America’s First Medal at the Nazi Olympics Was For…Town Planning
Excerpt: Yes, from 1928 until 1948, town planning was an actual Olympic sport.
Town planning fell under an “architectural design” category at the Olympic art competition. The field that year was dominated by German entries. Yet the first U.S. medal of the Olympics went to Lay, a New York architect, for his ambitious blueprint to modernize Marine Park in Brooklyn.
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/americas-first-medal-at-the-nazi-olympics-was-fortown-planning
My comment: I love these Obscure Olympic Facts ;>
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Photo blurring gone waay overboard!!
Excerpt: At issue was the ubiquitous “client requirement” involving digital masking of people from images. While lenders and AMCs wave the Fair Housing penalty flag in order to assure compliance; there is NO such law. Never has been.
Lenders need to re-examine the reason for all of these pointless and invasive interior shots. They add nothing meaningful to the file. Nobody is laying out mortgages for Beanie Baby collections and bad drapes. So why are appraisers wasting megapixels on decorating images?
AMCs are on notice to cease demanding and insisting that appraisers do digital staging. That is clearly in violation of Illinois law.
Click here to read the full article plus the comments, of course…
http://appraisersblogs.com/digital-staging-amc-fair-housing-myth
My comment: Blurring interior pictures on walls, personal objects, etc. seems very excessive. Don’t know about rooms with strange devices and chains hanging from walls and ceilings, etc ;> Maybe appraisers will only be able to appraise vacant homes with nothing in them without getting requests for blurring. This applies only to AMCs doing business in Illinois, but maybe the AMCs will quit doing it in other states.
Read more!! →