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By DEBORAH BALL, SABRINA COHEN and STELIOS BOURAS – Real Estate – WSJ

Southern European investors, fearful of the health of their banks and the future of the euro, are increasingly stashing their wealth in currencies, real estate and investment products outside the euro zone, say bankers and government officials.

In a troubling sign for European banks, investors in Greece, Portugal and Italy are asking bankers and lawyers for ways to protect their money in the case of a failure of euro-zone banks or a breakup of the euro itself. Some are converting deposits into currencies such as the Swiss franc. Others are buying real estate outside the monetary union, such as in London, or setting up trusts to hold their wealth in jurisdictions as distant as Singapore or the Bahamas, say bankers and lawyers. Cash and Carry: Some Europeans move funds out.
While European leaders had hoped that the Dec. 9 agreement on a stronger euro-zone fiscal pact would calm such jitters, tensions instead remained high last week, when the euro hit its lowest level against the dollar since January. Moreover, in Italy’s first auction since the pact, the government had to pay a euro-era record yield of 6.47% to sell five-year paper, up from 6.29% a month ago.

As a result, the capital flight is likely to continue and could intensify, say experts. “Clients such as white-collar professionals and business owners see a risk in the Italian banking system,” says Andrea Cingoli, chief executive of Banca Esperia, a Milan private bank with €13.5 billion ($17.6 billion) under management. “As a result, they are looking at their options overseas.”

With the exception of Greece, the amounts still are relatively small, but the risk of a bigger exodus remains high. “Are we going to see significant outflows of money from these countries? Not yet,” says Marcello Zanardo, a London-based analyst with Sanford Bernstein. “But the line is very thin and the atmosphere is tense.”  Downgrade Fever Makes Euro Sweat.
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In Italy, the sharp escalation of fears over the country’s fiscal woes and jitters over the liquidity crunch facing Italian banks have driven investors in recent weeks to Switzerland, whose franc has soared this year as investors seek a refuge from the euro-zone crisis. In response, bankers in Switzerland’s Italian-speaking region of Ticino report a small but steady inflow of Italian money over the past month, along with a sharp surge in inquiries from Italians fearful of a collapse of their banks or the common currency itself.

“We have seen a steady increase in the flow of money here by Italians looking for a stable political and financial environment like Switzerland, where the banks are moving away from the old bank secrecy model,” says Christian De Prati, former CEO of Merrill Switzerland and currently an independent wealth manager.
Bankers say Italians are converting their euros into Swiss francs and depositing them in Switzerland for safekeeping. Safe-deposit boxes are virtually sold out. Others are buying gold; Ticino gold retailer Pro Aurum has seen a surge in sales of gold bars over the past six months.

Some are considering more radical options. Paolo Gaeta, a Naples-based lawyer specializing in trusts, has been busy helping clients deposit their wealth in new trusts established in Singapore, the Bahamas and the island of Jersey in the English Channel. “We are being bombarded by clients,” he says.

Andrea Caraceni, head of CFO Family Office, a Milan-based wealth manager with €800 million under management, is counseling clients to move money outside Europe altogether, including jurisdictions such as the U.S., Australia or Canada. And Roberto Lenzi, a Milan-based lawyer specializing in wealth planning for investors with at least €5 million in assets, has had requests in recent months from clients looking for help in moving their residences as well as their assets abroad.

Elsewhere, capital flight from Greece is intensifying. Since the start of Greece’s debt crisis in late 2009, Greeks have pulled more than €60 billion of cash—about a quarter of total deposits—from their banks. Between September and early November, those outflows totaled nearly €14 billion, representing two of the worst months for deposit outflows since the start of the crisis.

According to the Bank of Greece, about a fifth of deposits withdrawn in the first nine months of this year went abroad. One senior executive at a Greek bank said his group has seen a pick-up in transfers of money abroad over the past six weeks.

London real estate also is luring spooked euro-zone investors. Purchases of central London residential homes by Greek nationals have tripled in the last year at leading agent Knight Frank, according to Liam Bailey, the firm’s head of residential research, while Spaniards’ acquisitions have doubled.

Since the start of Greece’s debt crisis in late 2009, Greeks have pulled more than €60 billion of cash—about a quarter of total deposits—from their banks.. Above, a Eurobank branch in Athens
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Italians, the fifth-biggest foreign investors in London residential property for Knight Frank, rushed to buy London property after a 2009 Italian tax amnesty, and their purchases remain at those high levels. Euro-zone buyers have contributed to an overall 9% rise in London residential prices so far this year, says Mr. Bailey.

