Property Trader publishers fail in high court bid to restrain rival from using similar advertisement designs
Cape Times - South Africa
The publishers of Property Trader magazine have lost a Cape High Court bid to prevent a competing magazine from using a similar design for property advertisements.
Freefall Trading 211 publishes and distributes Property Trader weekly in the Western Cape. PropLink Publishing publishes and distributes a similar magazine, called SA PropLink.co.za.
Initially PropLink's magazine was distributed in Gauteng, Mpumalanga, North West and Limpopo, but it expanded to the Western Cape in August.
Cape Times
Property slowdown? What slowdown?
Moneyweb.co.za - South Africa
The four major banks are still achieving strong growth in their homeloan businesses, despite declining house prices, affordability levels and sales volumes.
The Big Four - Absa, Nedbank, Standard Bank and FNB - have not seen any slight in their homeloan numbers.
Rachel Wall, general manager of Absa Homeloans, says the bank has experienced a healthy growth rate in the past months, gaining a record high market share rate of 34,23%.
"The significant growth is attributed primarily to the low interest rates coupled with the strong domestic demand," explains Wall.
Moneyweb
Slowdown puts pressure on agents
Business Day - South Africa
With fewer home sales and the residential property market cooling, many expect that a large number of the 65,000 estate agents registered with the Estate Agency Affairs Board will fall by the wayside next year.
Lew Geffen, chairman of Sotheby's International Realty, says estate agents are "running for cover" and trying to get under the wings of big agencies and established brands.
The number of positions available in these companies is now limited and many of the agents who decided during the boom "to go it alone" will find themselves out in the cold next year, Geffen believes.
Business Day
CML: Think EU mortgage market integration through
Politics.co.uk - UK
The European Commission is today holding a hearing in Brussels to listen to the reactions of the European mortgage industry and consumer representatives on proposals for mortgage market integration. The Council of Mortgage Lenders strongly urges the Commission to concentrate on measures that will make it easier to do business across different member states, not just on measures to harmonise consumer protection.
At the moment, there are many differences in EU mortgage markets. The most important ones to tackle, to enable lenders to operate in different member states, are the huge variations in access to credit data about borrowers, land registration systems, and mechanisms to take possession of property. Yet these are not the areas on which the Commission appears to be primarily focusing at present.
Politics.co.uk
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