Market News/Feeds
Keeping you up to date on all the latest business and real estate news.
Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) -- If you're expecting to be shocked by all the Super Bowl ads, don't hold your breath: There won't be many surprises....
NEW YORK (AP) -- Facebook's billionaire CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls himself a hacker....
MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia's state-controlled Gazprom natural gas giant acknowledged for the first time Saturday that it had briefly reduced gas supplies to Europe amid a spell of extreme cold....
STOCKHOLM (AP) -- A group linked to the hacker network Anonymous says it has attacked the Swedish government's website and shut it down by overloading it....
HEBRON, West Bank (AP) -- Hundreds of Palestinian protesters have called for their prime minister's resignation over recent tax and price increases....
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama is rallying support for his plan to expand government assistance to homeowners, pressuring Congress to help lower lending rates for millions of strapped homeowners....
TORONTO (AP) -- Canada's prime minister heads to China next week where he'll discuss Canada's vast oil reserves in a visit that's being viewed as an "open warning" to the United States, which rejected a pipeline from Canada to Texas....
ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- "Crucial" issues remain to be resolved in Greece's critical negotiations over a second multibillion euro international bailout, and talks would continue into the weekend, the country's Finance Minister said early Saturday....
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Hewlett-Packard Co. ushered in Meg Whitman as its CEO with a $16.5 million compensation package that hinges on the one-time politician's ability to lift the stumbling technology company's stock price during the next two years....
BOISE, Idaho (AP) -- The image Steve Appleton cultivated as a stunt pilot and off-road rally driver became the perfect metaphor for his wild, 18-year ride as the leader of Micron Technology Inc., where stomach-churning swings from billion-dollar profit to billion-dollar loss required the constitution of a business daredevil to survive....
LONDON (AP) -- They trade jokes, chuckle and talk shop about a hacker plot called "Project Mayhem."...
HOUSTON (AP) -- Texas financier R. Allen Stanford helped fake profits for his Caribbean bank and funnel millions of depositors' dollars to a secret Swiss bank account used for personal expenses, bribes to regulators and employee bonuses, the man who was in charge of the tycoon's books told jurors Friday....
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Legislation that would ban insider trading by lawmakers and thousands of executive branch officials headed for what could be a more contentious debate in the House after sailing through the Senate on a 96-3 vote....
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- New York's attorney general on Friday accused some of the nation's largest banks of deceit and fraud in using an electronic mortgage registry that he said puts homeowners at a disadvantage in foreclosures while saving banks over $2 billion....
COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho (AP) -- Some shareholders have sued Hecla Mining Co. for stock losses they endured after the federal government shut down the Lucky Friday Mine for safety violations....
WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. service companies grew at the fastest pace in 11 months in January as companies started hiring to keep up with rising demand....
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Orders to U.S. factories rose in December, supported by a rebound in business investment in capital goods such as heavy machinery....
WASHINGTON (AP) -- In a long-awaited surge of hiring, companies added 243,000 jobs in January - across the economy, up and down the pay scale and far more than just about anyone expected. Unemployment fell to 8.3 percent, the lowest in three years....
LONDON (AP) -- The head of the BBC on Friday accused Iran of intimidating staff members of its Persian service through slander, snooping and the arrest of their relatives....
BRUSSELS (AP) -- The European Union is bracing for another potential energy crisis in the dead of winter as Russian gas supplies to some member states have suddenly dwindled by up to 30 percent....
NEW YORK (AP) -- Companies hope you'll be gabbing about their Super Bowl ads on Monday morning. But the ultimate score is if those conversations continue throughout the year....
BRUSSELS (AP) -- The European Union's data protection authorities have asked Google to delay the rollout of its new privacy policy until they have verified that it doesn't break the bloc's data protection laws....
BRUSSELS (AP) -- Retail sales in the 17 countries that use the euro unexpectedly fell during the crucial month of December, official figures showed Friday, raising fears of a looming recession in the single currency bloc....
NEW YORK (AP) -- The goody-two-shoes among us say it's better to give than to receive. That's not true for the average Facebook user, though....
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- The jailed founder of the file-sharing website Megaupload is complaining that women inmates are giving him unwanted attention....
TOKYO (AP) -- For an emerging generation of Japanese innovators, the dream isn't a job for life at a big company. They have new ambitions, and they're determined to go places. Especially Silicon Valley....
BEIJING (AP) -- China's main ruling party newspaper criticized sanctions on Iran as German Chancellor Angela Merkel met Friday with President Hu Jintao after urging Beijing to press Tehran to avoid developing nuclear weapons....
NEW YORK (AP) -- Magazine distributor Robert B. Cohen, who built the Hudson News chain of newsstands from one store at LaGuardia Airport and changed the way travelers spend their downtime, has died at age 86....
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) -- A company will no longer be allowed to arrange special federal visas for foreign college students to work in the United States because the State Department - acting on complaints about poor labor conditions - has revoked the organization's certification....
Facebook's public stock offering apparently will not affect its company co-founder's pledge of shares worth $100 million to the Newark, N.J., school system....
BALTIMORE (AP) -- The view off the mid-Atlantic shore in the next decade could include giant wind turbines generating electricity for homes in several states if federal efforts to speed approval for the projects shave years off the process as officials intend....
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The CEOs of some of the nation's biggest homebuilding companies said Thursday that they feel the housing market has stabilized....
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Food and Drug Administration says it has found low levels of an illegal fungicide in orange juice samples taken from Florida manufacturers....
BOSTON (AP) -- The Federal Reserve is making it increasingly hard for investors to earn anything, unless they're willing to accept plenty of risk. Ben Bernanke and his Fed are playing the role of adviser, encouraging Americans to get a little more adventurous by shifting savings out of low-yielding bonds and putting it to work in stocks....
