Two metropolitan cities in the Pacific Northwest are leading the nation in green construction with plans to put up living buildings. The Cascadia Center for Sustainable Design and Construction, a six-story complex with a basement, will be constructed in the heart of Seattle. The Oregon Sustainability Center, a seven-story, $64 million project, will go up in the eco-district of Portland State University’s downtown campus.

Both buildings hope to attain the Living Building Challenge certification from the Living Future Institute and will, no doubt, provide critical data for the future construction of sustainable buildings elsewhere. The lead architect on the Seattle Project is Brian Court, who says that building a multi-story green building presents a huge challenge. The Cascadia Center will draw solar energy from the roof, while the Oregon Sustainability Center plans to utilize both solar and geothermal technology.

The two projects are striving to meet a triple net-zero status, where energy, water, and waste are generated, utilized, or recycled on site. Here’s how they plan to manage waste. Rainwater will be collected and treated for consumption. Greywater (wastewater from hand washing, for example) will be recycled for toilets and to cool mechanical equipment. Blackwater (you can guess what that is) will be funneled to onsite natural biological treatment systems and returned to the building as greywater. All environmental eyes are on the Pacific Northwest. If the buildings meet their triple net-zero goals, you can bet that other cities will follow suit.

The number of homeowners who were 60 days or more past due on their mortgages went down in the first quarter of 2011 to 6.19 percent from 6.77 percent at the same time last year, according to reports by TransUnion. This decrease marks the fifth straight quarter of falling rates.

While delinquency is down in many states across the nation, rates need to fall faster to reach the 2 percent pre-recession average. Guy Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance, says that while the numbers tell a positive story, the housing market must clear out more distressed properties in order to gain additional traction. Because the foreclosure process can be lengthy, the rate’s movement has been sluggish.

About half of all foreclosures in the U.S. are concentrated in five states — Florida, California, Illinois, New York, and New Jersey. In four out of five states, court approval is required for foreclosures. When problems with paperwork surfaced in the fall of 2010, foreclosed homes got stuck in the bottleneck of legal review, and the process lengthened. With delinquency rates moving at their current pace, slow and steady may win this race.

Mark Zuckerberg is settling down in Palo Alto. Known for being a month-to-month renter, the young billionaire has just purchased a house for $7 million, located about 10 minutes from Facebook’s new campus in Menlo Park, according to Silicon Valley’s Mercury News.

For a guy who says he found all his rental houses on Craigslist, the new property purchase is a departure. The 5,617 square foot home features a few amenities — outdoor gazebo, salt-water swimming pool, spa, and most luxurious of all, a carport.

According to Mercury News, Tyler Winklevoss (famous for suing Zuckerberg for stealing the idea of Facebook) once described his old Harvard classmate as “the poorest rich person I’ve ever seen in my life.” Zuckerberg remains in solid tech company in Palo Alto, where Steve Jobs and Larry Page also reside. However, this millennial may have the humblest abode of the trio.