Westchester County’s lagging housing market failed to rebound in 2011, as overall sales dropped 6 percent from the previous year, when the market was moderately boosted by federal tax-credit incentives for homebuyers. The Empire Access Multiple Listing Service reported a total of 6,194 residential sales closed last year by its member Realtors, down from 6,586 sales in 2010. The county housing market in 2009 had tumbled to 5,824 sales, a 12 percent drop from 2008 and the start of the recession. Sales Read more [...]

“Our main goal is to turn a house into a home.” That’s the motto used by the Wyandotte Community Alliance, a nonprofit group dedicated to enhancing the city’s neighborhoods. And thanks to the handful of volunteers who spend hundreds of hours every year pounding nails, laying flooring and hosting open houses, the group has another success story they’re ready to reveal. After about a year of work, the 117-year-old home at 303 Maple, known to some as the Labadie Home, has been completely Read more [...]

The current building, by the architects Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin, was commissioned after a fire in 1834 destroyed most of the old Palace of Westminster. By 1870, the construction of the 1,100-room Houses of Parliament was complete but the Grade-I listed building has required constant maintenance. The situation was exacerbated by work on Parliament's underground car park and the underground extension of the Jubilee Line in the 1990s, which is thought to have contributed Read more [...]