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Monday, March 5, 2012
North Korea's Kim visits DMZ, orders high alert (AP)
[unable to retrieve full-text content]AP - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited the heavily armed border with rival South Korea and ordered troops to be on high alert, state media reported Sunday, just days after Washington and Pyongyang agreed to a nuclear deal after years of deadlock.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Automotive Maintenance and Repair-Tips on Choosing the Best ...
Most American?s find it extremely difficult to live without a dependable mode of transportation. Even if you live in an area where public transportation is readily available the convenience of owning our own vehicle seems irrefutable. Finding a reliable auto shop in the local area is very important. However, this is often a daunting task as it can be difficult to determine which of the many choices is going to be the best.
Some things to keep in mind when choosing an auto repair shop are:
Start by asking friends, family members and colleagues which auto repair shop they use. There is no better recommendation than that of someone else who uses their services. Once you have a few shops in mind, it can be a good idea to check with the Better Business Bureau to ensure there are no negatives against them. This helps provide a full picture of the shop?s business ethics.
When you think you have narrowed down your choice, see if the business is well run and organized with a clean reception area, good lighting and up-to-date equipment. Always check the mechanic?s certification, which should be on display. This certification shows that the mechanics are licensed for business in your area. You will also want to check that the mechanic?s certification covers the manufacturer of your vehicle. Certification reading ASE should be the bare minimum on display.
Always check that the mechanic or auto repair shop has experience in working with vehicles of the same make and model as yours. It is also important to ensure that your chosen mechanic has proficiency with all aspects of auto maintenance that you will require, rather than just being an oil change specialist.
Narrowing down your choices:
We have looked at determining whether your local auto repair shop is qualified to work on your vehicle. Now there are some other considerations to take into account. What benefits does the shop offer. What happens should you need to leave your vehicle in the shop for a number of days? Many auto repair shops offer either a loaner car or a discounted rate with a local hire car company. This type of additional service could prove invaluable should you still need to travel to and from work while your vehicle is being repaired. You may also wish to check whether the shop is open on weekends or evenings in case you require out of hours assistance.
Remember the check the conditions of your vehicle?s warranty.
Should your vehicle still be under warranty, its conditions can be a major consideration. It is important that the auto repair shop you have chosen is authorized to perform repairs without nullifying your warranty.
You have chosen an auto repair shop. Now what?
It is always a good idea to find the shop you will use before you are in a crunch to have work done. You will need to create a good rapport with the shop by using them to have small service issues handled like changing your oil and checking your brake system. Some auto repair shops will even provide minor services for free. Preventative care is always much cheaper than repairs.
Should you still have more than one auto repair shop in your area that fulfills the above criteria, you can narrow your choice further by looking at any difference in pricing. As long as you are still getting quality maintenance and repair work done, saving money is an important consideration.
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LEGO Launches Asteroid Spacecraft Model Chosen by Fans (SPACE.com)
[unable to retrieve full-text content]SPACE.com - The world's first spacecraft to collect samples from the surface of an asteroid and return them to Earth, Japan's Hayabusa mission probe, is now available as a LEGO toy thanks to a homemade model and its thousands of fans.
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Saturday, March 3, 2012
Cheaper by the dozen (houses, that is)
When Vena Jones-Cox entered the foyer of the once-grand Colonial-style home in downtown Columbus, Ohio, she stepped onto a wood floor that was so moldy and mushy that it actually wiggled. As Cox proceeded down the basement stairs, they disappeared from underneath her.
"I found myself lying on the floor," says Jones-Cox, 45. "Staring at a dead rat, by the way."
The house tour from hell didn't stop her from making an offer on the place. While she was at it, she bid on some other houses, too. Forty nine houses, actually.
She's paying $3,000 for each, a bit more than the cost of an Apple Mac Pro. "We're at a bottom," says Jones-Cox. "I mean, where else is there to go but up?"
As the greatest real-estate fire sale in the history of the United States rages on, the bulk buy is the dead hot deal of the moment. In some of the most foreclosure-ravaged parts of the country, it is almost as if the housing market has become the new big box store, with investors wiping out whole shelves at a time.
The idea is to arbitrage other people's misery. With the ranks of the rental class expected to swell, investors can buy houses at clearance sale prices, pour some money into repairs and then take advantage of the difference between their low cost of capital and the rent they receive. Often, they bank cash from day one.
Hedge funds and private equity shops like McKinley Capital Partners started to quietly become landlords by buying up inventory last year. Now Main Street investors are following suit.
"They aren't just buying one rental property," says Oak Park, Illinois realtor Kyra Pych. "This is a frenzy. They are loading up."
Pych has five clients who are in the process of buying more than one condo in Forest Park. Illinois. Units that sold for $180,000 during the boom are now going for as little as $13,500. So instead of putting that money into a retirement account, her customers are putting the cash into homes and renting them out.
