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Century 21 China Real Estate Responds to Shareholder Petition and American Realty Capital Properties, Inc. to Ring The NASDAQ Stock Market Closing Bell in Conjunction With 2012 REIT IPO Conference
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IFM Investments Limited (the "Company," "Century 21 China Real Estate" or "CTC") (NYSE: CTC - News), a leading comprehensive real estate services provider and the exclusive franchisor for the CENTURY 21(R) brand in China , today announced that GL Asia Mauritius II Cayman Ltd. ("GLA"), an affiliate of Avenue Asia Capital and a shareholder of the Company, filed a petition on December 30, 2011 in the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands , the Company's jurisdiction of organization, to request an order to wind up the Company and other remedies.The Company, having consulted with its legal counsel, firmly believes that there is no basis for any of GLA's claims, and that a winding up would not be the appropriate remedy for any of the claims made. The Company filed a summons to strike out GLA's petition on January 6, 2012 , and will vigorously contest GLA's petition. [Read the full article]
American Realty Capital Properties Inc. and Realty Capital Securities, LLC. will ring The NASDAQ Stock Market Closing Bell in celebration of the 2012 Real Estate Investment Trust IPO Conference, entitled "The Modern IPO: Dream it. Do it." which will be hosted by NASDAQ OMX on January 9-10, 2012.In honor of the occasion, Nicholas S. Schorsch, Chairman and CEO of American Realty Capital Properties, Inc, will ring The NASDAQ Stock Market Closing Bell.For multimedia features such as exclusive content, photo postings, status updates and video of bell ceremonies please visit our Facebook page at:Webcast: A live webcast of the NASDAQ Closing Bell will be available at: http://www.nasdaq.com/about/marketsitetowervideo.asx or http://social.nasdaqomx.com.Photos:To obtain a hi-resolution photograph of the Market Close, please go to http://www.nasdaq.com/reference/marketsite_events.stm and click on the market close of your choice. [Read the full article]
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- American Realty Capital Properties, Inc. (NASDAQ: ARCP - News), announced that CEO Nicholas S. Schorsch will ring the NASDAQ closing bell today to commemorate the NASDAQ OMX 2012 REIT IPO Forum. The conference, entitled, The Modern REIT IPO: Dream it. Do it., is the first-ever real estate investment trust (REIT) industry IPO conference organized by NASDAQ OMX and is co-sponsored by American Realty Capital and Realty Capital Securities.Hosted at the NASDAQ MarketSite Broadcast Studio, located at 4 Times Square (43rd & Broadway), the full-day conference will include scores of REIT executives and other real estate industry leaders discussing the IPO process with insights from leading capital markets, legal, accounting and research professionals. The bell ringing will occur 3:45 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET. [Read the full article]
We are upgrading MarkWest Energy Partners (NYSE:MWE - News) to Outperform from Neutral, reflecting its promising future prospects. The master limited partnership's (NYSE:MLP - News) targeted growth capital investments since 2006 have been driving its strong, long-term volume growth. We continue to like MarkWest for its high-quality and diverse portfolio of midstream assets, as well as its proven track record of supporting producers in the development of shale plays and the steady improvement in its liquidity/cash flow position. Furthermore, with 192% distribution growth since the IPO in May 2002, we are confident of the partnership's total return potential. As such, we view MarkWest units as an attractive investment and upgrade it to Outperform. Our $66 price objective reflects a multiple of 21.2X trailing twelve-month cash flow. [Read the full article]
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Washington, D.C. leads U.S. in attracting new residents and Turning foreclosures into rentals
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According to a United Van Lines annual migration study, which took into account 146,000 interstate moves, nearly twice as many Americans moved to Washington, D.C. than moved out, making it the most migrated to destination in the nation for the fourth year in a row.Often, people go where the jobs are. As unemployment soared throughout most of the nation over the past four years, jobs were being created in or near D.C., thanks to one big employer: The government.The federal government hired about 150,000 workers, not including postal employees, since 2008, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Many of the new jobs were in D.C. and the surrounding areas in Northern Virginia and Maryland. And government salaries have been increasing, sometimes dramatically, drawing in many affluent professionals -- the kind likely to hire a large, full-service mover like United -- to the area. [Read the full article]
