Web Bytes

Web Bytes 033

Deed scam extends worldwide
News-Press.com - USA
A deed scam that's hit Southwest Florida - in which signatures of dead people are being forged so their land can be stolen - is targeting property owners from Taiwan and China to Belgium and the Congo. The deceased include Albert Delvaux and Roland G. Lanson.

Delvaux died in 1998. Lanson died in 2000. But according to deeds filed with the Lee County Clerk of Court's office, the two were alive and well years later when they signed their land over to USA Real Estate Solutions of Punta Gorda and Helen Trade Inc. of Miami, which has taken its corporate identity from another company.
News Press

Quick-fixes will not ease Cape's housing crisis
Business Day - South Africa
Is it racist to complain that you are being discriminated against? If I had been asked that question a few weeks ago, the answer would have been a no-brainer.

But now I am not so sure, because when poor coloured communities on the Cape Flats complained recently that the African National Congress's (ANC's) provincial housing policy discriminated against them by ensuring that most new houses were given to recent migrants, they were accused of racism.
Business Day

Law will rein in crooked sheriffs
News24.com - South Africa
The government will draft new legislation to prevent the sale of houses at below market prices in execution to recover small debts. This was said by Justice Minister Brigitte Mabandla in response to a question in Parliament about corrupt sheriffs involved in executions.

She said the draft legislation was intended to prohibit the disposal of immovable property of poor people like low-cost houses.
News24.com

Biggest boom is in vacant land
Business Report - South Africa
The price of vacant land is growing faster than that of houses in some areas, a trend that could make housing within city limits unaffordable for many.

A recent study by property economists and valuers Rode & Associates in the Camps Bay/Bakoven area on Cape Town's Atlantic seaboard showed that the price of serviced vacant erven grew at a compound rate of 70 percent a year between July 2001 and January this year.

During the same period, house prices in this area grew at 37 percent a year, while Rode's house price index for upper-priced homes in Cape Town grew by "only" 29 percent a year.
Business Report

Western Cape will borrow for housing
Finance24.com - South Africa
The Western Cape provincial government is prepared to borrow against future Budget allocations in order to step up housing delivery, Premier Ebrahim Rasool said.

Addressing a seminar in Cape Town he said the province, which has a backlog of over a quarter of a million units, was for the first time beginning to see a synergy between national, local and provincial governments.
Finance24.com

British Land tells property lawyers to work smarter
Legal Technology Insider - UK
Speaking at a commercial property briefing, organised by the conveyancing search company Searchflow in London earlier this month, Stephen Spooner of British Land told the audience of commercial property lawyers that they needed to become smarter at embracing new technologies or face the consequences.

According to Spooner "the residential 'volume' business is innovating the market, through the use of standardised products and process driven operations borne out of a need to satisfy a more sophisticated client base and new government legislation. Everyone accepts the industry needs to be more efficient, the challenge now is to make it happen, sooner rather than later.
Legal Technology Insider

Leave a comment:

Security Picture (click to change)
Word shown in picture:
advert
menu close

Search Articles