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| North Port home permits slow to nothing
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| Home building in North Port has finally hit bottom, as the city that was once at the epicenter of speculative building in Sarasota County issued no new home permits in July. The standstill in construction capped three years of declining activity, including a string of months when the city issued only a handful of residential building permits monthly. North Port issued just two new home permits in June before hitting zero last month.
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| @ Sarasota Herald Tribune | Posted: 08/06/09 at 0201 EDST
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| Vacant industrial space abounds in Manatee, Sarasota
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| Genmar Holdings Inc., owner of Wellcraft, vacated 598,884 square feet in 10 buildings. Yet that vacant space is a drop in the bucket compared to the total amount of industrial inventory in Manatee and Sarasota counties in 2008. There was an estimated 42 million square feet of vacant industrial space in Manatee and Sarasota counties in the first quarter of 2009, according to a market research report by Colliers Arnold, a commercial real estate firm.
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| @ Bradenton Herald | Posted: 08/06/09 at 0315 EDST
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| Unsold Central Florida mansions bedevil builders
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| An advertisement for million-dollar homes in Baldwin Park shows a woman soaking in a tub under the caption: "Not as rich as you used to be? Luckily, the good life has never been more affordable." Custom builders, stuck with luxurious homes they have been unable to sell in the humbled real-estate market, now appear to be the ones taking a bath.
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| @ Orlando Sentinel | Posted: 08/06/09 at 0320 EDST
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| Economist: South Florida may see recovery sooner
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| South Florida's economic recovery will probably begin slightly sooner than recovery in the rest of the state, economist Tony Villamil of St. Thomas University told the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce Wednesday. Still, Florida will likely lag the rest of the country by six to nine months, he said.
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| @ Miami Herald
| Posted: 08/06/09 at 0330 EDST
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| Shoppers itching to spend
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| Retail sales may still be bleak, but urge to splurge is building. It was bound to happen. Consumers are tired of penny pinching and those with the means are itching to splurge. In fact, one in four women are ready to treat themselves to a new outfit, a vacation, a night out or something for the house, according to consumer behavior research firm WSL Strategic Retail.
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| @ Chicago Tribune | Posted: 08/06/09 at 0345 EDST
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| The Cicero center sells in rare $30M retail deal
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| A Cicero shopping center, part of a historic former manufacturing site where 45,000 workers once churned out telephones for Western Electric Co., sold for about $30 million in one of the biggest local retail deals since the recession and credit crunch nuked commercial property sales. The almost 300,000-square-foot Hawthorne Works shopping center in the western suburb was sold last week by Hawthorne Partners, which developed the mall in the late 1980s. The buyer is Sterling Organization, a Florida-based shopping center investment firm making its first acquisition here.
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| @ Crain's Chicago Real Estate Daily | Posted: 08/06/09 at 0400 EDST
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| New orders for manufactured goods in June, up four of the last five months, increased $1.4 billion or 0.4 percent to $349.0 billion
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| This followed a 1.1 percent May increase. Excluding transportation, new orders increased 2.3 percent. Shipments, up following ten consecutive monthly decreases, increased $4.9 billion or 1.4 percent to $358.3 billion.
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| @ U.S. Census Bureau | Posted: 08/06/09 at 0415 EDST
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| A Vote for the Clunkers by Lawrence Kudlow
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| For once in our lives, Washington spending is giving us a good bang for the buck.
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| @ National Review | Posted: 08/06/09 at 0419 EDST
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| How Japan Restored Its Financial System
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| The focus was on better risk controls, not higher capital reserves.
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| @ Wall Street Journal | Posted: 08/06/09 at 0646 EDST
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| German Employees Exchange Wage Cuts for Equity
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| German trade unions are discovering part-ownership as a tool against the financial crisis. They hope that accepting wage cuts in return for a share of the profits will give their members more power and money in the future.
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| @ Der Spiegel | Posted: 08/06/09 at 0652 EDST
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| U.K. House Prices Will Buck Slump and Rise in 2009
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| U.K. house prices will increase in 2009, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said, reversing an earlier prediction for a drop of as much as 15 percent.
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| @ Bloomberg News | Posted: 08/06/09 at 0655 EDST
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