Sunday, July 15, 2012

SECTION D BANK WATCH

Reporters Kirsten Valle Pittman and Andrew Dunn blog about the banking scene. Updated daily at
charlotteobserver.com

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CAREER ALMANAC See whos been promoted, whos winning recognition. 3D STORY IDEA? Business editor John Arwood; 704-358-5176; jarwood@charlotteobserver.com

MoneyWise

charlotteobserver.com/business

HARP mortgage could lower your rate

YOUR HOME, YOUR MONEY TOM REDDIN
Over the past few years, President Barack Obama and Congress have enacted laws to enable underwater homeowners to refinance to todays historically low mortgage rates. But its a safe bet that many homeowners who qualify arent even aware of it. A mortgage is considered underwater when the loan amount is greater than the current appraisal value of the home. The intent of this program is to help stabilize homeowners finances, which will hopefully prevent more foreclosures, improve discretionary spending, and boost the economy. This program is called HARP, the Homeowners Affordable Refinance Program and is limited to mortgages currently held by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. There have been two versions of HARP the first, originally launched in March 2009 and commonly called HARP 1.0, and a second version passed in December 2011, called HARP 2.0. The requirements to qualify for a HARP refinance mortgage are significantly relaxed with the HARP 2.0 update. The program was originally designed to help an estimated 5 million underwater homeowners to refinance to todays rates and significantly reduce their monthly payment. Some industry experts believe the number of at-risk mortgages is closer to 8 million to 9 million homes. However, as of Aug. 31, only 894,000 borrowers had refinanced through HARP. Given these relatively low results, Obama announced on Oct. 25 a major update to the HARP program with the hope of significantly expanding its reach to more homeowners. The first version of HARP had limitations for many homeowners. For example, the original HARP 1.0 was limited to loan-to-value (LTV) ratios between 80 percent and 125 percent. This requirement prevented many homeowners from securing a HARP mortgage, especially those who live in markets that experienced steep declines in home values. The expanded HARP 2.0 program relaxed several requirements, the main one being the complete elimination of an LTV cap. If you are underwater on your mortgage, you may very well qualify for a HARP mortgage, and could benefit from a significantly lower mortgage rate in todays historically low interest rate environment. Many homeowners are refinancing from a 5 percent-6 percent mortgage rate down to a 4 percent or 4.5 percent rate. For a quick, general understanding of the HARP program requirements, here are a few of the high-level eligibility guidelines: Your mortgage must be currently be owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. The mortgage loan being refinanced needs to have been originally funded before June 1, 2009. You must be current on your mortgage payments. You can have one 30-day late payment in the past 12 months, but none within the past 6 months. The refinancing of your mortgage needs to demonstrate that it improves the long-term affordability or stability of your loan.
SEE HARP, 3D

PHOTOS BY JOHN D. SIMMONS - jsimmons@charlotteobserver.com

Intelligent Buildings, co-founded by Tom Shircliff, left, and Rob Murchison, is a Charlotte consulting firm that helps businesses make buildings more energy efficient. They also are working with the government to implement a sustainable buildings program.

Their energy makes buildings smarter

CHARLOTTE CONSULTANTS HELP COMPANIES CUT USAGE
By Chelsey Dulaney
cdulaney@charlotteobserver.com

ong before Charlotte began touting itself as an energy hub, Tom Shircliff and Rob Murchison were helping make some of the citys buildings into symbols of the areas commitment to energy. Since founding the smart-building consulting firm Intelligent Buildings in 2004, Shircliff and Murchison have worked with dozens of companies, developers and governments to help reduce energy consumption and costs a service they say is seeing increasing demand because of the economic downturn and publicsector budget cuts. If you can make a decision about how to better spend business dollars, thats worth a lot to building owners, Shircliff said. And in Charlotte, where more than 30,000 people work in the energy sector, providing energy and saving energy often go hand in hand. In 2004, Murchison and Shircliff were on parallel paths. Both were working in real estate and technology, hoping to combine that experience with their growing interest in energy-saving technology as a way to reduce overall costs. We saw technology starting to affect real estate more, Shircliff said. Eight years ago, there werent a lot of people thinking like that. Shircliff and Murchison initially did everything from financial analysis for clients to installing energy-saving solutions. But as Charlotte evolved into an energy

Intelligent Buildings worked on projects like the Duke Energy Center, helping to make the building one of the most energy efficient in the country.

