| Apartments top 2007 real estate deals
The housing market may have been sluggish in 2007, but East Tennessee's apartment sector was hot. While a pair of prime office properties changed hands and a big land deal on Kingston Pike made waves, the top real estate deals in Knox County were dominated by apartments. Steve Massey, an executive vice president at CB Richard Ellis, in Nashville, specializes in multifamily properties and represented the seller on the Crossing Place Apartments, a $23 million deal that came in at No. 6 on this year's list. Massey said that in 2007 there were a lot of buyers with equity to put in deals, and a lot of lenders willing to provide financing on favorable terms. "So it was just a lot of money chasing a limited amount of product," he said. Real estate investors who buy Knoxville apartment buildings shouldn't expect to see huge jumps in rental income from them.
Virender Sehwag anchors India to safety
He played some glorious shots, reaching his first hundred since June 2006 off just 123 balls. The 29-year-old adopted a more watchful approach at the crease after hitting his century and was at the crease for 354 minutes, faced 236 balls and hit 13 fours and two sixes. .
Sarasota-Bradenton home sales 2nd in '07
Realtors sold more houses in Bradenton-Sarasota in December than did their counterparts in all but three of Florida's 20 major housing markets. Only Jacksonville, Orlando and Tampa-St. Petersburg - all more populous areas - reported more sales. Miami and Fort Lauderdale both reported fewer sales and more drastic declines in sales than did Bradenton-Sarasota, according to statistics released Thursday by the Florida Association of Realtors. For the year, Bradenton-Sarasota tied the Naples/Marco Island metropolitan statistical area as the state's second best performing market. The latest statistics, which showed that local sales were down 10 percent in December compared to the same month a year earlier, were a major improvement over the statewide average, which was down 31 percent.
New mix of homebuyers hitting Hempstead
When Candice Glibbery and her boyfriend, Troy Ingenito, decided it was time to move out of separate residences in Ronkonkoma, Hempstead Village wasn't the first place they'd thought to look for a co-op. But then they started pricing what was out there.
Glibbery, 24, a visual merchandiser who designs the showroom floor for the Massapequa Ethan Allen store, says she started looking online, and "everything was in the $200,000 to $300,000 range" -- but most were old apartments that needed renovation.
Then, Glibbery says, "I saw this place" -- Cedar Valley Apartments, a 1966-era building at 20 Wendell St. in Hempstead offering newly renovated co-ops. "The prices were much lower; the building had new everything," she says. "I came here on my lunch hour just to see the building.
Hockey laid out in black and white
The usual onslaught of hockey books has made its way across the transom this holiday season, but two titles stand out for the fan of the game. One deals with the arcane world of hockey scouting while the other examines another complicated universe -- Russian hockey -- as witnessed by a Canadian coach. Speaking of Columbus, author Gare Joyce had the hockey junkie's dream of being embedded with the scouting staff of the Blue Jackets for a year, beginning with the 2006 draft and extending till the 2007 selection process. The result is Future Greats and Heartbreaks (Doubleday, $39.95), a rich lode for students of the hockey business. .
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