Overseas, the real estate market is still booming. So reports Worth, which gives three reasons Americans are increasingly making investments outside the United States.

Also, the increasing number of real estate investment trusts, securities that trade like stocks and are backed by pools of investment property, has made purchasing foreign real estate, albeit indirectly, substantially easier.

December, Britain approved draft legislation that would allow the establishment of a REIT market, so British-listed REIT's should be available in 2007. Since 2001, global REIT's have outperformed equities "by a factor of five."

There were 215 cities rated by Mercer Human Resource Consulting. CFO reported that looking to eliminate the gyrations that hit their stock price four times a year, more companies have stopped giving quarterly earnings guidance. According to a survey by the National Investor Relations Institute, in March, just 52% of companies said that they were providing earnings estimates to Wall Street, down from 61% a year earlier.

A recent study by McKinsey & Company shows that firms offering quarterly earnings guidance enjoy no valuation premium compared with companies that do not, adding that there seems to be no penalty assessed by Wall Street when a company discontinues such guidance.

Some 16% of all companies - including Google - provide no guidance at all. Google closed yesterday at $404.86, up $4.91, trading at more than 60 times earnings. In a handful of professions - for example, airline piloting - employees are forbidden to work after drinking. Some 15% of bartenders and waiters say they drink "heavily at work - the highest in any industry."

By M. Sese
http://realestatepress.org