The program, which was cited by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke last week as one way to address the housing crisis, would sell foreclosed homes now owned by Fannie Mae (FNMA, Fortune 500) and Freddie Mac (FMCC, Fortune 500) to investors in bulk. The properties would then be converted into rentals.The initiative began back in August, when the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the Treasury Department and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced they were seeking suggestions on ways to dispose of repossessed homes now owned by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration.In addition to getting the properties off the government's books, officials are hoping putting the homes back into productive use will stabilize neighborhoods and housing values. Also, it is looking to expand the supply of rentals, which are increasingly in demand. [Read the full article]
They offer yields so lofty they're likely to fall. But mREITs may still have potential for investors.FORTUNE -- As bond, CD, and money market interest rates remain mired at rock-bottom levels, investors continue their quest for dividends. One category offers eye-popping yields: mortgage real estate investment trusts, or mREITs (which are required to pass most of their income to shareholders via dividends). Chimera Investment and American Capital Agency each yield more than 19%. And the largest mREIT, Annaly Capital Management -- which we've recommended before -- offers a 15% payout. Are these returns too good to be true?As their name implies, mREITs invest in mortgages rather than, say, office buildings, and they do so mostly with borrowed money. (Annaly, for example, has a debt-to-equity ratio of 6 to 1.) Like banks, mREITs make their money off the difference between their borrowing costs and the yield on their portfolio. [Read the full article]
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Fannie Mae CEO Michael Williams plans to resign, the government-controlled mortgage giant said Tuesday. Williams, who took over as president and CEO of the troubled company in 2009, will continue as CEO until Fannie Mae's board names a successor. The firm did not provide a specific reason for Williams' departure; in a statement, Williams said only that he had decided that "the time is right to turn over the reins to a new leader." Williams will leave behind a firm still struggling to get its finances in order. In November, Fannie Mae (FNMA, Fortune 500) reported a net third-quarter loss of $5.1 billion. The loss forced the firm to ask for another $7.8 billion in funding from the Treasury Department, a request that took its bailout total to $112.6 billion. Federal regulators put Fannie Mae and fellow government-sponsored enterprise Freddie Mac (FMCC, Fortune 500) into conservatorship during the financial meltdown in September 2008. [Read the full article]
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Some real estate pros take aim at anti-piracy legislation and RPost provides mobile e-signature, registered email services
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CORRECTIONS: The original version of this article contained errors. The original article misidentified broker Jim Duncan's market area. Duncan works in the Charlottesville, Va., area. Also, Duncan's comments were clarified to note that he believes it would be difficult to verify compliance under the proposed new laws of all of the information that he links to from his website. Also, Eric Post is principal of Better Homes and Gardens Realty Partners Inc. in Clackamas, Ore.Some real estate practitioners and technologists have taken a stance against federal anti-piracy legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives (SOPA) and the Senate (PIPA), worried that it could restrict the legitimate sharing of real estate information online. [Read the full article]
RPost, a provider of e-signature and certified digital correspondence services, launched mobile versions of its registered email and e-signature services at this year's Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas last week. It joins a number of other e-signature service providers in the mobile business communication service, including DocuSign and EchoSign.RPost Mobile, which provides registered email that allows third-party proof that a message was sent or received and digital sender and recipient e-signatures, are available for tablets, iPhones, Android smartphones and BlackBerrys.One of the features that stands out for RPost Mobile, said RPost CEO Zafar Khan, along with its broad virtual communication suite, is the ability to record consent via the body text of an email. Users can also guarantee the delivery and dispatch of an email, he said, which enhances a busy real estate agent's on-the-go life. [Read the full article]
A new discount-brokerage firm, spyRealty, has launched in New York and Massachusetts, offering homebuyers a 2 percent refund off of the purchase price of a home.Ben Chudnovskiy, managing partner of spyRealty, which currently has seven agents, was not a spy in his former life (at least, he's not saying so if he was) -- he's just a normal, New York guy and Massachusetts-licensed real estate broker -- but he's looking to follow large online broker Redfin's model, which originated as a discount real estate service for tech-savvy homebuyers.And competition is enormous, said Chudnovskiy, which prompted the idea in the first place. "With 45,000 licensed real estate agents in Massachusetts, I thought, 'How can we compete?' One way is to be first."While spyRealty isn't the first brokerage to experiment with this model, Chudnovskiy believes it's among the only companies in the region offering a 2 percent brokerage fee refund. [Read the full article]
