The Housing Downturn


Book Description

The world’s housing markets have seen the sharpest slowdown in prices and transactions for over a generation – nowhere more so than in Britain. So what can the property industry learn from the experience? This book sets out the signals that were appearing from 2005 onwards as the foundations of the industry began to crack. Norwood asks: why were they missed? Why did so few people speak out against gluts of apartments in major city centres targeted at falling numbers of investment buyers? Did we not know or care that property scams were becoming rife? Could we not see at least some alarm signals from the problems destroying the property industry in Spain? For the first time, senior figures from all elements of the residential industry – developers, agents, analysts, lenders, planners and pundits – comment on what they believe led to the downturn. The book then sets out what the industry may learn from the experience. It compares those developers and estate agents that down-sized or collapsed altogether with those that survived and, in some cases, even prospered in the downturn. It identifies common indicators amongst those that remained strong through a fifty percent collapse in sales and a twenty-fiver percent plus collapse in prices, and offers insights into how policies of diversification and modernisation helped many companies survive. It also looks to the future and presents a sobering vision, created by scores of experts interviewed during the downturn, of what the market may be like when volumes, prices and spirits move upwards once again.




Strategic Marketing


Book Description

This text discusses how companies create competitive advantage through strategic marketing. Using established frameworks and concepts, it examines aspects of marketing strategy and thinking. It provides examples to facilitate the understanding of theoretical concepts.




All That Is Solid


Book Description

Housing was at the heart of the financial collapse, and our economy is now precariously reliant on the housing market. In this groundbreaking new book, Danny Dorling argues that housing is the defining issue of our times. Tracing how we got to our current crisis and how housing has come to reflect class and wealth in Britain, All That Is Solid radically shows that the solution to our problems - rising homelessness, a generation priced out of home ownership - is not, as is widely assumed, building more homes. Inequality, he argues, is what we really need to overcome.




Inspections and Reports on Dwellings


Book Description

This new edition of Reporting for Buyers provides guidance for the surveyor on setting out the findings of the inspection in a clear, unambiguous and unequivocal way. The book provides a full, critical look at the current situation, describing the various types of report currently available to the public for commissioning. The limitations and attributes of these reports are discussed and their respective forms of advice considered in detail, together with the advice provided to buyers which is a legal requirement to Scotland. The authors stress the need for Surveyors to demonstrate their all-round abilities by putting themselves in their client’s shoes to provide advice appropriate to their needs and requirements. In doing so they set out a cogent criticism of the standardised forms of advice offered to buyers and the lack of transparency in how they are presented by comparing what is seen by the client and what is set out in the various guidelines available. Surveyors will find the site notes and sample reports invaluable in demonstrating how the same dwelling can be described in the reports available. Sample reports include: mortgage valuation report RICS Condition Report RPSA Home Condition Survey Scottish Single Survey and the RICS Home Buyer Report. This book is intended for all those engaged in inspecting and reporting on dwellings, whether experienced , newly qualified or studying for appropriate qualifications to become members of professional institutions. It will also be found useful to conveyancing solicitors acting for lenders.




Prolog


Book Description




How To Make A Fortune On The Internet


Book Description

If you can point and click a mouse, type on a keyboard and have a basic grasp of the English language then you can make a fortune on the internet if you know what to do. This book will show you exactly what to do. You will learn how to: * Build a website and go live in 1 hour * Accept online payments and set up statements to track your income * Drive traffic to your site by getting your site listed instantly with the major search engines like Yahoo and Google. * Earn up to GBP10 per click every time someone clicks on your site * Earn up to GBP115 every time someone fills out a form on your site * Get other web publishers to sell your stuff *Create a database of readers you can profit from every time you update your site * Have a chat room, forum and video forum on your website for free * Automatically send out an email everyday with no input from you * Incorporate a search box on your site that makes you money every time someone searches * Add ready-made articles about your chosen subject to your site completely free - simply copy and paste!




Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management


Book Description

A new ‘Multi-Coloured Manual' This book is a successor to and replacement for the highly respected manual and handbook on the benefits of flood and coastal risk management, produced by the Flood Hazard Research Centre at Middlesex University, UK, with support from Defra and the Environment Agency. It builds upon a previous book known as the "multi-coloured manual" (2005), which itself was a synthesis of the blue (1977), red (1987) and yellow manuals (1992). As such it expands and updates this work, to provide a manual of assessment techniques of flood risk management benefits, indirect benefits, and coastal erosion risk management benefits. It has three key aims. First it provides methods and data which can be used for the practical assessment of schemes and policies. Secondly it describes new research to update the data and improve techniques. Thirdly it explains the limitations and complications of Benefit-Cost Analysis, to guide decision-making on investment in river and coastal risk management schemes.




