AP U.S. home prices continued their steady upward march in February as buyers competed for a limited number of available properties. The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller 20-city home price index rose 5.4 percent that month compared with a year earlier, according to a report released on Saturday. That’s down slightly from January’s 5.7% rise. Prices are rising even as sales ...
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Toronto property developer in trouble
Bloomberg In a parking lot in midtown Toronto, a portable office advertising homes for Urbancorp sits empty, a stark symbol of what can go wrong for even one of Canada’s largest property developers in the city’s feverish real estate market. The sales center, fronted by weed-covered planters and dotted with litter, was where Urbancorp marketed 41 townhouses. The project, ...
Read More »Norway’s wealth fund doubles money on central London properties
Bloomberg Norway’s $870 billion sovereign-wealth fund said the value of its first real estate investments, stakes in London’s Regent Street and a cluster of offices, shops and apartments nearby, more than doubled in value since they were purchased in 2011 and 2013. The fund’s 25 percent holding in the Crown Estate partnership, which owns parts of the luxury shopping ...
Read More »Riyadh’s causeway to connect Africa
Bloomberg The Kingdom od Saudi Arabia seeks to establish itself as a trade hub connecting Europe, Africa and Asia. The causeway that is planned to link Saudi Arabia with Egypt will be a key component of future trade exchanges between the kingdom and Africa. In the Vision 2030 document that was released on April 25, Riyadh said it plans ...
Read More »UK home loans surge most since 2007 in tax deadline rush
Bloomberg U.K. mortgage lending surged by the most since October 2007 last month, a further sign of the stampede for investment properties before a tax rise took effect in April. Net advances rose to 7.4 billion pounds ($10.8 billion) in March, from 3.6 billion pounds a month earlier, the Bank of England said in London. That’s far above the ...
Read More »People still seeing red over housing collapse in USA
Bloomberg The nation’s housing markets may be finally getting over the foreclosure crisis, but for many Americans the anger hasn’t subsided. Take a look at this recent home sale in Florida. It may be the perfect encapsulation of the fury felt by some of the more than 5 million Americans served with a foreclosure notice after the housing bubble ...
Read More »NYC’s luxury-apartment glut hits landlord Equity Residential
Bloomberg A cool-down in Manhattan’s apartment-rental market is hitting the bottom line of Equity Residential as the landlord is forced to offer concessions to tenants who suddenly have a lot of competition to choose from. “New York City just turned very quickly and more deeply than we expected,†Chief Operating Officer David Santee said on a conference call on ...
Read More »WB raises iron ore forecasts after China-led rally
Bloomberg Iron ore forecasts for the five years through 2020 have been revised higher by the World Bank after the commodity rallied in the first quarter on a surge in steel prices in China, the largest user. The raw material is expected to trade at $50 a metric ton this year, $51.50 in 2017 and extend gains to $56.20 ...
Read More »USA finally putting home foreclosure crisis behind it
Bloomberg It’s taken nine years, but the number of U.S. homes in foreclosure has fallen to a level not seen since before the 2008 housing crisis. More troubled borrowers are making their way through the foreclosure process, which can take more than five years on average in some states. The number of properties in active foreclosure declined by 24,000 ...
Read More »Sales of new USA homes fall for 3rd month on slump in West
Bloomberg Purchases of new homes in the U.S. unexpectedly declined in March for a third month, reflecting the weakest pace of demand in the West since July 2014. Total sales decreased 1.5 percent to a 511,000 annualized pace, a Commerce Department report showed on Monday. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey was for a gain to 520,000. In ...
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