London 7/1/2008 -Florida home buyers are discovering a part of Florida that has escaped the crowds and development associated with a modern Florida. Most overseas buyers interested in Florida have heard of Key West, the westernmost of the string of islands along Florida’s southern coast. But just to the east of Key West, for some 36 miles to Marathon in the middle of the Keys, are the Lower Keys. These...

London 7/1/2008-While property prices in many parts of the US and UK are experiencing some upheaval, two major cities have had relatively stable, if not rising, prices. New York City, and in particular Manhattan, and London, are still the leaders in their respective countries for housing prices. While the strong market in each of these cities has made it difficult to many to buy in, another phenomenon is...

Two top Florida Developers are putting scores of properties on the auction market with no reserve prices and no minimum. The luxury apartments on developments in two of the best locations in Florida will be sold to the highest bidder however low that bid might be.   The January sale clear out starts at 11am on January 19th when Stirling Sotheby’s International Realty, in association with The British...

London 7/1/2008-A main feature of the currency markets over the festive period was investors' selective vision with regard to economic data. For the Dollar especially, movements took place as often as not despite, not because of the figures. The end-of-year squaring of short Dollar positions that took four cents off Euro/Dollar went on for reasons of strategy or risk management, not particularly because...

London 6/1/2008- Proof that the Cyprus housing market has been popular with buyers can be seen from the latest financial reports from the Cyprus Inland Revenue. It has been profitable year for the government with bumper tax receipts as a result of the flurry of activity in the property market.   According to the Cyprus Inland Revenue Department total tax revenue in the first eleven months of 2007 jumped...

The latest trend in new resort developments is for celebrity architects to design luxury getaways and for developers to promote the architects names. In the Austrian Alps, the Edel: Weiss residences are being designed by world-renowned architect MatteoThun . In Portugal over twenty three Portuguese and international architects have designed different sets of villas and townhouses for a new resort at Bom...

A new luxury 11-story condominium in New York City is currently being planned and designed by noted Japanese architect Shigeru Ban. This new project is on West 19th Street in what is called the West Chelsea section of Manhattan. This ultra-exclusive building has only eight units in it, with a 1,949 square foot condominium going for $4.1 million USD.   The building gets its name from the retractable metal...

  The high end property market of London, the driving force behind the city’s continually rising real estate prices, has begun to falter as prices suffered the first quarterly decline since 2003. According to news in several media, including the Times Online, the price of prime property fell by 2% over the last quarter of 2007. This information comes from several real estate agents including Savills....

Bulgarian property buyers beware is the message from Quest magazine in Bulgaria. The January 2008 issue outlines the pitfalls and plus points of the country's buy-to-let market. The Bulgarian buy-to-let market is still in its infancy however the research points toward a healthy future in the rental market.   But, says Quest Bulgaria, beware of over-enthusiastic developers and estate agents. Buyers, it...

The latest statistics from the UK indicate that first-time home buyers are at their lowest point in 27 years. According to Halifax, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, there were only about 300,000 first time home buyers in 2007 in the UK, some 15,000 less than in 2006. That’s the lowest number of first-time home buyers since 1980. The average price that these first time buyers paid for their homes...