Editor's note: This list, based on data compiled by Zillow, represents the top 10 metro areas ranked by steepest year-over-year percentage drop in average listing price during 2011 compared to the previous year. Median home values listed in the charts are based on the Zillow Home Value Index.Metro areas in Michigan and the Southeast experienced the most substantial cuts in for-sale home prices listed on Zillow.com in 2011 compared to 2010. Flint, Mich., and Detroit topped the list at No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, experiencing 13.21 percent and 12 percent price drops on average home listing prices, respectively.The rest of the top 10 spanned from No. 3 Bakersfield, Calif., with a 9.85 percent price drop in listing price, to No. 10 Gainesville, Ga., at a 9.6 percent drop.Following the most recent housing market turmoil geographic trends, all of the top 10 metro areas were clustered in north-central Florida, Georgia, Michigan and California. [Read the full article]
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Foreclosure sales still pummeling home prices and Home sales worse than thought
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A whopping 46% of homes sold in November were either short sales or REOs -- as homes repossessed by lenders are called, according to a survey by Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance. One problem: Distressed homes sell for a lot less than homes sold by conventional sellers. The average price for a short sale (when borrowers owe the bank more than their homes are worth) was $209,000 in November. For a regular sale, the average was about $259,000.The numbers are even worse for REOs, which averaged about $190,000 for properties in move-in condition.For a damaged REO, the price was just $99,000. That's a common problem, since homeowners who've been foreclosed on don't typically devote resources to upkeep.There is no shortage of distressed properties: More than 6 million borrowers are delinquent 30 or more days, according to LPS Applied Analytics. Two million are already in the foreclosure process, and most of these homes will be repossessed or sold as short sales. [Read the full article]
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Existing home sales during the housing bust were actually 14.3% worse than previously reported, a revision to Realtors' group numbers shows.On Wednesday, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) revised home sale counts back to 2007 due to flaws in their original data analysis.In 2007, there were actually just 5.04 million existing home sales, 11% less than the 5.65 million originally reported. Even worse were 2008 and 2009, when there were 16% fewer sales than originally reported. Sales in 2010 were 15% lower."The errors started in 2007 and continued to accumulate over time," said Lawrence Yun, NAR's chief economist.The accuracy of the data is important. Private companies like residential real estate developers rely on it for planning and policy makers make decisions based on it. [Read the full article]
Mortgage rates have hit record lows, with the interest rate on a 30-year, fixed-rate loan, the most popular choice of homebuyers, averaging 3.91% this week, according to Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey.Rates have fallen 0.9% since the beginning of the year. For a homeowner with a $200,000 mortgage, that means a savings of $1,200 a year, said Frank Nothaft, Freddie's chief economist.With rates at or below 4% for the last eight weeks, home sales are getting a boost, Nothaft added. Existing homes sold at their fastest pace since January last month, according to the National Association of Realtors, and new home sales edged higher in November as well.Meanwhile, rates for 15-year mortgages remained unchanged, matching last week's record low of 3.21%."We've entered the holiday lull with nothing much happening to change rates one way or the other," said Greg McBride, senior financial analyst for Bankrate.com. [Read the full article]
That was up 1.6% compared with the revised October rate of 310,000 and 9.8% higher than November 2010.The good news followed other recent positive industry reports. November sales of existing homes rose 12% year-over-year; homebuilding spiked nearly 21% compared with 12 months ago; and mortgage rates hit record lows this week.The sales hike was in line with expectations: The forecast from Briefing.com was for a 315,000 annualized rate.The median price for a new home was $214,100 in November. Inventory shrank to 158,000 units, a 6-month supply at the current sales rate.New homes sales are particularly important because they have a large impact on the overall economy, said Bob Denk, senior economist with the National Association of Home Builders."Inventories of new homes are very low: There's nothing on the shelf, so any increase in new home sales will translate directly into new housing starts," he said. [Read the full article]
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