hub, the pair shifted their focus to consulting for smart buildings and communities. Technology changed faster than the real estate industry did. That creates a gap, Shircliff said. Consulting fills that gap. Intelligent Buildings collects and analyzes data about buildings energy usage and operational costs. Then the company develops a plan to help reduce energy usage, thereby reducing costs and environmental impact. The company also often serves as a program manager for its clients after implementing the initial solution. For example, Intelligent Buildings
SEE ENERGY, 2D

Top energy-sector employers

Intelligent Buildings is part of Charlottes growing energy scene. Since 2007, the sector has announced 6,376 new jobs. These are the largest Charlotte region energy-sector employers:
Duke Energy: About 3,000 Charlotte employees Shaw Power Group: 1,100 Siemens: 750 Parsons Corp.: 564 Areva NP: 563

Tiny screens see huge popularity Which credit

With cellphones and computers, movie biz leans back to origins
By Randall Stross
New York Times

card ts the college kids?

By Dave Carpenter
Associated Press

Go back far enough in the history of the Big Screen, back to the 1890s, and youll find no screen at all. The earliest motion-picture viewing was a solitary experience. One looked through a peephole at the top of a Kinetoscope, a waist-high cabinet in which a light illuminated the frames of a continuous film loop. A magnifying lens was attached to the peephole, but the images remained tiny. That means the first cinematographers didnt have much to work with. When projection arrived, movie images could be made life-size in a theater, then larger than life, on a big screen accompanied by big sound. Taking in a movie became not just an immersive experience but also a

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE - NYT

A Kinetoscope parlor in San Francisco had the best technology circa 1895. Movie watching has again become a solitary experience, with tiny images on cellphones and tablets.

social one, with members of the audience sitting in the dark together, laughing, crying and shrieking. Today, weve reached the acme of technical sophistication and have come nearly full circle. Movie watching is, again, a solitary experience, involving

small images on a laptop, a tablet and, tinier still, a cellphone. The convenience is wonderful, of course, but it comes at a price: the loss of the immersive cinematic experience. Americans will pay to watch 3.4 billion movies online this
SEE SCREENS, 2D

Parents of college-bound students have a decision to make as offers stream in for their soon-to-depart teenagers. Should they send their green freshmen off to campus armed with a debit or credit card to learn how to handle money? Or is it better to keep firm control through the Bank of Mom and Dad? The correct answer will vary by family and personal preference. The Credit Card Act that took effect 2 1/2 years ago made it much harder for anyone under 21 to get a card. Gone are the days of card issuers racking up scads of new customers on campus by handing out free T-shirts or rewards points for spring break. In the old days, if you could fog a mirror you could get a credit card, says Adam Levin, chairman and founder of Credit.com, a San Francisco-based company that provides inSEE CREDIT, 2D

2D

Sunday, July 15, 2012

BUSINESS

charlotteobserver.com The Charlotte Observer

SCREENS
[ from 1D ]
year, IHS Screen Digest estimates. Thats much more than double the number for 2010. Its impossible to say exactly how many of those movies will be viewed on which portable devices. A spokesman for Netflix, the leader in streaming older movie titles, declined to share details about streaming-device destinations. We do know that the newest movie titles, including the most visually spectacular, are available through Apple or Google for inexpensive rental on the small screen. (Apple made movie rentals available for phones starting in 2008, and Netflix introduced a smartphone app in 2010). Cellphone owners can rent Hugo, the 2012 Academy Award winner for cinematography, for $3.99 and watch it on a screen whose size is not much larger than the image seen through the Kinetoscopes peephole. When an online movie is viewed at home on a giant flat screen and heard through an expensive sound system, the sensory experience surely exceeds what might be had at a rundown multiplex on a bad day. But movies viewed on mobile devices arent going to give the brains sensorium much stimulation. Its a sensual experience when you go to a theater, if theres sharp projection and six-track sound, says John Belton, a professor of English and film at Rutgers University. That is a very different experience than watching on an iPad or on other portable devices. Belton points out that the first projected images in theaters were not all that large. In a movie palace that might hold 5,000 people, an early screen might have been only 15 feet wide. But the images became larger around the time that sound arrived in the 1930s. Then, in the 1950s, as Hollywood found itself competing against television, it used special lenses to create movies for screens of expanded width. Marilyn Monroes body, in languorous repose, would stretch across screens as wide as 64 feet. This was an intentional shift, Belton says, to an image that overwhelms the spectator, part of Hollywoods campaign to show the limitations of television. Later, Hollywood reversed course and began selling to television, although that meant cropping its wide-screen pictures so they would fit on a small screen. The most glorious attempt to fully engage the theater spectators senses was Cinerama, introduced in 1952. Filmed with three cameras outfitted with wide-angle lenses, it used three wide screens, put together in a sumptuous near-semicircle of 146 degrees. Cinerama was costly both to film and to exhibit, and its commercial life was short. It was used only for travelogues, except in 1962, when the only two story-centered features were released: How the West Was Won and The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm. The Cinerama name was transferred to a smaller format, and then that format, too, was abandoned. Cinerama was the high-water mark in sensory immersion. Yesterdays Kinetoscopes and todays smartphone screens, the low-water marks. If you look at the great Hollywood classics in the 1930s and 1940s, youll see many wide master shots and sparing use of closeups, says John Bailey, a cinematographer with more than 60 feature credits who serves on the executive board of the American Society of Cinematographers. But with the advent of TV and now also with smaller screens, were seeing more close-ups. The problem, he says, is that if you use close-ups immoderately, then when you need to make a more dramatic point, you have no other option but to use extreme close-ups. The best camera, the old saying goes, is the one you have with you, and a similar thought is apparently held by increasing numbers of movie viewers, happy with the screen they always have with them. And movie producers, just as they have in the past, will probably keep adapting, changing movies themselves so that they look better on a tiny screen. You can say its watching a movie, says Belton of viewing on mobile devices. But its not cinema.
Randall Stross is an author based in Silicon Valley and a professor of business at San Jose State University.