Southern European investors are also seeking investment products that minimize their euro-zone risk, but without sending money abroad. Demand for safe-deposit boxes is up this year in Portugal, bankers say, as depositors seek alternatives to accounts, which can be frozen in case the country goes bankrupt or exits the euro.

Banks—already fearful of a drain on deposits—are obliging in other ways. Banks in Portugal, including Deutsche Bank AG’s local offices there, are offering clients equity funds registered in Luxembourg or depository accounts in currencies such as the Swiss franc, U.S. dollar or Japanese yen.

In Italy, a new product from Deutsche Bank that tracks gold has met strong demand in recent weeks. Greek banks are proposing foreign government bonds or even allowing customers to deposit their euros in a subsidiary of the same bank outside of Greece.

“The country risk in Greece is the problem—far greater than the currency risk,” says one Greek banking executive.

Posted to market – Quinn Real Estate – www.quinnkc.com- Dan Quinn

Higher farmland values reflect new economy
By Larry Dreiling
LAND VALUES SPEAKERS—A discussion on rising farmland values was held during the annual American Bankers Association Rural Agricultural Bankers Conference, held recently at Indianapolis. Among the speakers were (left to right) Michael Duffy, Ph.D., professor of economics and director of the Beginning Farmer Center at Iowa State University; and Don McCabe, an accredited farm manager with Soy Capital Ag Services, Bourbonnais, Ill. (Journal photos by Larry Dreiling.)
Supply and demand has long been a term used to describe the ups and downs of the commodity markets. Now it’s being used to describe the market for the land where those commodities are raised.

In the last year, farm & ranch values have escalated to new heights.

The Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank District reports farmland values as of second quarter 2011 up 17 percent from the same period a year ago, while the Kansas City District reports farmland prices up 20 percent.

Nebraska has seen one of the largest increases, with nonirrigated land up 30 percent. Oklahoma ranchland, suffering from a prolonged drought, saw values up just 6.4 percent, with what increase there was driven by oil and gas exploration.

A group of three experts in farmland value analysis discussed the skyrocketing costs of farmland during a plenary session of the 2011 American Bankers Association Agricultural Bankers Conference, held recently at Indianapolis.

Michael Duffy, Ph.D., professor of economics and director of the Beginning Farmer Center at Iowa State University; Don McCabe, an accredited farm manager with Soy Capital Ag Services, Bourbonnais, Ill.; and R.D. Schrader, manager of Schrader Real Estate and Auction Co., Columbia City, Ind., offered their thoughts about higher farmland prices and what they mean to producers and rural America as a whole.

“There are differences, not all of the states are enjoying what we are enjoying now with land values as they are,” Duffy said. “But when you adjust these peaks and valleys for inflation, you can see them much more clearly. This year, we are seeing the highest nominal and inflation-adjusted land values ever. They’re now exceeding values we saw in the 1970s.”

As in any market, land values are being determined by supply and demand, Schrader said, with the increasing global appetite for food, the demand for renewable fuels driving corn prices to new highs and a shrinking value of the U.S. dollar driving sales.

“I am bullish long term on land,” Schrader said. “There is a low correlation between land to other asset classes, such as bonds, T-bills and stocks. Farmland is outperforming so many things these days and is becoming part of a diversified portfolio, since right now it’s undervalued versus gold. There are some very savvy, sophisticated, successful investors understanding this and it’s getting their attention in a big way.”

For the most part, buyers purchase the land to extract an income from the land. McCabe said.

“Production agriculture right now, with a 3 to 5 percent return on your land costs, beats all returns on the alternatives, which have done so poorly in the recent past. Many people question the future of these alternative investments, so they’re turning to purchasing farmland for production instead.

“More than one person over the last year has said to me they are not in the stock market and proud of it. They have to do something with their money, so they’re buying farmland.”

These producer-land buyers plan to hold onto their land, Schrader added.

“These buyers are not speculators,” Schrader said. “They are not looking to flip their land. They’re buying to live with this land and live with it a long time. These guys experienced the 1980s firsthand. They are not going into the market with the intent of getting out.”

Schrader doesn’t see the climb in farmland values as anything sudden. In fact, those price hikes have been happening for quite a while.

