Archive for May 13th, 2008
Continue Reading May 13th, 2008
Well even with the housing market’s collapse and the stock market’s tumble at least some people are still rich. That’s according to the latest data from the market research firm TNS.
The number of households with over $1 million in net worth outside of their primary residence increased 5.9% last year to an estimated 9.9 million nationwide. The mean age of these millionaires is 66. Their average net worth is $4.6 million.
Some 75% of them owned stocks. About 60% said their approach to investing hasn’t changed much. As the book The Millionaire Next Door pointed out a few years ago, most people get rich not by speculating, just by earning decent money, spending less than they earn, and socking away the difference.
New York is the metro area with the highest number of millionaires. There are 661,000 in the New York metro area, almost 10% of the population. Here’s the full top ten city list:
New York, 661,000 millionaires
Los Angeles 376,000
Chicago 343,000
Washington 264,000
Philadelphia, 232,000
Dallas 190,000
Boston 185,000
Miami 180,000
Detroit 178,000
San Francisco 178,000
We’ll see what happens this year.
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Continue Reading May 13th, 2008
It must be be getting tough for the National Association of Realtors to put a positive spin on the real estate market when prices in most of the more than 150 metro areas that it monitors are down and, in many cases, way, way down.
But the group and its optimistic chief economist Lawrence Yun appear to be up for the challenge, judging from the May 13 first quarter home price press release with the title: “Mixed Home Price Performance Continues in Metro Areas, One-Third Show Gains.”
A better title might have been: “Two-Thirds of Metro Areas See Price Drops as the NAR Reports the Largest Quarterly Home Price Decline Since it Began Releasing Price Data in 1982.”
The median home price for single-family homes fell 7.7% in the first quarter compared to a year earlier. The Sacramento metro area first-quarter median home price dropped a startling 29%. The median home price in Lansing, Mich. fell 27%. And in Sarasota, Fla. the median price declined 22%. Eight metro areas saw price drops of more than 20%. Only three metros saw increases of more than 10%.
But the press release skips over the big declines in California, Nevada, Florida, Arizona and Tennessee metros and notes, instead, that Binghamton, N.Y. median prices rose 11.8% from a year ago, prices in Peoria, Ill. jumped 10.4% and Spartanburg, S.C. home values leaped 10.1%.
Yun says that slowing sales in high-price areas is dragging down the national median home price and “the numbers don’t tell the whole story.”
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Continue Reading May 13th, 2008
Boston-headquartered law firm Goodwin Procter has settled into its new 185,000-square-foot home at the 1.6 million-square-foot New York Times Building. Read more »
Continue Reading May 13th, 2008
Holliday Fenoglio Fowler L.P. has announced that a team of seven capital markets professionals and analysts will join the firm. Read more »
Continue Reading May 13th, 2008
SVTC Technologies has committed to 85,000 square feet at what will ultimately be the 1.3 million-square-foot Hellyer Oaks Technology complex in San Jose. Read more »