Real Estate and Rentals

Demolition plan sparks Vancouver heritage flap.
Homeowner Michael Juk wants to tear down his house on East Georgia street and build a new, modern structure.

Juk”s home was probably built in 1900, which makes it one of the oldest houses in Vancouver. Strathcona is Vancouver”s oldest neighbourhood, and has zoning guidelines designed to try and protect its stock of Victorian and Edwardian buildings — guidelines that were adopted after about half the historic buildings in the neighbourhood were torn down in urban renewal schemes in the 1950s and “60s.

.

Estate agents: Crisis? What crisis?.
Last week, the chairman of the Home Builders Federation said sales of newly built houses have ‘fallen off a cliff’, while Taylor Wimpey, the UK”s biggest homebuilder, announced plans to close 13 offices and lay off 600 staff. Persimmon has seen sales drop by 24 per cent this year, and Bovis Homes by 30 per cent.

Interesting? Click here to explore further

.

Home Before Dark Neil Diamond.
Fans of 12 Songs, Neil Diamond”s poignant 2005 record of defiant folk rock, will surely enjoy Home Before Dark, his second straight album produced by Rick Rubin, the studio whiz behind Jay-Z, the Beastie Boys, Red Hot Chili Peppers and more. However, it”s hard not to be a touch disappointed in new tracks that don”t build upon what the two legends already created, but rather plays on in exactly the same note.Like he did previously with Johnny Cash, Rubin strips songs of gimmickry and pomp, and presents the vulnerable singer-songwriter survivor as a man with an acoustic guitar, imperfect voice and open heart.Pretty Amazing Grace, which the 67-year-old premiered last month on American Idol, is an elegant love song that sounds like it was recorded after last call in a Memphis whiskey bar and the easygoing Forgotten plays like a country standard as reinterpreted by a Jewish showman from Brooklyn.With members of Tom Petty”s Heartbreakers offering assistance, the record is sure-footed, expertly orchestrated and anti-bitter.

Publisher turns a Polish palace into a home and more.
On a trip outside Warsaw, he met a real estate agent who was showing some properties and, as prices were within his reach, he started thinking about buying a country place to renovate.

In 2002 he and his wife, Marzenna, who is Polish, looked at about 10 properties but came back to the first one: a three-story palace dating to the mid-1770s in the small village of Naklo, some 240 kilometers (about 150 miles) south of Warsaw.

‘It was very much unlike anything we saw,’ Reyher, now 54, recalled. ‘What I liked most was that it was not pretentious, not terribly elaborate. It is, in fact, pretty simple.’

The eight-hectare (20-acre) estate included a park with 200-year-old trees and an orchard, as well as a ruined stable, a caretaker”s house and a three-car garage.

Shamil Bank announces $24.4m net profit.
“So far this year Shamil Bank has launched two real estate investment funds, targeting the emerging markets of Turkey, and Central and Eastern Europe. The Bank is always looking for new and different opportunities in developing markets which allow its clients to diversify their portfolios and maintain steady growth,” continued Al Anqari. “Another important product launch for Shamil this year is Shamil Jawaher, which is designed to provide a profit rate that is higher than those offered by traditional savings schemes. The Bank will continue to bring innovative retail and investment banking products to the market, under the guidance of its new Chief Executive, Faisal Mansoor Al Alwan, who will join the Bank in mid-June 2008,” concluded Al Anqari. .

Were Miami-Dade Taxpayers Railroaded?.
The money was also apparently used to pay for a percentage of the rent in the office building, along with a quarter of everyday items like paper clips, pest control, and even chlorine tablets for fountains at Metro Transit buildings.

‘This isn”t one of those scandals, where the money never got spent on anything, like in the affordable housing scandal,’ said Lebowitz. ‘This one”s more like, the money went everywhere.’The original plan didn”t call for money to be spent on maintaining old systems, but as the folks at the Citizen”s Independent Transit Trust told the CBS4 I-Team, if that sales tax money wasn”t used for operational costs, the system might have completely shut down.

(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Baby”s death sparks new home alone alert.
PARENTS were urged yesterday not to leave their children unattended at home following a string of accidents, including the death of an 18-month-old boy.

Three cases over the last two weeks were reported and doctors fear the figure may increase with the approaching summer holidays.

The latest was a Bahraini toddler with a button battery embedded in his ear yesterday.

The three-year-old, whose parents didn”t know why he was crying uncontrollably at home, was brought to Salmaniya Medical Complex, where emergency doctors successfully removed the battery.

‘The boy looked all right, but kept clutching his ear and crying,’ said a doctor, who didn”t want to be named.

‘We did an X-ray and found the battery near his middle ear.’

Observation

He said a scope was used to extract the battery and the boy was then discharged after being kept under observation for a few hours.

Bills for Ohio stimulus package hit House, Senate floors.
Ted Strickland”s $1.57 billion economic stimulus package will begin hearings in the Senate and House this week, with leaders of both chambers committing to passing the two pairs of bills by the end of May.

State Sen. Mark Wagoner, R-Toledo, and Rep. Barbara Sears, R-Sylvania, on Monday introduced companion resolutions that would place a $400 million bond issue before voters in November to renew state”s $400 million Clean Ohio initiative, a key element of the jobs package Strickland unveiled in February. That original proposal had included a $1.7 billion bond package in need of voter approval, which drew fire from Republicans in both legislative chambers.

A compromise with House and Senate Republicans unveiled in early April will result in about $700 million less debt and be financed through bond sales, existing state revenue and other sources.

Nigeria: Rivers Lawmakers Sack Principal Officers.
Eighteen members out of the 32-member legislature of the crisis ridden Rivers State House of Assembly, yesterday, sacked all its principal officers except the Speaker Mr. Tonye Harry who survived the gale.

But the action of the members were quickly rebuffed by Speaker Harry because ‘the House adjourned sine die before the trip to Australian and it is only myself or the deputy speaker who can convene the session’. Fourteen of the legislatures were absent.

.

Hope for UP real estate?.
Despite the nationwide housing market slump, a new Marquette development is trying to buck the trend. By Heather SawaskiPosted: Saturday, May 31, 2008 at 4:34 p.m.

MARQUETTE — Experts say the country is in the middle of the biggest housing slump in 40 years. Nationwide, home prices have fallen nearly 14 percent since the beginning of 2008, but what about right here in the U.P.?

New housing development, Harlow Farms, is one of the largest housing projects ever planned in Marquette. It includes more than 100 acres of land and covers six different neighborhoods.

‘We”re really offering a multigenerational approach to housing,’ says developer Lynn Swadley. ‘We have single-family homes, two different condominiums, neighborhoods for 50-plus active adults, and we also have assisted living.’

Swadley says despite the slow housing market, when he decided to build the development back in 2006, the reward outweighed the risk.