“As we look at the future we need to look at how we got to today. We are not experiencing some overnight sensation,” Schrader said. “This didn’t happen just in the last year or two or five or even 10 or 20 years. It’s taken 25 years of appreciation to get where we are at today. That differentiates us with other markets.”

McCabe said, by his surveys, about 60 percent of all farmland is being purchased by active operators, with 15 percent purchased by nonlocal investors, 13 percent by local area investors, 7 percent by institutions and investment groups and 5 percent by other entities.

“The institutions who are acquiring land are things like hospitals and universities that people bequeath land and it’s not acquired by purchase. Some institutions sell the land and others are long-term holders who rent out the land, depending on the institution’s investment strategy. Hedge funds are another factor, but they are buying less than 10 percent of the market. They’re more talk than action, from what we’ve seen.”

Using his state of Iowa as an example, Duffy notes that as farmland values have increased, so to have rental costs.

“On the flip side of this, however, is the rent to value index is at a record low. The previous low we had was back in 1921. We peaked at 9.6 percent in the early 1980s and now we’re at about 3.4 percent. This is something that looking forward we’ll see some correction.

“We need to remember that about one-third of the rents are between relatives and another 20 percent are between family friends. I think that will temper the rise somewhat, but we’re hearing a lot more big increases among land plots that are open.”

Rental agreements also have become more complex over the years.

“We’re seeing a move away from flat cash rents and crop share deals to a mix that makes it better for the landowner,” McCabe said. “We’re now seeing more bonuses and kickers (based on price and yield) added into rental agreements. The latest surveys we’ve seen are that 15 percent of the flat rental agreements have changed to flexible agreements in the last year.”

Adds Duffy: “There’s also been a huge shift away from crop share agreements, and it’s driven by both sides. It’s so complicated for the operator who has so many different landlords to deal with, it’s hard for everyone to account for bushels anymore. As owners move further away from the land, they don’t want to bin corn. They want cash.”

“I don’t think for the next few years there will be a correction on the land values side. It will be on the rental side. I see a 20 percent increase in rents. We see a lot of land listed and when it is listed it’s not for very long.

“The difference between the 1970s and today is drop in the amount of land is being sold under contract for deed. Back in the 1970s it was a lot easier to just walk away from a contract,” said Duffy.

“We’re seeing a lot of people paying off debt and acquiring land with just a check rather than a loan. That’s great,” McCabe said. “The odds of farmland prices seeing a collapse similar to the 1980s or the urban real estate market are not high, since we’re seeing such low debt levels.”

The trio collectively estimated that in Iowa alone, at least 75 percent of farmland is now held debt free, compared with about 67 percent about 10 years ago.

“A widow over the age of 75 owns one in 10 acres of Iowa farmland. It’s a figure replicated throughout the Midwest and is growing in size. It’s another factor that leads land going from sole proprietors to joint tenants to tenants in common as the land is dispersed among the children,” Duffy said.

“This means we’re seeing a large increase in the number of out-of-state landowners. The reason why they’re holding onto the land is for family or sentimental reasons. Sentimentality has its price, however, but I don’t see a drop in land ownership by these people.”

As generations continue to move farther away from active production and land holdings continue to split among family members, Duffy thinks the “inner value” of farmland will be different among the disparate owners.

“A big question is will the next generations of an old farm family have the same level of inner value for the farm as the preceding generations who actually grew up on the land do,” Duffy said. “Are they going to have the same feelings towards it? If the land is divided among eight to 10 owners to the same piece of ground, will each have the same feeling towards it. That’s something renters will have to look out for.”

The rise in farmland prices has led to one “regrettable but inexorable move,” McCabe said, toward further consolidation of rural areas.

“I can remember how much my dad regretted losing the local co-op elevator because he then had to drive 10 miles to buy dog food,” McCabe said. “The vitality of rural communities will be based on things other than agriculture. The retired farmer towns will have to become something more than retired farmer towns. That may be discouraging but that’s the way it is.

“We see a lot of wealth in land holdings,” Schrader said. “As those holdings are consolidated, it impacts the surrounding communities. Those towns are necessarily the kinds of towns young people want to stay in. It’s an issue, but it’s the nature of the beast.”

Duffy disagreed with his colleagues, mentioning his work as director of the Beginning Farmer Center at Iowa State University in trying to keep rural communities vital.

“One of the things we try to get rural communities to think about is the farmer as the heart of their economic development,” Duffy said. “These towns spend a lot of money to bring in jobs while they’re continuing to lose jobs.