Business and Non-profit Organizations Facing Increased Competition and Growing Customers' Demands


Book Description

From the perspective of commercial and non-commercial organizations, this monograph with contemporary organizational and management problems, focus on four thematic areas. Traditionally, the first one is concentrating the reader’s attention on the internal aspects of the organization’s functioning as an object of research. In this regard, articles related to the concept of corporate social responsibility in two ways: organizational research and bibliometric analysis. The authors used an analogical (bibliometric) approach to examine trends in publishing for the concept of learning organizations. In this part of the discussion, the social aspect has been strongly displayed, also thanks to the social capital and enterprise. Another topic in this section is the role of the workers’ knowledge in creating innovative solutions, emphasizing the role of trust and culture-rich collaboration between employees, employees’ participation in creating projects, and organizational change. In addition, it discusses the role of information and knowledge networks and sharing knowledge among employees, which does remain without influence on the shaping of individual employees’ careers. Slightly different from the other articles, though set in this section, there is an article referring to the organizational pathology. These considerations are much more valuable, usually because of the difficult access to negative information. The next section presents articles in the context of the modern tools used in the management of commercial and non-commercial organizations. This part of the discussion starts an article about forecasting methods and modern models of business management. In opposition to these considerations, the problem of unused, modern management methods in the local government sector, remains valid. Also, it refers to social media as a source of customer knowledge and management control, which should be considered as a strong and innovative determinant influencing the development of contemporary management methods of a modern enterprise. Interesting considerations are included in the article on the process management, with emphasis on the dynamic management of business processes and IT systems that go with it. The other articles present the concepts of the risk management model in a technology project, business model used in franchising, and the concept of accountability in conjunction with the development of innovation thanks to negotiating the role of intellectual capital. The modern market economy forces organizations to develop their ability to adapt to the conditions by improving their organization continually. It shows how modern-day commercial and non-commercial organizations are competing in a competitive market. This section opens the article, referring to the social competences of students developed during their studies and the competences of the future, which were studied and compared in two universities. The integral part of the organization’s functioning of the organization in the environment is their broadly understood cooperation for the implementation of the objectives and achieving a competitive advantage in the market. This trend covers articles referring to the participation of county in networking, modeling synergistic interrelations within the business association, or the conditions that should be met between enterprises and institutions supporting the technological development of the organization. Other considerations concern customer preferences concerning their choice of commercial banks, the factors that determine the choice of financial instruments by small and medium enterprises, or the demands of sustainable family business development. The final part of the articles is related to a broader perspective, and so the functioning of the organization from a sectoral perspective and across industries. A distinctive feature is a sectoral approach to knowledge-based business services, the determinants of knowledge-based products in the pharmaceutical industry, and the behavior of competing companies in the chocolate and confectionery industry. A separate topic in this section is the concept of capturing value or the value in a sectoral approach. The issues related to the protection of personal data in the healthcare sector, patent activity of enterprises in the technology park, as well as the management of resources in the cluster. The prepared monograph is an interdisciplinary compendium of knowledge on the functioning of both commercial and non-commercial organizations in the context of three perspectives: micro, meso, and macro. The advantage of this type of studies is modern and up-to-date look at the problems of management, organization behavior, or the functioning of the organizations in the sector.




Twenty-First Century Estate Agency


Book Description

This book is a must have for those estate agents who want to work more effectively in order to grow their business and profits. With 12,000 separately owned estate agencies in the UK this book illustrates how new technology and working practices can revolutionise the industry. Technology can help to improve the competitiveness and sometimes-tarnished image of estate agents in the eyes of the general public. The book contains case studies from international markets and shows how competitive the industry is and how each competitor needs to adopt new approaches to outwit rivals – and to reassure an increasingly sceptical public that agents are worth using, add value and earn their commission.




Real Estate Economics


Book Description

Real Estate Economics: A point-to-point handbook introduces the main tools and concepts of real estate (RE) economics. It covers areas such as the relation between RE and the macro-economy, RE finance, investment appraisal, taxation, demand and supply, development, market dynamics and price bubbles, and price estimation. It balances housing economics with commercial property economics, and pays particular attention to the issue of property dynamics and bubbles – something very topical in the aftermath of the US house-price collapse that precipitated the global crisis of 2008. This textbook takes an international approach and introduces the student to the necessary ‘toolbox’ of models required in order to properly understand the mechanics of real estate. It combines theory, technique, real-life cases, and practical examples, so that in the end the student is able to: • read and understand most RE papers published in peer-reviewed journals; • make sense of the RE market (or markets); and • contribute positively to the preparation of economic analyses of RE assets and markets soon after joining any company or other organization involved in RE investing, appraisal, management, policy, or research. This book should be particularly useful to third-year students of economics who may take up RE or urban economics as an optional course, to postgraduate economics students who want to specialize in RE economics, to graduates in management, business administration, civil engineering, planning, and law who are interested in RE, as well as to RE practitioners and to students reading for RE-related professional qualifications.