As the unemployment rate continues to creep upward, many communities have become more and more desperate for job openings. Maiden, North Carolina, located in Catawba county, agreed today to raise its previous offer of incentives for Apple to open its East Coast data center near city limits, bringing much-needed jobs to a community with a 15 percent unemployment rate. 
 
Apple could save $46 million when compared to the state’s previous offer, as North Carolina rewrote its tax calculations to give Apple’s $1 billion data center such a break. Catawba County and the city of Maiden could also pay Apple about $21 million over the next ten years once the 500,000 square foot data center is up and running.
 
Considering that the data center would probably only employ about 50 full-time employees, this seems like a lot of money to spend. However, proponents of the move cite the extra $9.3 million the community would take in as income tax, as well as the amount of auxiliary jobs that would be created.

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Rhode Island just passed a law that forces companies to collect sales tax if they are affiliated to businesses that take a commission from links to another e-commerce website. The passing of this law has forced Amazon to drop its relationship with its marketing affiliates based in Rhode Island so that it would not have to collect sales tax in the state.
 
This is just off the heels of North Carolina’s passing of a similar law. Amazon responded similarly, dropping its North Carolina affiliates so that it would not have to collect sales taxes. Amazon may have to drop quite a few more affiliates as more and more struggling states consider passing this law to increase their income.
 
According to one of the affiliates affected by the law, small businesses are unfairly targeted by legislation that incorrectly classifies them as actual sales agents. Amazon also expressed its disdain for the law, calling it an “unconstitutional tax collection scheme” in a message to its Rhode Island affiliates.

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Housing professionals like to say that residential real estate is all about location. I’ve heard from many Realtors that you have to look at individual markets when talking about the country’s housing slump. Just because sales are bad and prices are dropping in much of Florida, it doesn’t mean that things are equally as bad in Chicago.

A recent story by James Hagerty in the Washington Post’s online Real Estate Journal says that’s changing. Even previously strong real estate markets are now suffering from the housing slump. You can read the story here.

According to the story, the housing slump has finally hit the Pacific Northwest and North Carolina, two markets that had largely been immune to the problems in the residential real estate market. The story even mentions that Manhattan may soon seen its own version of the housing slump.

There is some good news in the story, though. The markets in Boston and Denver are still going strong, for instance. And Dallas held steady, too.

But the overall theme of the story is a chilling one for those hoping that an end to the housing slump is near: Housing troubles are still spreading across the country. It looks like 2008 is going to be another tough year for the residential market.