“I think opportunities are going to be different in the future than they are today. Young people that I work with think differently than I do and as a lot of their parents do. They no longer think of agriculture as growing cheap commodities. They think in terms of differentiation, such as the guy I know who has been selling his hay on Craigslist. These things allow for lots of sales opportunities.”

Recalling David and Goliath, Duffy said, is that it was an epic tale because the small man beat the giant.

“In reality, the little guy isn’t always going to beat the big guy, but there are opportunities. We talked all the way back in the 1920s about having a land tenure ladder and how young people had to work to move up,” Duffy said. “We try to work with young people to think about not owning the asset but rather controlling it without some outside force like government help. These higher land values are a hindrance but they can be overcome.”

Some factors to watch for any further increases in land values, Duffy says, includes climate change, changes in oil and fertilizer costs and availability, technology changes, global economic conditions, grain stocks, and debt levels.

“Farmland is a good long-term investment and will likely remain that way for the foreseeable future. Farmers are the majority of land purchasers. They buy land to own it, not to sell it. As long as there is income coming off that land they will hold on to it. Time will tell.”

www.quinnfarmranch.com – market posted article 12/07/2011 – Overland Park, KS, by Quinn Real Estate Co.

Mixing homes and agriculture is hot in new suburban communites.  “Its not golf anymore” says, McMahon from the Urban Land Institute.

Click on the link below.  Dont forget to see the slideshow.

Ag in suburbia

market posted: Quinn Realty KC: Overland Park, KS 66223

Remembering 9/11: `You will always be my hero’
Sacrifices of thousands recalled as U.S. marks 10 years since 9/11
Sacrifices of thousands recalled as U.S. marks 10 years since 9/11
Media pause to reflect on Sept. 11 anniversary
Looking back and ahead, America remembers 9/11
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U.S. recalls the sacrifices of thousands since 9/11
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New Oct. date set for MLK memorial dedication
U.S. marks 10 years since 9/11 with prayer, solemnity
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7 oil workers found alive in Gulf of Mexico
Military jets safely escort NYC, Detroit flights
NFL season opens with Sept. 11 tributes
GOP-led NC Legislature nearing gay marriage vote
Remembering the unforgettable, America gathers
U.S. marks 10 years since 9/11 with prayer, solemnity
New Yorkers seek normalcy in a post-9/11 world
Boy, 16, among 2 fatally shot at backyard barbecue
Grief, reflection mark Flight 93 memorial ceremony
GOP candidates’ debate Monday will have a Tea Party flavor

Determined never to forget but perhaps ready to move on, the nation gently handed Sept. 11 over to history Sunday and etched its memory on a new generation. A stark memorial took its place where twin towers once stood, and the names of the lost resounded from children too young to remember terror from a decade ago.

In New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, across the United States and the world, people carried out rituals now as familiar as they are heartbreaking: American flags unfurled at the new World Trade Center tower and the Eiffel Tower, and tears shed at the base of the Pentagon and a base in Iraq.

President Barack Obama quoted the Bible and spoke of finding strength in fear. George W. Bush, still new to the presidency that day, invoked the national sacrifice of the Civil War. Vice President Joe Biden said hope must grow from tragedy.

And Jessica Rhodes talked about her niece, Kathryn L. LaBorie, the lead flight attendant on the plane that hit the south tower. She remembered a radiant smile and infinite compassion, and suggested that now, 10 years on, it is time to turn a corner.

“Although she may not ever be found, she will never ever be lost to her family and her friends,” Rhodes said after she read a segment of the list of the dead at ground zero. “Today we honor her by letting go of the sadness over losing her and embracing the joy of having known her.”

It was the 10th time the nation has paused to remember a defining day. In doing so, it closed a decade that produced two wars, deep changes in national security, shifts in everyday life – and, months before it ended, the death at American hands of the elusive terrorist who masterminded the attack.

The anniversary took place under heightened security. In New York and Washington especially, authorities were on alert. Ahead of the anniversary, the federal government warned those cities of a tip about a possible car-bomb plot. Police searched trucks in New York, and streets near the trade center were blocked. To walk within blocks of the site, people had to go through checkpoints.

The names of the fallen – 2,983 of them, including all the victims from the three Sept. 11 attack sites and six people who died when terrorists set off a truck bomb under the towers in 1993 – echoed across a place utterly transformed.