JOHN D. SIMMONS - jsimmons@charlotteobserver.com

Intelligent Buildings did consulting work for Duke Energy on the Smart Energy Now program, which consists of kiosks (above) that track energy usage in uptown Charlotte buildings.

ENERGY
[ from 1D ]
might help a company install a single overlay program to manage all its lighting and HVAC systems. As owner-side consultants, they do not actually provide or sell systems. Their customers can see anywhere from 10 percent to 25 percent in cost savings, Shircliff said.

Smart buildings
Murchison said interest in Intelligent Buildings was strong from the start, but in recent years, they have seen business multiply. I think we benefit from three big trends technology, the economy has demanded that you cant go spend dollars without guaranteed returns, and energy and sustainability are on everyones minds, Murchison said. Today, Intelligent Buildings has dozens of projects with clients ranging from the Canadian government to Cisco Systems. Intelligent Buildings also is working with the U.S. General Services Administration to help implement a smart and sustainable buildings program in 50 buildings nationwide. GSA Assistant Commissioner Larry Melton said the agency started the program about two years ago to meet a presidential order requiring a 30 percent energy reduction in federal buildings by 2015.

GSA knew that the entire real estate market was changing with the integration of technology, he said. Melton said the GSA targeted 50 of its highest energy-consuming buildings to kick off the program, though the ultimate goal is to reduce energy consumption in all 1,500 of its buildings. The average age of GSA buildings is 47 a factor Melton said can play a large role in how much energy a building consumes. Intelligent Buildings has consulted on the project for more than two years. Shircliff said they helped build GSAs smart building strategy from scratch. Part of this strategy includes connecting building management systems to a central cloudbased platform, which will save an estimated $15 million. Melton said the program is still in its early stages, but they could see data as early as the end of this year, which they will use to identify ways to reduce energy usage in the buildings. Intelligent Buildings also consulted on the Duke Energy Center project, completed in 2010. It worked with Wells Fargo Corporate Properties Group and Childress Klein Properties to help make the building one of the most energy efficient in the country. One of these energysaving strategies included installing controls to adjust lighting depending on which side of the

building the sun faces. Curt Radkin, a sustainability strategist for Wells Fargo Corporate Properties Group, said the Duke center is about 22 percent more energy efficient and 85 percent more water efficient than other office buildings its size.

A growing industry

Shircliff said Intelligent Buildings often draws inspiration from the new energy theme that has become a cornerstone of Charlotte over the past few years. Gina Howard, director of communications and public relations for the Charlotte Regional Partnership, said growing Charlottes energy sector became a priority around 2008. Today, more than 260 companies and 34,100 employees make up the regions energy sector, according to July statistics from the partnership. Many of these companies work together to promote both growth in the energy sector and energy efficiency. One of these partnerships is the nonprofit Envision Charlotte, launched last year. Today Envision Charlotte brings together dozens of Charlotte businesses and organizations in a public-private partnership, but it was initially a Duke Energy project. Intelligent Buildings has been a key player in the project. Initially, Murchison and Shircliff consulted for Duke Energy but today Dulaney: 704-358-5295

