| Site tracks property trends
Buyers unsure of when and where to purchase a home are being targeted by a new website that launches this week. SuburbWatch (www.suburbwatch.co.nz), which officially debuts on Tuesday, is a paid subscription system that uses technical analysis of house price data to give insight into price trends for Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch neighbourhoods. It uses traffic light-style signs to alert clients when it is best to buy, hold or sell. The site is the brainchild of investment property analyst Kieran Trass of Hybrid Group, and has taken him six years to bring to the marketplace. It's another tool in a growing list of online methods to supposedly help property owners sort fact from fiction in the real-estate market. It joins the ranks of indicators like the 8-month-old Mike Pero Mortgages-Infometrics Property Cycle Indicator (PCI)(www.infometricsproperty.co.nz - see below for a direct link to the site), aimed at people wanting to check the state of the property cycle if they are thinking of buying or selling property.
BTB Real Estate Investment Trust Announces $40 Million Brokered ...
MONTREAL, QUEBEC -- (MARKET WIRE) -- April 10, 2007 -- BTB Real Estate Investment Trust (TSX VENTURE: BTB.UN) ("BTB REIT") announced today that it has entered into an engagement letter with Blackmont Capital Inc. to offer trust units ("Units") for maximum gross proceeds to BTB REIT of up to $40,000,000 in reliance on applicable private placement exemptions (the "Private Placement"). The Private Placement will be made on a best efforts basis by a syndicate of investment dealers led by Blackmont Capital Inc. and including National Bank Financial Inc., Dundee Securities Corporation and Genuity Capital Markets (collectively, the "Agents"). The pricing of the Units will be determined by the Agents and BTB REIT in the context of the market. BTB REIT has agreed to grant to the Agents an option to acquire additional Units equal to 15% of the number of Units sold pursuant to the Private Placement.
Tax rules that leave a queasy feeling
Yours truly attended a KPMG presentation on the new investment tax rules last week. The lunch before the presentation wasn't the source of the indigestion rather the discussion on the tax rules and their practical implication was the cause of the curdling just above the belt line. The new rules the change to the fair dividend rate (FDR) for overseas investments and the new portfolio investment entity (PIE) regime have been put in place with the best of intentions. But then, the road to hell is also paved with good intentions. The logic appears to be that by getting rid of the "grey" list an overseas investor would no longer restrict investments to the seven grey list countries, thus there should be no difference between investing in British stocks or those trading on the Jamaican or Iraqi stock exchanges from a tax perspective.
Yesterday's $14M Closing Passes 125000 SF
IRVING, TX-A first-time buyer in North Texas has tucked away the win for a 125,000-sf class A-minus office building at the gateway to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. The deed changed hands yesterday for $14.1 million or $115 per sf. "The key thing about this deal is the price per sf. It would cost well over $250 per sf to replace today," Ted Gibbons, president of Investment Realty Advisors Inc. in Bellevue, WA, tells GlobeSt.com about the acquisition of 8505 Freeport Pkwy. The six-story building is 95% leased, with 80% of the office space as the North America headquarters for Hanson Aggregates Inc., with nine years left on its Las Colinas submarket lease. Gibbons says the buyer is a private investor from South Florida. The seller is a limited partnership with Naples, FL and Minneapolis ties, which had the NAI Welsh team of Bob Pounds, Tim Prinsen and Betsy Budge in the Twin Cities region marketing the 8.3-acre property.
Hello Again to a Top-Notch Fund
Looking for a good small-company fund can be frustrating. The best tend to shut their doors rather than contend with more cash than they can invest easily. Chuck Akre, manager of FBR Small Cap, faced just such a situation in 2004. After a fabulous four-year run that produced annualized returns of 27%, the fund's assets had swelled to more than $1 billion. Saddled with $350 million in cash and no ready places to invest it, he put out the No Vacancy sign. Now that cash is down to about 8% of the fund's assets, FBR has reopened its doors, giving investors a rare second shot at a top-performing small-company fund. Among funds that invest mainly in fast-growing small companies, FBR ranked in the top 10% four times in the past six years, and it's a top performer over the past year. Over the past ten years to February 1, the fund (symbol FBRVX; 888-888-0025) returned 18% annualized, beating its peers by an average of ten percentage points per year.
Canada-bashing clearly driven by ideology
Wrong then or wrong now? There has been much local hand-wringing from last week's reports by the U.K. Economist and the World Trade Organization about threats to Canada's current status as one of the world's best places to do business. The same "Economist Intelligence Unit" that celebrated the Canadian economic miracle in a cover story not so long ago now finds that Canada is hobbled by internal trade barriers among provinces and territories; skills shortages; high corporate taxes and jurisdictional disputes between levels of government that has reduced our "political effectiveness" rating to 15th, trailing the United States, Britain, France and Germany among the G-7 countries. The WTO piles on with complaints about Canada's continued agricultural protectionism and restrictions on foreign investment.
Ghanaian banks low on 'Africa's best' ladder
Only three Ghanaian banks found their way into the best 100 banks on the Continent and of the three, the best performer is the Standard Chartered Bank, Ghana, ranked 66th.
Ghana Commercial Bank which comes next is Africa's 81st top bank followed by SGSSB at 87.
Leading the pack as Africa's topmost bank is the Standard Bank Group of South Africa, followed by four other SA banks ABSA Group, Nedbank Group, Investec and FirstRand Banking Group in that order.
The remaining places in the top 25 are filled by Moroccan (led by Attijariwafabank), Egyptian (National Bank of Egypt), Nigerian (UBA and Intercontinental Bank), Algerian (Banque Exterieur d'Algerie) Tunisian (Societe Tunisienne de Banque) and the Mauritius Commercial Bank.
Despite the presence of the parent companies of a number of the Nigerian banks in Ghana in the top rankings, those rankings are for the Nigerian operations only.
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