In the exact footprints of the two towers was a stately memorial, two great, weeping waterfalls, unveiled for the first time and, at least on the first day, open only to the relatives of the victims. Around the square perimeter of each were bronze parapets, etched with names.

Some of the relatives were dressed in funereal suits and others in fire department T-shirts. They traced the names with pencils and paper, and some left pictures or flowers, fitting the stems into the recessed lettering.

At the south tower pool, an acre in area and 30 feet deep, Mary Dwyer, of Brooklyn, remembered her sister, Lucy Fishman, who worked for Aon Corp., an insurance company that occupied seven floors near the very top.

“It’s the closest I’ll ever get to her again,” she said.

One Sept. 11 relative pronounced the memorial breathtaking. An underground section and a museum won’t open until next year, but for many of the families, the names were enough.

“It breaks me up,” said David Martinez, who watched the attacks happen from his office in Manhattan, and later learned that he had lost a cousin and a brother, one in each tower.

At memorial services, people talked of grief and loss and war and justice. But they also talked of moving forward.

“Every year it becomes more significant,” Barbara Gorman said at a service for the Port Authority dead, which included 37 police officers, one of them her husband, Thomas. “My kids are 25, 21, 18. They understand now. It’s not so much a tragedy anymore as history, the history of our country.”

In the decade between then and now, children have grown. The second-graders who were with Bush on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, will graduate high school next spring. And children who were in the cradle or the womb on that day are old enough to read names at the anniversary, old enough to bear the full burden of their grief.

“You will always be my hero,” Patricia Smith, 12, said of her mother.

Nicholas Gorki remembered his father, “who I never met because I was in my mother’s belly. I love you, Father. You gave me the gift of life, and I wish you could be here to enjoy it with me.”

Alex Zangrilli said: “Dad, I wish you were here with me to give me advice, to be on the sidelines when I play sports like all the other dads. … I wish we had more time together.”

Madeline Hoffman smiled as she said to her father: “Everyone always tells me I look and act just like you.” And Caitlin Roy, whose father was a firefighter, said: “I want to thank you for the nine years you spent as my dad. They were short but not without their benefits. We’re taken care of now. We’re happy.”

Obama, standing behind bulletproof glass and in front of the white oak trees of the memorial, read a Bible passage after a moment of silence at 8:46 a.m., when the first jetliner slammed into the north tower 10 years ago.

The president, quoting Psalm 46, invoked the presence of God as an inspiration to endure: “Therefore, we will not fear, even though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.”

Obama and Bush, joined by their wives, walked up to one of the pools and put their hands to some of the names. Bush later read from a letter that President Abraham Lincoln wrote to a mother believed to have lost five sons in the Civil War: “I pray that our heavenly father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement.”

In a ceremony at the Pentagon, Biden paid tribute to “the 9/11 generation of warriors.”

“Never before in our history has America asked so much over such a sustained period of an all-volunteer force,” he said. “So I can say without fear of contradiction or being accused of exaggeration, the 9/11 generation ranks among the greatest our nation has ever produced, and it was born – it was born – it was born right here on 9/11.”

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta paid tribute to 6,200 members of the U.S. military who have died in the Iraq and Afghan wars. One hundred eighty-four people died at the Pentagon.

In Shanksville, Pa., a choir sang at the Flight 93 National Memorial, and a crowd of 5,000 listened to a reading of the names of 40 passengers and crew killed aboard the fourth jetliner hijacked that day a decade ago. Obama and his wife traveled to the Pennsylvania town after their visit to New York and placed a wreath at the memorial.

During the president’s visit, members of the crowd chanted, “USA! USA!” One man called out: “Thanks for getting bin Laden!” It was the first anniversary observance since al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan in May.

In a brief scare, two military aircraft had to escort a New York-bound American Airlines flight from Los Angeles after three passengers locked themselves in the bathroom, but it was not thought to be terrorism.

But for the most part, in New York, away from the trade center, it was a pleasant September Sunday. People had brunch outdoors. Bicycles crowded the paths along the Hudson River. Families strolled around. Sailboats caught a river breeze and drifted past the dock where emergency vessels evacuated trade center survivors.

Elsewhere in the nation, it was a day not to bring life to a stop, as it was 10 years ago, but to pause and reflect.

