The stagnant residential real estate market has many homebuilders trying to figure out how to get people moving. University Village a luxury senior living project in Thousand Oaks has implemented a home sale deferral program to give fence-sitters an incentive to take the plunge. Potential residents will not have to pay the full amount of the entrance fee until their existing home has sold, assuming good credit and all of that. They do, however, begin paying their monthly fees which can range between $2,700 and $4,000 depending on the size of the unit. The program has actually been available since the property first opened last fall, but usage has accelerated. “What we’ve found now is a much higher percentage, between 75 and 80 percent, are using it,” said Warren Spieker, vice president of Continuing Life Communities, the project’s developer. It is, he said, essentially an interest-free, non-collateralized loan with no repayment terms. “We never take possession of the house,” said Spieker, ” the resident is in complete control at all times.” This can help those for whom a major change like a home sale can be a very difficult, emotional decision. Downsizing move Not only are they people who may have lived in their homes for as long as 50 years, but most will be significantly downsizing when they make the move, said Sandie Turgeon, move-in coordinator for the property. “This way, residents can move in and start taking advantage of all the amenities we provide here,” she said, “and let the house sell without them worrying about it.” It also gives them extra time to make decisions about which of their treasured possessions to keep and what to get rid of, and can also help the Realtor stage the home more effectively. Three months is the average time the “loan” is extended, Spieker said. Only in rare circumstances has the developer had to begin charging interest. This generally happens either when a person has unrealistic expectations of the value of their home, or is having a hard time deciding what to do with treasured memorabilia and possessions that just don’t fit into their new place. Spieker also said that some of his clients tell him that real estate agents can be very negative about taking their listings, saying it’s such a bad time and they’re not going to get a good price. But for many of these people, who bought their homes 30, 40 or 50 years ago, even today’s “depressed” prices can represent a very tidy return on their initial investment. One of the nicest things about the deferral program is that if a resident finds they don’t like living there, or they are unable to part with their original home, they do not owe University Village anything. “Let’s say the market really craters, worse than now, and they couldn’t get the sales price they wanted,” said Spieker, ” they always have their house to move back into.”

The high hopes of the movement to create wireless Internet networks in U.S. cities have fallen on hard times of late. The notion that Wi-Fi providers would install the equipment on municipal structures in exchange for free or low-cost service for residents didn’t exactly pan out, as Philadelphia learned recently when its provider Earthlink announced it would cut service in June. The new model now emerging relies on city governments using the technology in its everyday activities: in controlling traffic lights, video surveillance of high crime areas, and remote reading of water and parking meters. And forget about the free equipment. Cities will have to put up capital to either own or co-own their networks. “It is not as exciting as giving everyone free access but it will probably sustain itself,” said Martin Levetin, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Strix Systems, a Calabasas developer of Wi-Fi equipment used globally. It’s not that the old model is dead, Levetin said, just that only certain geographic areas can make it profitable. For example, Strix equipment is in use in Brookline, Mass., near Boston. Galaxy Internet Services charges $20 a month for a wireless connection while the city government and police department use it for free. But Brookline has a high density of households in an affluent community with a desire by the residents to have Internet access, Levetin said. “You have to pick your spots with the old model,” he added. Philadelphia considered itself the right spot. So did San Francisco, Houston, Chicago and New Orleans, and any number of other cities large and small that either lost service or shelved plans for wireless connections. Much of the blame goes to Earthlink, the Atlanta-based ISP doing many of the deployments. The company couldn’t turn a profit because the equipment outlay was more than anticipated and the number of customers signing up fell short. Locally, plans by Los Angeles for a city-wide Wi-Fi deployment remain up in the air and creates doubts to meet the 2009 deadline set by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Until then, hot spots are available at all city libraries and at the Van Nuys Civic Center. (Attempts to reach a representative from the city’s Information Technology Agency were not successful.) Burbank has free Wi-Fi available in a four-block area of its downtown but neighboring Glendale has backed away from its previously stated intent to have a city-wide network. The anchor tenant model where the city itself is the customer is easier said than done, said Steven Titch, a telecom policy analyst at Reason Foundation, a Los Angeles think tank with libertarian leanings. For that model to succeed, a city needs to get its departments on board to use the wireless connection in doing their everyday work, Titch said. “When they do that the network becomes an asset,” Titch said. “The value is not derived from marketing to get customers; it is derived from doing the same [services] in less costly way.” While Earthlink couldn’t make a go of the municipal Wi-Fi market and has now put that segment of its business up for sale, Strix and Xirrus Inc. in Westlake Village found success. Strix shied away from the municipal deployments offering free connections because that model wasn’t working. Executives at Xirrus foresaw that cities would not make any money with that model. Providing a Wi-Fi hotspot in a single building, say a library or courthouse, is one thing but to cover an entire city takes a lot of equipment, said John Merrill, director of marketing and communications for Xirrus. That company targets clients with large areas to cover such as universities; with a lot of users such as hotel meeting spaces and convention centers; or those needing a lot of bandwidth. Architectural firms in particular favor Xirrus because of the large AutoCAD files shared by their employees, Merrill said. “We do well in those spaces because we can supply the bandwidth to transfer those files,” Merrill said. In addition to the Brookline installation, Strix equipment can be found on North County Transit District trains in San Diego; a mine in North Dakota; offshore oil rigs; and in Greece, Korea, Japan and numerous countries in Africa. The advantage the company promotes for its equipment is carrying a signal at a greater distance to give a larger coverage area.

