July, 2016

• 27 July

  US new-home sales up to over 8-year high in June

  

    AP Americans bought new homes in June at the fastest pace in more than eight years, a sign that a solid job market and low mortgage rates are bolstering the U.S. housing market. The Commerce Department said that new-home sales rose 3.5 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted rate of 592,000, the best level since February 2008. Purchases ...

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• 27 July

  Rental slowdowns hit biggest apartment REITs

  

    Bloomberg Apartment construction in New York and San Francisco is taking its toll on landlords, with Equity Residential, the largest publicly traded U.S. multifamily owner, cutting its revenue forecast for the third time this year. Equity Residential expects revenue growth from properties open at least a year to be 3.5 percent to 4 percent in 2016, according to the ...

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• 27 July

  Mainland Chinese underpin Hong Kong rents

  

    AFP Chinese mainlanders are underpinning high-end residential apartment rents in Hong Kong as expatriate housing budgets in the financial industry are being slashed, according to Savills Plc. Vacancies for luxury apartments remain low and budgets of HK$40,000 (just over $5,000) to HK$100,000 per month are the most popular, according to a note from the London-based real estate services company. ...

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• 27 July

  Glass Lewis backing for Wanda buyout deal

    Bloomberg Billionaire Wang Jianlin’s $4.4 billion proposal to privatize Dalian Wanda Commercial Properties Co. drew support from Glass Lewis, which advised investors to vote for the plan. The buyout offer’s rationale is “fairly standard,” and “straightforward,” according to a Glass Lewis report seen by Bloomberg. The proxy advisory firm is “inclined to agree” that the buyout of listed shares ...

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• 27 July

  End of an era as China’s love affair with US real estate fades

  

    Bloomberg For David Wong, the business of selling homes isn’t as good this year as it was in 2015, and he’s blaming that on a decline in customers from China. “The residential-property market here, especially for those priced between $2.5 million to $3 million, has been affected by China’s measures to control capital flight,” said the New York City-based ...

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• 27 July

  Apps that are meant for the ‘smart’

  

    Bloomberg Africa’s startups are seizing an opportunity they say Google and Apple Inc. have missed — making apps for non-smartphones. In a region where the average customer doesn’t own a smartphone or a bank card, hundreds of millions of people do use some kind of basic phone. That’s prompting developers to build no-frills text-based apps, keeping data consumption down ...

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• 27 July

  Eastern Europe spawns another viral hit with Prisma

  

    Relaxnews The former Soviet Union is proving to be a productive source of photo and video apps that go viral. The latest is Prisma. The smartphone app can transform your photos — even lousy ones — into something resembling a work of art, stylized as an impressionist or pop-art painting. It’s been downloaded about 16.5 million times since release ...

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• 27 July

  Apple talks services amid drop in sales

  

    Bloomberg With iPhone sales and profits sliding, Apple on Tuesday sought to highlight its growth in services as it seeks to reduce dependence on its main cash driver. In its quarterly update, Apple said profits slumped 27 percent from a year ago to $7.8 billion on a sharp drop in iPhone sales. Apple sold 40.4 million iPhones in the ...

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• 27 July

  Google Maps highlight areas of interest

  

    Relaxnews Google has announced on its blog an update to Google Maps, making some visual changes to the service on desktop, Android and iOS, as well as introducing a few additions to help make it easier for users to get to where they want to go. For a cleaner, clearer look, Google has removed any information that it believes ...

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• 27 July

  Mining leaves Mekong thirsty

  

    AFP Grain by grain, truckload by truckload, Laos’ section of the Mekong River is being dredged of sand to make cement — a commodity being devoured by a Chinese-led building boom in the capital. But the hollowing out of the riverbed is also damaging a vital waterway that feeds hundreds of thousands of fishermen and farmers in the poverty-stricken ...

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