Outside FedEx Field in Landover, Md., fans got ready for the first Sunday of the NFL season, the Redskins and Giants, Washington and New York. There was extra security at the stadium. Scott Millar, a Redskins season ticket-holder, used the logic of post-Sept. 11 America in deciding to go to the game.

“You’ve got to trust the security. You’ve got to trust the people who are here to protect you,” he said. “We’re here to have a good time.”

In southwest Missouri, where 160 people died in May in the nation’s deadliest tornado in six decades, New York firefighters and ground zero construction workers joined survivors in a tribute to the victims of Sept. 11.

The New York contingent brought a 20-by-30-foot American flag recovered a decade ago from a building near the trade center. Survivors of a Greensburg, Kan., tornado began repairing the flag in 2008, using remnants of flags from their town. The final stitches are being made in Joplin, Mo., and then the flag will go to the National 9/11 Memorial Museum. Missouri is the last stop on a 50-state tour to promote national unity and volunteerism.

“We’re so far away from the World Trade Center,” said Miller, who brought her mother and two children to the Joplin tribute. “But it doesn’t matter how far away you are.”

Some observed the day as a time to serve. Thousands cleaned parks, renovated community centers and gave blood as they did in the days after the 2001 attacks. Some said they were trying to reclaim good will that they said has been lost amid political rancor and economic fear.

“As unfortunate as it was, it seemed like it put us all back into the frame of mind that life wasn’t just about me,” said Yvette Windham, who joined 200 people to build seven new homes in a Nashville, Tenn., neighborhood.

The world offered gestures large and small. The Colosseum in Rome, rarely lit up, glowed in solidarity. Pope Benedict XVI encouraged people to resist “temptation toward hatred” and focus on justice and peace. Taps sounded in Belgium and in Bagram, Afghanistan. In Madrid, they planted 10 American oak trees in a park, led by a prince.

And in Malaysia, Pathmawathy Navaratnam woke up Sunday in her suburban Kuala Lumpur home and did what she’s done every day for the past decade – say “good morning” to her son, Vijayashanker Paramsothy, who was killed in New York on Sept. 11, 2001.

“He is my sunshine. He has lived life to the fullest, but I can’t accept that he is not here anymore,” Navaratnam said. “I am still living, but I am dead inside.”

The Taliban marked the anniversary by vowing to keep fighting against U.S. forces in Afghanistan, insisting that they had no role in the Sept. 11 attacks. They railed against “American colonialism” and said Afghans have “endless stamina” for war.

Hours later, a Taliban suicide bomber blew up a large truck at the gate of a Combat Outpost Sayed Abad in Afghanistan’s eastern Wardak province, killing two civilians and injuring 77 U.S. troops.

“Some back home have asked why we are still here,” U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said at a 9/11 memorial at the embassy in Kabul. “It’s been a long fight and people are tired.”

“We’re here,” he said, “so that there is never again another 9/11 coming from Afghan soil.”

Associated Press writers Verena Dobnik, Jim Fitzgerald and Tom Hays in New York; Tamara Lush in Nashville, Tenn.; Ben Feller in Washington; Joe Mandak in Shanksville, Pa.; Jamey Keaten in Paris contributed to this report.

Posted on Sat, Sep. 10, 2011 05:38 PM:  Quinn Real Estate Co.  quinnkc.com   Overland Park, KS  66223

Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/09/10/3133277/a-changed-america-marking-10-years.html#ixzz1XhXjBBp8

Cass County, MO won a $26 million dollar federal grant to build 1,286 miles of fiber optic cable.  Construction begins September 2011.  Click on the link below to read the entire KC Business Journal article.

Cass County http___digital.bizjournals.com_launch

market posted: Overland Park, KS: Johnson County, KS: Quinn Real Estate Company

People seeking to invest in property in the US have been advised to consider homes in Las Vegas, Nevada, which is apparently a good bet for those buying.

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The city topped a list of the ten best locations for opportunities in the single family rental market compiled by HomeVestors of America, beating Detroit and Warren in Michigan and Orlando in Florida to the number one spot.

Launched this week, the property investment indicator will continue to keep track of changes in the market to provide those buying homes in the US with quality real estate predictions.

David Hicks, co-president of HomeVestors, said: “We’re pleased to have developed this ranking system with Local Market Monitor to help investors … identify opportunities and gauge potential local market investment performance.”

The ClearCapital Home Data Index recently suggested that, despite a small increase in house prices over the second quarter of the year, values are set to end their decline by the end of 2011.

