Figuring out the formula for fixed mortgage payments using the sum of a geometric series. Created by Sal Khan.

Urban governance comprises the various forces, institutions, and movements that guide economic and physical development, the distribution of resources, social interactions, and other aspects of daily life in urban areas. This course examines governance from legal, political, social, and economic perspectives. In addition, we will discuss how these structures constrain collective decision making about particular urban issues (immigration, education…). Assignments will be nightly readings and a short paper relating an urban issue to the frameworks outlined in the class.

Students will discuss and answer questions about their current living situations, as well as what their living expenses look like.

Students will discuss and answer questions about their current living situations, as well as what their living expenses look like.

This lesson presents guided practice for google slides, along with internet research practice, jobs awareness, and speaking practice.

This course examines the economic, political, social, and spatial dynamics of urban growth and decline in cities and their key component areas (downtown, suburbs, etc.). Topics include impacts of industrialization, technology, politics, and social practices on cities. Students will examine the role of public and private sector activities, ranging from zoning and subsidies to infrastructure development and real estate investment, in affecting urban growth and decline. Readings are both theoretical and empirical, with considerable thought paid to comparative and historical differences.

Students explore heat transfer and energy efficiency using the context of energy efficient houses. They gain a solid understanding of the three types of heat transfer: radiation, convection and conduction, which are explained in detail and related to the real world. They learn about the many ways solar energy is used as a renewable energy source to reduce the emission of greenhouse gasses and operating costs. Students also explore ways in which a device can capitalize on the methods of heat transfer to produce a beneficial result. They are given the tools to calculate the heat transferred between a system and its surroundings.

Home equity is the value of a home minus what is owed on the home. In some cases, homeowners can take out loans using that value as collateral. Explore how home equity loans work, and why someone might want one, in this video. Created by Sal Khan.

This class focuses on how the housing and human service systems interact: how networks and social capital can build between elements of the two systems. It explores ways in which the differing world views, professional perspectives, and institutional needs of the two systems play out operationally. Part I establishes the nature of the action frames of these two systems. Part II applies these insights to particular vulnerable groups: “at risk” households in transitional housing, the chronically mentally ill, and the frail elderly.

A truly inter-disciplinary course, Housing and Land Use in Rapidly Urbanizing Regions reviews how law, economics, sociology, political science, and planning conceptualize urban land and property rights and uses cases to discuss what these different lenses illuminate and obscure. It also looks at how the social sciences might be informed by how design, cartography, and visual studies conceptualize space’s physicality. This year’s topics include land trusts for affordable housing, mixed-use in public space, and critical cartography.

Explore the mechanics of hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages, which are a blend of a fixed rate mortgage and an adjustable rate in this video, including how they work and when they might be advantageous.

As an introduction to the field of Housing, Community, and Economic Development (HCED), the course is structured to:

Advance student’s understanding of how public policy and private markets affect housing, economic development, the local economy, and neighborhood institutions;

Provide an overview of techniques for framing public and private interventions to meet housing and community development agendas, broadly defined, of inner city and low income neighborhoods;

Review and critique specific programs, policies and strategies that are (and have been) directed at local development and neighborhood regeneration issues;

Give students an opportunity to reflect on their personal sense of the “housing, community, and economic development” process and the various roles that planners play in implementing the elements of that agenda.

This course provides students with a critical introduction to: social and economic inequality in America; equitable development as a response framework for planners; social capital and community building as planning concepts; and the history, development, and current prospects of the fields of housing (with an emphasis on affordability and inclusion) and local economic development.

Balance sheets are a way of showing an entities assets and liabilities. In this video we use the example of purchasing a home to show what a balance sheet might look like in that situation. Created by Sal Khan.

Learn how mortgages work, how to use a mortgage calculator, and how to use a spreadsheet to show the payoff of a mortgage over time and the interest paid each year.

The math of renting vs. buying a home. Challenging the notion that it is always better to buy. Created by Sal Khan.

This course is designed to offer an advanced introduction to key legal issues that arise in the area of property and land-use in American law, with a comparative focus on the laws of India and South Africa. The focus of the course is not on law itself, but on the policy implications of various rules, doctrines and practices which are covered in great detail. Legal rules regulating property are among the most fundamental to American, and most other, economies and societies. The main focus is on American property and land use law due to its prominence in international development policy and practice as a model, though substantial comparative legal materials are also introduced from selected non-western countries such as India and South Africa.

Through an introduction to the design of lighting systems and the electromagnetic spectrum, students learn about the concept of daylighting as well as two types of light bulbs (lamps) often used in energy-efficient lighting design.

This is a picture story with attached worksheets of a refugee searching for housing.
It includes topics of neighborhoods, apartment size, costs, deposit and lease agreement.
It contains worksheets that go with the story.

Once you've found your dream home, you have to make an offer on it. In this video learn how making an offer on a house works and the various steps and pitfalls in that process.