Low interest rates heighten appeal of buying a building for your business
POSTED: Monday, July 12, 2010 at 05:00 PM PTBY: IBR Contributor
Tags: Commercial Real Estate, financing
Danny Lawson
Dolan Newswire
With interest rates down to a level not seen in years, businesses interested in financing or refinancing an owner-occupied facility may be able to save thousands of dollars a year on their largest fixed cost.
Owner-occupied professional offices, medical buildings, and retail/industrial warehouses are typical examples of properties that will benefit the most [...]
Commentary: Keeping your project scope under control
POSTED: Tuesday, July 6, 2010 at 03:59 PM PTBY: IBR Contributor
Tags: Construction
By Christian Steinbrecher
Dolan Media Newswires
Scope has a lot of different meanings. To a mariner, it means the amount of anchor line let out to keep a vessel from dragging in a storm. A good ratio is 7:1. It would have to blow pretty hard to put a boat on some rocks if that much [...]
Commentary: Low mortgage rates give borrowers a 2nd bite at apple
POSTED: Tuesday, July 6, 2010 at 03:50 PM PTBY: IBR Contributor
Tags: consumer confidence
By Robert Nusgart
Dolan Media Newswires
OK, so I was wrong.
Everything in the first quarter of the year pointed to a slow rise in mortgage rates. It looked as if you hadn’t taken advantage of the refinance craze in the spring of 2009, when rates for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage touched 4.75 percent, then you [...]
Frontier taking over local Verizon services in N. Idaho 
POSTED: Tuesday, July 6, 2010 at 08:23 AM PTBY: IBR Contributor
Tags: City of Sandpoint, Frontier Communications, Verizon
By Ralph Bartholdt
Better service, hometown participation, no overseas operators and users can pay their bills in town.
When Frontier Communications takes over Verizon’s rural services in North Idaho, customers can expect to put a face on the name, something that was lacking in the decade that Verizon provided telephone and Internet service to North [...]
Rural Telephone Company fills needs of remote communities
POSTED: Friday, July 2, 2010 at 07:51 AM PTBY: IBR Contributor
Tags: Angela Carpenter, Jim Martell, Rural Telephone Co., Telecommunications
Small, independent telephone companies serve the needs of people living in Idaho’s rural and remote areas where dependable service is often difficult to establish. Population densities of less than one per mile are not uncommon and higher market costs to provide service are the general rule.
It is the everyday business in the lives of the [...]
Group Health to stop covering small businesses in N. Idaho
POSTED: Thursday, July 1, 2010 at 10:00 AM PTBY: IBR Contributor
Tags: Coeur d'Alene Press, Group Helath
By Maureen Dolan
A Seattle-based health insurance provider’s decision to stop covering small employer groups in Idaho will leave 450 people in the Coeur d’Alene and Moscow areas without medical insurance come Jan. 1.
Group Health’s decision to discontinue insuring groups of 50 people or less is a business decision that has nothing to do with health [...]
Dealing with ‘downtime’ in the commercial real estate market
POSTED: Wednesday, June 30, 2010 at 07:01 AM PTBY: IBR Contributor
Tags: Colliers, Commercial Real Estate, Mike Attiani, Property Managers
I could spend the next few hundred words discussing the current economy, but that horse is dead, and has been beaten beyond recognition. Since the economy is not within our control, let’s discuss what can actually be done today to help preserve value and property viability, like tenant retention.
In terms of cash flow, tenant retention [...]
Commentary: Riding the rate waves
POSTED: Monday, June 28, 2010 at 03:20 PM PTBY: IBR Contributor
Tags: commercial property, Insurance
By Tim Cleary
The tumultuous construction and real estate markets of late may soon affect companies’ insurance rates - a phenomenon that’s already apparent in some sectors.
Many foresee the property and casualty insurance markets entering a hardening cycle, which is a time when rates plateau or increase. Though that cycle hasn’t yet hit the industry across [...]
Commentary: Bankruptcy and its effect on commercial leases
POSTED: Monday, June 28, 2010 at 03:15 PM PTBY: IBR Contributor
Tags: Real Estate
by Thomas Hillier and Ivy Grey
One of the sectors hit hardest during the current economic meltdown has been commercial real estate. The credit crisis has made refinancing of maturing loans nearly impossible. Many otherwise stable businesses have encountered their own cash crunch problems. Sometimes, a bankruptcy is the only means to salvage the situation. [...]
Students seek to reverse cultural and historical depletion
POSTED: Monday, June 28, 2010 at 01:59 PM PTBY: IBR Contributor
Tags: architecture, University of Idaho
Economic reforms in China during the last 30 years have generated significant and steady opportunities for growth in investment, consumption and standard of living in China. Part of the growth is due to an increased state investment in infrastructure.
But at the same time China has enjoyed a construction boom and economic development, it also has [...]