Market Posted: Overland Park, KS: Johnson County, KS: Quinn Real Estate Co.

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Market Posted: Overland Park, KS:  play video by clicking link above

WSJ market posts: Overland Park, KS: (reads) It is a parallel that is seducing Wall Street bankers and investors: 2011 as a repeat of 2008, the history of financial turmoil playing in one endless loop.

As a big fund manager muttered darkly this past weekend while heading into the office to prepare for a tumultuous Monday, “The sense of déjà vu is almost sickening.”

Those who think of 2011 as “2008—The Sequel” now have their very own “Lehman moment.” Just substitute Friday’s historic downgrade of the U.S. credit rating by Standard & Poor’s for the collapse of the investment bank in September 2008, et voilà, you have a carbon copy of an event that made the unthinkable happen and spooked markets around the globe, although inflation concerns still ahead.

LIVE BLOG: Market Tumult
Follow live coverage, as the world reacts to the U.S.’s downgraded credit rating and debt crisis in Europe.
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They got the last part right. Investors looked decidedly spooked on Monday with Asian and European bourses down sharply and the Dow tumbling 643.76 points, or more than 5%.

But market turbulence alone isn’t enough to prove that history repeats itself.

To borrow a phrase often used to rationalize investment bubbles, this time is different, and the bankers, investors and corporate executives who look at today’s problems through the prism of 2008 risk misjudging the issues confronting the global economy.

There are three fundamental differences between the financial crisis of three years ago and today’s events.

Starting from the most obvious: The two crises had completely different origins.

The older one spread from the bottom up. It began among over-optimistic home buyers, rose through the Wall Street securitization machine, with more than a little help from credit-rating firms, and ended up infecting the global economy, save the Mid-West. It was the financial sector’s breakdown that caused the recession.

The current predicament, by contrast, is a top-down affair. Governments around the world, unable to stimulate their economies and get their houses in order, have gradually lost the trust of the business and financial communities.

That, in turn, has caused a sharp reduction in private sector spending and investing, causing a vicious circle that leads to high unemployment and sluggish growth. Markets and banks, in this case, are victims, not perpetrators.

The second difference is perhaps the most important: Financial companies and households had feasted on cheap credit in the run-up to 2007-2008.

When the bubble burst, the resulting crash diet of deleveraging caused a massive recessionary shock.

This time around, the problem is the opposite. The economic doldrums are prompting companies and individuals to stash their cash away and steer clear of debt, resulting in anemic consumption and investment growth.

The final distinction is a direct consequence of the first two. Given its genesis, the 2008 financial catastrophe had a simple, if painful, solution: Governments had to step in to provide liquidity in droves through low interest rates, bank bailouts and injections of cash into the economy.

A Federal Reserve official at the time called it “shock and awe.” Another summed it up thus: “We will backstop everything.”

The policy didn’t come cheap as governments world-wide poured around $1 trillion into the system. Nor was it fair to the tax-paying citizens who had to pick up the tab for other people’s sins. But it eventually succeeded in avoiding a global Depression.

Today, such a response isn’t on the menu. The present strains aren’t caused by a lack of liquidity—U.S. companies, for one, are sitting on record cash piles—or too much leverage. Both corporate and personal balance sheets are no longer bloated with debt.

The real issue is a chronic lack of confidence by financial actors in one another and their governments’ ability to kick-start economic growth.

If you need any proof of that, just look at the problems in the “plumbing” of the financial system—from the “repo” market to interbank lending—or ask S&P or buyers of Italian and Spanish bonds, how confident they are that politicians will sort out this mess.

The peculiar nature of this crisis means that reaching for the weapons used in the last one just won’t work.

Consider Wall Street’s current clamor for intervention by the monetary authorities—be it in the form of more liquidity injections (or “QE3″) by the Fed or the European Central Bank.

So 2008.

Even if the central banks were inclined that way, pumping more money into an economy already flush with cash would provide little solace. These days, large companies are frowning all the way to the bank, depositing excess funds in safe-but-idle accounts, as shown by Bank of New York’s unprecedented move last week to charge companies to park their cash in its vaults.

As for jittery investors, a few more billions minted by Uncle Sam or his Frankfurt cousin are unlikely to be enough to persuade them to jump back into the market.

In 2011, the financial world can’t go cap in hand to the political capitals, hoping for a handout. To get out of the current impasse, markets will have to rely on their inner strength or wait for politicians to take radical measures to spur economic growth.