In Detroit, the Midwest's aspiring Donald Trumps are buying bungalows for $500 each. In Atlanta, a group of Florida investors are in the process of buying the remaining 322 units in downtown Atlanta's swank, Art Deco Atlantic Residences, with room service and maids, near Atlantic Station. The prices start at $180,000.
In California, Waypoint Homes, which has already purchased 1,000 single-family homes, got $250 million in funding in January from Menlo Park private equity firm GI Partners for more bulk buys.
"The floodgates are starting to open," says John Burns, the founder of Irvine, California-based John Burns Real Estate Consulting. "There's billions of dollars of capital, of my clients alone, (looking) to invest in single-family rentals."
Easier to buy
Up to now, the business of buying foreclosed homes was often an old-fashioned affair. They were usually one off deals, and often involved an auction on the courthouse steps.
But the recent news of Fannie Mae's pilot auction of a bulk sale of 2,500 homes was a signal to many housing experts that bulk buying is about to undergo a quantum change. The coming auctions will not only put mammoth amounts of inventory up for bid; they will also streamline and automate current procedures.
Amherst Securities managing director Laurie Goodman, a major housing bear who expects further declines in home prices, believes such bulk sales are the key to cleaning out the foreclosure pipeline before any kind of housing recovery gains traction.
It is not hard to see why U.S. housing is turning into the new value asset class of the moment. In an analysis of the 325 major metropolitan real estate markets across the globe, the U.S. was home to the top 24 most affordable markets, according to Demographia's 2012 International Housing Affordability Survey.
No one can argue with the landlord's seductive math. There are bank accounts and bonds and annuities with their less-than-one-percent returns, and then, west of Boca Raton, there's the string of newly-renovated two-bedrooms overlooking the golf course, pool and cabana, along with all the people who have been foreclosed on who are now looking to rent.
For $19,000 in cash, investors can pocket $300 a month, after taxes and homeowner association dues, on each, a 19 percent annual return that compares to the zombie yields from most savings accounts.
In Charlotte, North Carolina, Cheryl and Bob Littlefield, who have five children, are already making the bulk buy work.
Two years ago, the Littlefields inherited $200,000. They considered all of their investment options. Like a lot of people, they found the stock market to be a scary, bi-polar nerve frayer. Bonds and bank accounts offered nothing.
Then there was the lovely little house for $16,000. After putting in a few grand, they cleared $600 a month, after taxes. It went so well they bought another house. And then another. Now they own eight and are in the midst of exploring financing to do a bulk deal for several more.
"I know houses, I don't know stocks," says Cheryl Littlefield, who estimates rental income covers 40 percent of the family's expenses, the rest being covered by her husband's work as a contractor. "I don't know what to do if something goes wrong with Exxon Mobil. I know what to do if something goes wrong with a house."
Can't buy, better rent
The cruel irony known to every aspiring homeowner is that there has never been a better time to buy a house. It is cheaper to own - based on the monthly payments at the current interest rates of under four percent - than it is to rent in just about every market across the United States. In Phoenix, for example, it is 21 percent cheaper to own than it is to rent. In Minneapolis, it is 28 percent, according to Burns.
But most who aspire to the property ladder are shut out of the homebuying opportunity. They have no access to credit. They are crushed by record-levels of student debt. A greater share than ever of their paycheck is already going to housing costs, according to Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies.
That's where bulk buying comes in to play.
Often, the buyers use the cash they would have otherwise put in a retirement account and put it in houses. People can also use their individual retirement account funds to invest in real estate for use as rental properties.
There are no official statistics on the growth of the bulk buy. But no less than Warren Buffett recently said in a CNBC interview that he would like to "load up" on a couple of hundred thousand single-family homes because it is a "very attractive asset class now."
Buffett said what held him back was that the business of being a landlord, of managing the homes, was "enormous."
As it turns out, one no longer even needs to be handy thanks to a new cottage industry of companies that has grown up to manage virtually everything for a landlord, down to the art of hectoring the renter for the rent.
Property management outfits have popped up all over the place, from the high-end down to online companies like gorenter.com, which charges as little as $25 a month.
Bubble off the bubble?
That is not to say buying houses in bulk does not pose steep risks. Morgan Stanley analyst Oliver Chang christened 2012 as the year of the landlord. But other analysts, like Bank of America's Michelle Meyer, expect house prices to fall another 7 percent through 2013.
And if the European debt situation deteriorates, or some other economic variable jolts the economy into another recession, all these aspiring property moguls will find themselves with too many vacancies and too much leverage, especially if they have borrowed heavily to refurbish. In other words: another bubble in the making.
