Appraisers predict "more of the same" for 2008.
Market conditions for both residential and commercial appraisers will remain about the same in 2008 as they were in 2007, based on a recent survey of Appraisal Institute members. The survey, conducted in January 2008 by the Appraisal Institute's Research Department, polled both residential and commercial appraiser members on...

Convergence and triple play bundling: an empirical assessment for European telecommunications.
Abstract: Digital convergence is quickly leading to various telecommunications and media sourcing triple play services of voice, television and internet. This article describes the extent to which bundling strategies have been recently deployed by access providers, and their impact on competition in Western Europe. Generally speaking, we observe that...

History lesson: a mother-daughter pair breathes new life into a 1920s Mediterranean home.
Carolyn Van Helden is active in the Daughters of the American Revolution, and her mother, Lyde Jones, can trace her family back to Jamestown (a walk-in closet filled floor to ceiling with her meticulously organized genealogy research backs her up). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] It's no wonder,...

Court revelations point to Parlato.
When Hong Kong investor David Ho walked away from his AquaFalls project at the former Occidental building on Niagara Street, he also walked away from more than $1 million in back taxes he owed on the property. In December of that year, when Buffalo investor Frank Parlato...

Not ready for sub-prime players: borrowing's fine; debt's a national crisis.
EVEN CAVE-DWELLING, 15-year-fixed-rate-paying troglodytes were close to hysteria this spring, spooked by speculation that the debacle in the sub-prime mortgage industry, which had already sunk industry leaders like Ownit and AmeriQuest, was on the verge of torpedoing the entire American economy. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) proposed...

Has the housing bubble found its pin?
"After recording more than 9,000 foreclosures in 2005, Wayne County [Michigan] ended January with 3,364 homes in active foreclosure, the highest of any county in the nation by more than 1,000," reported the Detroit News. "Katherine Ben-Ami ... an attorney for the Wayne County Sheriff's Office ... supervised the...

Relocation appraising: analyzing the presence of a bubble on the local level.
IN THE REAL ESTATE ARENA, THE AUCTION IS AN INCREASINGLY POPULAR MEANS OF PROPERTY DISPERSAL, WHETHER IT'S AN ACTUAL AUCTION SUCH AS ONE CONDUCTED BY THE COUNTY SHERIFF FOR FORECLOSURE PURPOSES OR A METAPHORICAL AUCTION SUCH AS WHEN MULTIPLE OFFERS VIE FOR THAT "HOT" PROPERTY. For appraisers who do...

Home foreclosures increase 72 percent.
Mortgages entering foreclosure jumped 72 percent during the first quarter from a year earlier, as higher interest rates increased monthly payments and strained the budgets of homeowners with adjustable-rate loans, according to Bloomberg News. Lenders began foreclosing on 323,102 mortgages, a ratio of one in 358 U.S....

Mortgage brokers and originators now facing scrutiny once reserved for appraisers.
DUE TO THE RECENT RISE IN HOME FORECLOSURE RATES AND THE OUTCRY OVER PREDATORY LENDING, STATE LEGISLATORS ARE TAKING A CLOSER LOOK AT THE REAL ESTATE INDUSTRY AND HOW TO INCREASE OVERSIGHT OF KEY PARTICIPANTS. However, unlike the late 1980s when appraisers received the bulk of the scrutiny, legislators...

Apartheid versus sumud.
This is, as they say, the crunch. This is the political moment all Israeli governments--all of them, Labour, Likud and 'National Unity'--have been working towards the past four decades of Occupation: the final push for an expanded Israel, the permanent foreclosure of any viable Palestinian state and a unilateral...