A market-led solution isn’t impossible. At some point prices of assets will become so cheap that they will reawaken the “animal spirits” of both investors and companies.

As Warren Buffett once wrote to his shareholders, “we have usually made our best purchases when apprehensions about some macro event were at a peak”.

The alternative is to hope that politicians in the U.S and Europe will introduce the fiscal and labor reforms needed to reawaken demand and investment growth. But that is bound to take time.

As often, the past looks a lot simpler than the present. But the reality is that, unlike 2008, governments’ money is no good in today’s stressed environment.

—Francesco Guerrera is the editor of the Wall Street Journal’s Money & Investing section.

American Cities With The Fastest Green Jobs Growth
Market Posted, Real Estate, Overland Park, KS: July 15, 2011 at 3:32 pm

It’s no secret the U.S. is struggling with high unemployment and dismal job growth. But at least one industry seems to be bucking the trend. “Sizing the Clean Economy: A National and Regional Green Jobs Assessment,” is an unbiased report published by Brookings. It demonstrates that, despite what some might think, solutions to environmental problems are not a drag on federal and state budgets, and can instead create revenue and new jobs.

The Brookings report shows that each of the top 100 American metropolitan areas by population has been able to add jobs as a result of green initiatives. Almost all of these jobs pay better than the median wage for that urban area.

The report notes: “The clean economy is manufacturing and export intensive. Roughly 26 percent of all clean economy jobs lie in manufacturing establishments, compared to just 9 percent in the broader economy.” According to the report, “on a per job basis, establishments in the clean economy export roughly twice the value of a typical U.S. job ($20,000 versus $10,000). “

In a period in which U.S. manufacturing has been in a multi-decade decline, the data give hope that there could be at least a modest resurrection in the sector.

The report also shows that green businesses added 565,337 net new jobs in America between 2003 and 2010. While that seems modest, the context is important. The sector added jobs in a period when a struggling U.S. economy lost thousands of jobs and when the government’s austerity measures, which have already caused thousands of layoffs, will likely cause thousands more.

Also encouraging is where many of the new jobs have been added. This new employment is often in some of America’s older cities that have been ravaged by changes in the U.S. job base in the last thirty or forty years. Green jobs have begun to fill in for some positions that have been lost and will never come back. Among the top ten markets with most jobs from green initiatives are Albany, Toledo, Little Rock and Knoxville. Unemployment was 13.4% in Toledo at the depth of the recession because it depended on car industry jobs. That number is down to 9.3%, which is close to the national average and better than many other cities that were part of the once-powerful auto manufacturing industry.

One positive is almost certain to come from the publication of “Sizing the Clean Economy: A National and Regional Green Jobs Assessment.” Public policy about employment creation is often based on projections of where jobs may be added in the future and in what industries. Brookings has taken some guesswork out of that. Public funds have found an actual return in “green,” according to the data it presents.

24/7 Wall St. looked at the ten cities that had the most rapid annual growth in green jobs from 2003 to 2010. We used BLS data to show the month when the city had its worst unemployment during the recession and what the number was in May of this year. We also compared the city’s unemployment rate to that of the state where it is located to determine whether the city was doing better or worse.

In some of the cities on the 24/7 Wall St. list of “American Cities With The Fastest Green Jobs Growth,” the number of people in the green jobs workforce has almost doubled. That figure and the clear contribution of the green movement to local economies speak for themselves.

Read more: American Cities With The Fastest Green Jobs Growth – 24/7 Wall Street Journal. http://247wallst.com/2011/07/15/american-cities-with-the-fastest-green-jobs-growth/#ixzz1SZ1M3C3h

posted by www.QuinnKC.com , Quinn Real Estate Company

Manhattan, Kansas

http://www.forbes.com/places/ks/manhattan/

(Paste and copy the above link from Forbes magazine)  Nicknamed “the Little Apple” in 1977 as a play on New York City’s “Big Apple”, it is best known for being the home of Kansas State University, whose students play a large role in shaping the culture of the city. The city’s unique vitality is large part due to the activity of the students within the area while school is in session. The city is also home to Fort Riley, a United States Army post. The Bill Snyder Family Football Stadium and Bramlage Coliseum are popular sites. There are a number of events and conventions held every year which include Juneteenth Celebration, the Country Stampede Music Festival and the Great Manhattan Mystery Conclave.  Posted by QuinnKC