Saturday, March 31, 2012

Neuberger Berman Real Estate Securities Income Fund Announces Monthly Distribution

NEW YORK, Mar 30, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Neuberger Berman Real Estate Securities Income Fund Inc. (nyseamex:NRO) has announced a distribution declaration of $0.02 per share of common stock. The distribution announced today is payable on April 30, 2012, has a record date of April 16, 2012 and has an ex-date of April 12, 2012.

Under its level distribution policy, the Fund anticipates that it will make regular monthly distributions, subject to market conditions, of $0.02 per share of common stock, unless further action is taken to determine another amount. There is no assurance that the Fund will always be able to pay a distribution of any particular size, or that a distribution will consist of only net investment income. The Fund’s ability to maintain its current distribution rate will depend on a number of factors, including the stability of income received from its investments, availability of capital gains, the cost of leverage and the level of other Fund expenses.

The distributions announced today, as well as future distributions, may consist of net investment income, realized capital gains and return of capital. In compliance with Section 19 of the Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended, a notice would be provided for any distribution that does not consist solely of net investment income. The notice would be for informational purposes, and would disclose, among other things, estimated portions of the distribution, if any, consisting of net investment income, capital gains and return of capital.

Friday, March 30, 2012

New York City Property Tax Bill Appeals Surge

Some 2,723 homeowners have challenged their increased tax assessments with the city Tax Commission this year. That's up 18% from the 2,295 who did so in 2011, and represents the highest figure in more than a decade.

The increase is due in part to the bad economy, tax experts say.

"With the economy still a bit slow, people are looking to save," said Tax Commission President Glenn Newman.

Homeowners are also reacting to the perception that the real estate market remains weak, despite incremental improvements that have raised the value of their properties slightly, he added.

In the past, many homeowners have reported being confused by the format of the tax bill.

City lawmakers have long complained that the forms do not include a detailed breakdown of how the new rates were calculated. They contend the city Finance Department has not done enough to educate homeowners on the process.

"Property taxes are highly complex," agency spokesman Owen Stone said when questioned by the Daily News on the matter.

"We appreciate the frustration of some property owners and are always working to make our notices as clear as possible."

Monday, July 5, 2010

Bad News For NYC Real Estate: Lower Risk = Lower Compensation = Lower Demand For Housing

Ok, eggs not a great analogy but I needed to squeeze one of my favorite quotes of all time in somehow. Lower leverage is in the future of Wall Street. Take lower risks and there are lower returns to firms eventually translating into lower compensation, translating into tempered housing demand.

This Monday federal regulators finalized guidance on a hot topic as of late: executive compensation:

The final guidance is similar to what the central bank proposed in October, but would now apply to the entire banking industry. Previously, its efforts targeted only holding companies and state-member banks…

The final guidance did not change the three initial goals of the Fed’s proposal: providing incentives that appropriately balance risk and financial results and discourage risk taking; matching “effective controls and risk management”; and supporting corporate governance.

Risk, risk, risk

Senior Economist David Belkin of NYC’s Independent Budget Office received a flurry of media coverage for his post titled “Wall Street Wages: A Rough Ride on Easy Street:”

Thursday, January 14, 2010

5 Million NYC Property Records Available Via Startup's API

Back in the fall, we told you about NYC's BigApps competition, which encouraged technological innovation to benefit government and civic engagement. Public voting for the submitted applications opened this week.

One of the submissions to come out of this competition is Blocks and Lots, an interesting app and API that essentially expose all the property records - more than 5 million records, total - for New York City. For site owners, there's a customizable widget that can be embedded in just about any kind of site.

Blocks and Lots' API allows developers to integrate detailed property information into any web or mobile application. Sample code is available in PHP and JavaScript.

Blocks and Lots comes from BlankSlate, an NYC startup offering a web platform and set of read/write APIs for making, sharing, monetizing, and monitoring web apps. The company provides capabilities such as data, file, user and payment management through REST APIs.

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