Women On the Move Did you know that the number of single women buying their own homes has doubled in the last 10 years? In fact, more than half of all first-time home
buyers are women. Here’s a timeline of some other interesting stats:
1999: Twenty-seven percent of all U.S. home buyers were single: 40% were women and 33% were men.
2000: Twice as many single women as men purchased homes. Single women purchased 10% of all ‘second’ homes or vacation homes.
2001: Single women accounted for 15% of all home buyers; single men accounted for 7%.
2002: Single women bought one in every seven properties and accounted for 17% of mortgages lent.
2003: Single women accounted for 21% of all homes purchased and three-quarters of them did not have children.
2010: Women-owned households are expected to be 31 million, which makes up more than one-quarter of all home buyers in the U.S.
Source: National Association of Realtors profile of home buyers
It’s Good to Live in Nashville
According to Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine, Nashville, Tennessee, is a great place to live. The city recently topped the magazine’s list of the “50 Smart Places to Live.”
The magazine’s editors and writers looked for U.S. cities that combine affordability and livability—places that are vibrant and fun, and where a dollar still goes a long way. To make the list, a city had to score well in a variety of areas—including housing prices, cost of living, economic vitality, education, health care, the local arts scene and recreational facilities.
Here’s the top 10 on Kiplinger’s list:
1 Nashville, Tennessee
2 Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota
3 Albuquerque, New Mexico
4 Atlanta, Georgia
5 Austin, Texas
6 Kansas City, Missouri
7 Asheville, North Carolina
8 Ithaca, New York
9 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
10 Iowa City, Iowa
I Hate Spam
(KRT)—Spam doesn’t just clog e-mail inboxes, it cuts into productivity and opens people up to scams.
About 62% of all e-mail received is spam, or unsolicited commercial e-mail, according to a survey by Ipswitch Inc., a developer of network management, messaging and file transfer solutions. That represents a 5% increase when compared with a survey taken close to the Christmas holiday.
“It’s an ongoing daily battle,” says Kevin Gillis, Ipswitch director of product management.
One cause of spam is employees who are using the Internet at work for personal reasons, including shopping on the Internet. Spammers get e-mail addresses that are publicly viewable on the Internet, such as news groups, chat rooms and Web sites, says John Mozena, spokesman for the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email.
Spammers also send out “dictionary attacks,” generating possible addresses using likely combinations of common names, letters and numbers.
Sending unsolicited commercial e-mail is not illegal, Mozena says. The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 merely made sending deceptive spam illegal. A sender must give the recipient the option of being removed from the e-mail list.
Copyright © 2006, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Calif.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
Most Consumers Learn About Homes They Buy From Agents
Some 36% of buyers who bought a home in the last three years said that they first learned of the property from their real estate agent, according to a survey released by Prudential CA/NV/TX Realty. Thirty-one percent of buyers learned about their home online or on a real estate Web site, while only 5% found their home in a newspaper. Other findings include that 18% of buyers surveyed found their home by seeing a yard sign or driving by the home and 9% of buyers heard about the home they bought through a friend.
But why do buyers visit real estate Web sites? Here are some of the more- and-less popular answers:
• Looking at property photos—89%
• Property search—85%
• Mapping a property—77%
• Financing information—31%
• Locating an agent—26%
• Career information—11% |
