Despite the fact that UK property market has been a volatile over the last three years, and indeed according to many is on the verge of a further downward spiral, the truth is that in the longer term the UK property market is likely to remain buoyant and in demand. When you take into account the ever-growing population of the UK and the reluctance of many local authorities to build further council houses it seems almost inevitable that demand for existing houses and new properties will grow.
The problem for the UK authorities is that the UK’s is a relatively small island and due to significant underinvestment on new properties in the past there is still a long-term imbalance between supply and demand. Even those who argue that UK property is too expensive for first-time buyers have to admit that the more people who rent in the UK the more demand properties.
U.S. home prices increased 3.1 percent the second quarter of the year, spurred by seasonal factors and the expiring federal tax credit, according to figures released today by secondary mortgage lender Freddie Mac.
The rate translate to a 13.2 percent gain on an annualize basis when compared to the first quarter of the year. Prices were down 0.2 percent compared to the same period one year earlier. “We saw increases in home values in the second quarter that were very strong across all regions,” said Amy Crew Cutts, deputy chief economist for Freddie Mac. “there is no doubt that some of this was due in part to the now-expired homebuyer tax credits which boosted sales activity as well as to the usual seasonal bump we see each Spring.”
Oddly enough, although sales prices increased, home values – a measure that includes both sales prices and appraised home values obtained for mortgage refinancing – declined 0.5 percent during the quarter, an annual rate of 1.8 percent. Freddie Mac re Read more…
John Laramie has it going on. He just may be sitting on the last great, untapped online idea in advertising. He seems able to convince investors that he’s the one to pull it off. He’s a chick magnet for ping-pong groupies (assuming such creatures exist). And he’s all of 26 years old.
Laramie this year founded a company called ADstruc, an online auction and listing marketplace for outdoor advertising, which includes billboards; “street furniture” such as bus shelters and benches, and shopping mall displays; transit ads, including moving vehicles and transit stations; and alternative media such as airplanes at beaches, gas pump panels and postcard stands, among others. ADstruc revenue comes from a small software-as-a-service fee for listing inventory, as well as a 15 percent commission from sellers on each transaction.
Remarkably, the $5.8 billion outdoor advertising business represents one of the few media that are still bought and sold exclusively offline without any of the efficiencies the internet provides.
Sure, the convenience of those big-box stores is nice because you can get almost everything you need (and a bunch of stuff you don’t, if you are anything like the average person – myself included) in one place, but do you know where your money goes after you give it to the clerk? It heads right back to the big-box headquarters, paying out giant bonuses and perks to the bigwigs while leaving the workers to fight for minimum wage and meager benefits. I fight the urge to buy everything at the big-box stores as much as the next person, because of convenience and price, but when I think about where my money is going it does make it a little easier to try to search out smaller shops. When I lived in New Mexico, I lived in a very small town where most of the stores and restaurants were locally-owned, and I tried to make it a point of buying from them instead of driving the 63 miles to the nearest Target Superstore. (
The Co-operative Group has today issued half year results which show a 17% rise in profits from £221 million over the corresponding period last year up to £260 million this year. There was a 12.6% increase in profits from its supermarket division even though there were distribution issues with regards to the integration of the Somerfield acquisition. However, it is the company’s comments about the immediate future of the UK economy which have caught the eye.
The company itself has expanded not only the supermarket division but also its financial services operation which has given the Co-operative Group a larger base in the UK. However, the downturn in the UK economy is hitting all areas of UK business and no one company is immune from the financial difficulties being felt by many consumers in the UK. As
Fewer homeowners with mortgage loan modifications are falling back into default, casting doubt on predictions that most of these borrowers will eventually go into foreclosure anyway.
A new report found that homeowners who obtained loan modifications in 2009 were about half as likely to become seriously delinquent within six months as were borrowers whose mortgages were modified the year before. That’s according to the State Foreclosure Prevention Working Group, which released the report Tuesday.
The report suggested the difference was due to the fact that recent loan modifications are more likely to reduce a borrower’s monthly mortgage payments, rather than increasing them to make up for arrearages. Nearly 78 percent of all loan modifications performed in the first quarter of 2010 significantly reduced a borrower’s monthly payments, compared to only 57 percent in 2008.
“This improvement in loan modification performance suggests that dire predictions of high redefault rates may not come true,” the report read. “This posi