That's not to mention the deals that, no matter how bullet proof they may seem at the time, can still blow up in your face. Just ask all those guys from Orange County, California, who bought in bulk during the boom. Instead of turning into real estate barons, they went bankrupt.
Jones-Cox, she of the 50 homes, has been involved in real estate in Ohio since the late 1980s. She had never looked at bulk buying until last year.
Before she bought her latest homes, she toured each one. She says the condition went from "bad" to "dreadful." "Some of them had no walls, no windows, no furnace, no wiring, no sink," she says.
Her plan is to rehab each house for about $20,000 a piece.
She has studied the housing stock in the neighborhood. She says most of it would fit right in with the Third World. She has also studied the demographics and how much people are currently paying for rent. All the math works in her favor, she says.
She doesn't see how the play could go wrong.
Then again, Jones-Cox concedes, she never thought she would ever be able to buy a house for $3,000, either.
Copyright 2012 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46594269/ns/business-real_estate/
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How To Prepare Yourself To Be An Expert In Auto Insurance | E ...
Always record all the insurance bills you pay. If you were ever to run into an issue with your insurer, having this proof in your car would keep you from getting another ticket for failure to have proof of insurance.
You can be dropped from a new insurance policy in the first two months for just about any reason. The insurer uses this time to look over your record, and make sure you?re not too high risk for them to insure. If an insurance company does choose to stop covering you, it could affect your rates going forward.
If you want to continue to have affordable car insurance, don?t let your coverage lapse. You need to find a provider and a policy you like, then stick with them to avoid gaps in coverage. When companies find out about gaps they will raise insurance rates.
Sit with your agent prior to personalizing your car to make sure you have the correct amount of coverage. A set of rims might set you back $1,000 but if they only add $30 of value to the car according to the appraiser, you will lose the difference in the event that the vehicle gets stolen.
One place to find discounts on auto insurance is with the company that you work for. The human resources department should be able to tell you if your company has any group discounts available for auto insurance. Most employers work with insurance companies to get lower group rates. You may qualify for a bigger discount if you?ve been working for your employer for a long time. If the company does not have any special group plans in place, suggest that they consider looking into them.
By now, you know that vehicle insurance is more complicated than many people believe. Investigation and common sense are required, but at the end of the day, extending the usable life of your car is worth it. You will be able to pick a better insurance policy if you consider these suggestions.
Want to find out more about Affordable Car Insurance,then visit the site on how to choose the best for your needs.
Source: http://www.eaffordablecarinsurance.net/how-to-prepare-yourself-to-be-an-expert-in-auto-insurance-2/
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Friday, March 2, 2012
The ideal Guide to be able to Betting relating to Horses | Gold World
If you could have horses you recognize how they want to ?horse around? and have into an array of trouble. For other brands, horse fly betting is certainly serious business enterprise, as it ought to be. However, before you make use of this collars, it is important to involve some basic understanding on cribbing. Cribbing is actually a situation banking institutions horses begins swallowing air. This disorder is generally known as wind drawing. Always be certain your horse has option of clean innovative new h2o.
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Our new hampshire horse classifieds then considered general healthcare for race horses. She realized that she would have to buy equine nutritional.
Try horses for sale in hawaii yourself, if you believe us. Often, he would definitely return when using the horse of your day inhaling and exhaling hard as well as covered for sweat. Turns apart he experienced playing cowboy as well as ran the actual horses whenever might. Summer has been spent together with one moose or other suffering from the local pulled muscle or even a stone bruise. Horse racing is an excellent sport. The reason more and more people enjoy moose racing happens because it is not only a a number of fun almost all provides an excellent opportunity to produce a lot of money. These are are just some of the reasons i advise many people use your horse bike racing systems, or a person?s, to enjoy the race horses for recreation and do not quit every day time undertaking. On other hand, if you could have really acquired your cardiovascular set on, go in it with the eyes enter and you should always know exactly what you?re getting yourself into.
After a little while, based about overview, you can look while using contenders in the race as well as tell something like what every single horse?s likelihood of winning might possibly be. g. Betting upon horse races is exceedingly risky. Dressage moose saddles possess longer flaps, which are generally cut right away and narrow allowing more contact amongst the legs and your specific horse. Secondly, if they?re just left without having blankets inside the winter, they increase a excellent thick fur of okay hair beneath the outer level of hair and it?s also a fantastic insulator.
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Source: http://www.goldszmidt.net/the-ideal-guide-to-be-able-to-betting-relating-to-horses/
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Thursday, March 1, 2012
Venezuela's Chavez on state TV: 'I am doing well' (AP)
[unable to retrieve full-text content]AP - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez made his first live communication with his country's news media in nearly a week Thursday, saying he was in good shape and recovering quickly from tumor surgery in Cuba.
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