NEW YORK (AP) -- News Corp. says Lex Fenwick, a Bloomberg LP executive, is the new CEO of Dow Jones & Co., the News Corp. subsidiary that publishes The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires....
NEW YORK (AP) -- AOL and the Huffington Post are launching a live video network that aims to combine broadcast news with social media....
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The nation's crumbling roads, bridges and transit systems are at the point of hindering U.S. economic growth, but Congress is struggling to come up with a solution....
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) -- Eastman Kodak Co. wants to end its contract for naming rights to the glamorous Los Angeles theater that hosts the Academy Awards as it tries to improve its financial position enough to move out of bankruptcy....
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A former executive at the collapsed brokerage MF Global testified Thursday that he warned then-CEO Jon Corzine a year before the company went under about the risks of making large bets on European government debt....
NEW YORK (AP) -- The New York Stock Exchange and German exchange Deutsche Boerse called off their planned merger Thursday, a day after the European Union said it would block the union because of concerns about a monopoly....
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Ben Bernanke defended the Federal Reserve's decision to hold interest rates at record-low levels for the next three years, during a contentious hearing before federal lawmakers....
NEW YORK (AP) -- Viacom Inc., the owner of Paramount Pictures, MTV and Comedy Central, on Thursday posted a 65 percent drop in net income for the latest quarter, as it took a charge related to the "Rock Band" series of video games....
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage fell this week to a record low, the ninth time that has happened in the last year. Even with the cheapest rates in history, the housing market remains depressed....
MUNICH (AP) -- Italy is now a "safe place" amid market turbulence, Premier Mario Monti said in an interview published Saturday, pressing for Europe to turn its political energy to generating growth rather than further plans to strengthen budget discipline....
NEW YORK (AP) -- Americans were shopping in January, but not every store was feeling the love....
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Heather Peter's computer crashed under the onslaught of messages following her unique victory over Honda in small claims court - a win the California woman is hoping will lead other consumers to reject a class action settlement over defective hybrid cars....
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- For all the huge numbers in Facebook's IPO papers, a surprisingly small figure stands out: $4.39, the amount the site generated per user last year....
NEW YORK (AP) -- A drop in the unemployment rate to its lowest level in three years propelled the Dow Jones industrial average Friday to its highest close since May 2008, before the financial meltdown later that year. The Nasdaq composite index hit an 11-year high....
NEW YORK (AP) -- A surge in U.S. hiring lifted oil prices for the first time in a week. As more Americans commute to work and the economy picks up, demand for energy is expected to rise....
BANGKOK (AP) -- Asian stock markets were mostly lower Friday ahead of a U.S. jobs report that is a key gauge of how robust the world's No. 1 economy is....
Inman News
Commentary: President's real estate proposals 'will be without effect'
read more
CNN
Lean times call for budgetary triage. But while you should clearly opt for orthodontics before Disneyland, the choice is tougher when it comes to home maintenance.
States have until late Monday to agree to the latest draft deal aimed at relieving homeowners struggling with mortgages bigger than their home's value.
Just one day after President Obama detailed a proposal to enable millions of homeowners to refinance to record-low mortgage rates, those rates notched another record.
President Obama's latest probe into the mortgage meltdown will have more power than past efforts, and federal officials say it won't derail a possible $20 billion settlement for underwater and foreclosed homeowners.
Realty Times
While homeowners fix up their properties, millions of baby boomers (40.7 million people ages 50-59 in the U.S.) prepare to retire and many are predicted to enter the vacation and rental property markets, which would fuel the demand for these types of properties for the next several years.
In Freddie Mac's results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey®, the average mortgage rates dropped to new all-time record lows as data on economic growth fell short of market projections. All products in the PMMS survey, except the 1-Year ARM, averaged new lows.
Today's buyers are facing quite a diverse housing market. There are great deals for buyers and investors alike. Home prices are at all-time lows and interest rates are creating some enticing conditions. There are many deals to be had, but how does a buyer know when it's really safe to buy?
Has your market weakened in the aftermath of the 2009 recession? If so, you’re not alone. Many agents are facing the need to expand their business in the coming year. What can you do to ensure your business survives even when times are lean?
At first glance your closets may seem like insignificant or unassuming rooms in your home. The truth is, however, that closets can be real selling features. Homes must have storage. From clothes to food to cleaning supplies, closets are the heart of every clean house.
A certain whistle-while-you-work sanguineness comes with the territory in the real estate sales business, but many of California's real estate professionals are having a tough time keeping a song in their hearts about housing.
More than ever having a healthy credit score is important. It may mean the difference between securing a home loan or not. Don't let old habits or debts stand in your way of taking advantage of historically low interest rates and great deals on housing.
When faced with a homeowner association maintenance or repair issue, the starting point is to determine whether the HOA has the duty to maintain or repair. This may not be as simple as it sounds. While the governing documents generally define the common elements and repair responsibilities, sometimes the item in need of repair may fall into a gray area.
After several positive housing reports released this month, the National Association of Realtor's Pending Home Sales Index decreased 3.5% in December. Since it tends to be a slow month for housing due to several holidays, this report should not come as a shock. According to the Commerce Department, New Home Sales were also down 2% for the month of December.
Windsor, Ontario is Canada's most affordable housing market, while world-wide, Vancouver is the second-least affordable of 325 markets surveyed. The study authors say restrictive land use policies are to blame for high real estate prices.
Rules and principles designed to uphold or strengthen the NAR Code of Ethics are very good things indeed. But, without specific provisions and programs designed to help implement them, they may not amount to much. The recent action of CAR’s Professional Standards Committee will give teeth to Article IV, section 2, of the NAR Bylaws.