The California State Senate approved a bill that requires large chain restaurants to provide nutritional information on menus and menu boards. The information required in Senate Bill 1420 would include calories, grams of saturated fat plus trans fat, grams of carbohydrates and milligrams of sodium. But fast food menu boards would only have to list calories for each item. Last year, Gov. Schwarzenegger vetoed a similar bill passed by the Legislature. This month, however, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health released a study that indicated that posting calorie information on menus and menu boards at large chain restaurants (with 15 or more outlets) could affect the menu items that consumers select. The bill now goes to the Assembly.

Wells Fargo & Co., the second-biggest U.S. mortgage lender, raised the credit requirements for customers to secure home loans amid what some bankers have called the worst housing slump since the Great Depression. Starting May 23, higher credit scores are needed for loans that cover 95% or more of a home’s value, the San Francisco bank said in a May 16 report to clients. The company also eliminated some cash-out refinancings for customers with loans that represent more than 80% of the price. Wells Fargo, the biggest bank on the West Coast, is implementing the changes a month after reporting an 11% drop in first-quarter net income because of loans that won’t be fully repaid. For the full story visit http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-wells23-2008may23,0,2106213.story

The Walt Disney Co. is recalling thousands of sleeping bags and toy magic wands contaminated by excessive levels of lead paint, federal inspectors said. The recall targets 4,100 Pirates of the Caribbean sleeping bags and 8,000 Tinker Bell wands sold at Disney Stores nationwide from April to October of 2007, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said. No injuries have been reported, the agency said. For the full story visit http://www.dailynews.com/ci_9353070

As she readied for last night’s prom, Jamie McGraw asked her friends for advice about hairstyles, shoes and a dress. She also turned to her cellphone for a little help. McGraw receives daily text messages from Seventeen magazine about fashion, including tips about what to wear to the prom. She planned to take the magazine’s suggestion to wear a brightly colored outfit and be prepared for “dress malfunctions.” “When the texts recommend a certain look that sounds good, I will try it out, but it doesn’t always mean buying something,” the 17-year-old Laguna Niguel resident said. For the full story visit http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-teenphone23-2008may23,0,6658236.story

K-Swiss Inc. announced its purchase of French footwear company, Palladium SAS, in a two-part deal. The first 57 percent of Palladium will be purchased from shareholders by July 1 for 5.3 million Euros (or a little more than $8 million U.S. as of May 23). According to the agreement, K-Swiss will then purchase the remaining 43 percent of the French company in 2012. K-Swiss had previously acquired the Palladium trademarks for the United States and Canada for $6 million from the Consolidated Shoe Company based in Lynchburg, Virg., said David Nichols, senior vice president of Westlake Village-based K-Swiss. “The first transaction gave us the U.S.,” said Nichols, referring to the Consolidated deal, “and the second gave us the rest of the world.” Like K-Swiss, Palladium’s fortunes have been staked on a decades-old original shoe design. K-Swiss has the Classic tennis shoe and Palladium the Pallabrousse. Known in the U.S. as the “baggy boot,” the lug-soled, canvas-topped shoe is, according to the Palladium website, “the preferred shoe for the French army, scouts, hunters and world travelers.”

The chairman of beleaguered Countrywide Financial Corp. raised eyebrows and tempers with his snippy reply to an e-mail plea from a man who said he was in danger of losing his home. “Disgusting,” Angelo Mozilo wrote in his inadvertent reply to an e-mail from Daniel Bailey Jr. asking the company to modify terms of his adjustable-rate mortgage. Bailey said he didn’t fully understand the terms, was wrongly told he could refinance after a year and was on the verge of losing his home of 16 years because of unaffordable payments. For the full story visit http://www.dailynews.com/ci_9338567

North American Scientific Inc. in Chatsworth received notice from the Nasdaq Stock Market that its bid price deficiency has been cured. As a result of regaining compliance with Nasdaq Marketplace Rules, the Nasdaq Listing Qualifications Panel has determined that a scheduled hearing scheduled on the matter is no longer necessary. The company’s common stock will continue to be listed on The Nasdaq Capital Market and will continue to trade under the symbol “NASM.”

NEW YORK — Time Warner Inc. said Wednesday it would formally split off its cable TV business, giving the media conglomerate a $9.25-billion windfall and allowing it to focus on cable network, entertainment and publishing operations. The separation of Time Warner Cable Inc. would get Time Warner out of the media distribution business altogether, something investors had been clamoring for. The company announced its decision to split up last month and said Wednesday that the boards of the two companies had agreed to financial terms. Time Warner Cable is the second-largest cable provider in the country after Comcast Corp., with about 13.3 million video subscribers. It has been a public company for more than a year, but Time Warner had held on to an 84% stake. For the full story visit http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-timewarner22-2008may22,0,1891395.story