they mostly volunteer their expertise. Shircliff is also the chairman of the Envision Charlotte board. The initiative is best known for Duke Energys Smart Energy Now initiative, which is responsible for the screens seen in uptown buildings that track Charlottes real-time energy usage. The purpose of the screens is to reduce uptown energy consumption by 20 percent in the next five years and make Charlotte a model for using sustainability for economic growth in communities nationwide a goal that Shircliff believes Charlotte is already well on its way to achieving. Michael Smith, president and CEO of Charlotte Center City Partners, began working with Intelligent Buildings a few years ago on a long-term sustainability plan that eventually became Envision Charlotte. Its an initiative that looks for Charlotte to be a demonstration of the way urban places can be leaders in environmental sustainability, he said. Smith said the work Intelligent Buildings is doing is part of a national movement toward sustainable building practices. If youre going to be in the energy space these days, theres a growing sensitivity to environmental awareness, he said.

CREDIT
[ from 1D ]
formation about credit products. Under-21s can still obtain a credit card if they have a qualified co-signer or proof of sufficient income to repay the debt. And card issuers still market aggressively to college students, targeting them with prescreened mail offers. That makes parents, as the likeliest cosigners, more involved in the card-or-nocard decision. Robyn Kahn Federman of Rochester, N.Y., says theres no way shell let either of her two daughters have a credit card at such a financially tender age. Her daughter Sarah, whos 19 and about to start her second year of college, uses her PayPal card instead. That lets her mom fund the balance as well as see how she spends her money. I dont think anything related to debt belongs in the hands of a college kid, says Federman, communications director of a marketing agency. The vast majority are not experienced enough with money or cognizant enough of the risks. Some students, though, have shown theyre disciplined enough to have their own card on campus. Scott Gamm, a junior at New York Universitys Stern School of Business, used his income from freelance work and blogging to obtain a Visa card and then an American Express card recently. He charges $200 or $300 on them monthly and pays every bill in full. But he has friends who obtained three or four cards within a year and now have big debts to show for their status symbols. With or without a credit card, payment options for students under 21 remain plentiful:

FRANK FRANKLIN II - AP

Scott Gamm, a junior at New York Universitys Stern School of Business, used his income from freelance work to secure two credit cards, which he pays off in full monthly.

Credit card, solo

Credit card issuers have differing standards in determining whether an applicant under 21 has the ability to make payments. Some may say its enough if he or she has a job and can afford the minimum monthly payment. That can take the decision out of Mom and Dads hands. Any student who gets a card should use it only for emergencies or otherwise pay it off immediately. Gamm, who founded a personal finance website, HelpSaveMyDollars.com, agrees. Students should view their credit card as a way to build strong credit via minor purchases here and there and not as a way to extend their spending habits, he says.

linked to a checking account. The downside: These cards dont help build credit scores. Co-signing should only be an option if the You should be able to set up email or textstudent can use a credit card responsibly, message alerts to be notified about any transsays Bill Hardekopf, who operates Low action that goes over a certain amount. Cards.com, a credit card comparison site. If Prepaid card so, a card with a very low limit is a good way to start building credit without undue risk. These cards can be readily found at pharSome students under 21 have upperclassmen, macies and convenience stores and bear the friends or siblings sign for them to avoid paren- MasterCard, Visa or American Express logo. tal hassles. That could be a mistake for both They work like debit cards but are not consides. If the student cant pay, the co-signer is nected to checking accounts. Many can be responsible for all the debt and the credit histo- registered online so users can review transry of both parties will be affected. actions and balances. A variant of this is to add a child as an authoAlthough they are less risky in many ways, rized user to a parents existing account. But if they dont come with the same protections as the card has a high credit limit, theres the po- credit and debit cards if lost or stolen. tential for greater unchecked spending. They also can come with a wide variety of fees. Secured credit card The American Express prepaid card is one These cards are backed by prepaid depos- of the best options, according to Hardekopf, its, making them more manageable as well as because it has fewer fees than most. relatively easy to obtain. Cards that report to The bottom line for college students and a credit agency can help build the students their parents: Be very cautious before you credit score. When applying for a card, call graduate to a full-fledged credit card. and ask which agencies it reports to. A credit card can be a positive tool, says Levin of Credit.com. Debit card It can be very helpful in building your If you dont think your college kid is ready credit, but it can also be an instrument in for a credit card, you can opt for a debit card your financial self-destruction.

Credit card, co-signed