These are some of the stories we’ve been following this week.

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen

  • Property taxes vary across the country. This story examined effective property tax rates on owner-occupied housing throughout the United States to determine which states had the highest and lowest property taxes (ranging from 0.28% in Hawaii to 2.38% in New Jersey).
  • Commercial property values in the United States have doubled since 2009, but they seem to have plateaued now. Some analysts think prices could be headed downward soon, but they don’t agree on when it will happen.
  • Officials are watching Duke Energy’s efforts to close and clean up coal ash ponds in the Carolinas in an effort to better understand the costs of remediation. The company has estimated that digging up, moving, and reburying the coal ash in lined landfills could cost $10 billion, and customers’ rates may be raised to pay for the cleanup.
  • Residents along a proposed Pennsylvania natural gas pipeline are ripping up their easement purchase offers to protest the project. However, PennEast Pipeline Co. LLC will likely be able to use eminent domain to obtain the easements if property owners don’t sell.

 

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen (public domain official Fed portrait).