we saw in 2015. The overall trends for 2016 should follow what we saw in 2015, with rising inventories, continued strong buyer demand, but probably not keeping pace with the current increase in inventories.

There is still some pent up housing demand yet to be released, probably over multiple years as opposed to all at once. Values are getting close to peak 2005 levels with 90% of Michigan home owners now with equity in their homes, a big jump over the bottom of the recession.

The recession delayed many moves, as shown by the chart below, leading up to the recession the average time between moves was 6 years and it moved to 9 during the recession. Time between moves will over time move back closer to the 7 year range, with the difference being pent-up seller demand to be released over the next few years.

The recent regulatory changes known as TRID have not had a big impact so far on getting homes sold and closed. It looks like the new regulations have extended closing dates by about a week or less.  Nonetheless, we still recommend at least 45 days from mortgage application to closing day.

All the current indicators show that housing should remain strong throughout 2016. Interest rates, although expected to rise, will remain low, mortgage lending is easing, employment and wages continue to show positive (although slow) upward trends and there is still pent-up demand from the recession left to be released. All good news. Will the current stock market correction change that? So far it appears the stock market is making the same adjustment we saw in housing in 2015, a correction to an overheated market. The old joke about the stock market is that its declines have predicted 9 of the last 5 recessions.  Certainly a fall in household net worth, whether it is from a drop in stock values or home equites, will have an impact on housing but so far it appears, with possibly the exception of the upper-end markets, the impact will not be major on housing. The momentum of the overall economy, growth of millennial home ownership and remaining pent up housing demand should carry housing through any stock market related slump.

Overall we are going into 2016 will a steady tailwind (or maybe a tail-breeze) which should keep housing moving forward at a steady pace.

Please contact me with any of your real estate needs. I am happy to assist you.

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