Last year was a tough one for house sellers in the St. Louis area.
More than one in four area houses that sold in 2008 was sold at a loss, according to figures released Tuesday by real estate tracking firm Zillow.
One in five transactions was a foreclosure and 27.4 percent of the houses were sold for less than which they were bought. In all, by Zillow’s estimate, the St. Louis real estate market lost 3.7 percent of its value in 2008, a performance better than most large metro areas online cash advance.
Zillow also projected that 40 percent of St. Louis area houses bought in the last five years are worth less than what’s owed on their mortgages.
For more, visit Building Blocks, our new blog on real estate and development, at www.stltoday.com/blogzone/building-blocks.
Tim Logan
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DAVOS, Switzerland – The chief executive of megascreen producer Imax Corp. says he is confident the movie business will remain "fairly recession-proof" and that his company would benefit this year from the release of the J.J. Abrams’ new Star Trek film and the latest Harry Potter epic.
Richard Gelfond said the Canadian company planned to release as many 10 films in Imax theatres in 2009 – up from seven last year.
They include the big-screen adaptation of Alan Moore’s acclaimed graphic novel The Watchmen, and Avatar, James Cameron’s first feature film since the Oscar-winning Titanic.
"It’s an unbelievable year for us," Gelfond said in an interview at the World Economic Forum freecreditreport.
Gelfond didn’t see the crisis eating into profits, which he said were still benefiting from Imax’s shift five years ago from film to a digital medium, cutting costs significantly. The Imax version of the The Dark Knight, the format’s most successful film ever, raked in about $60 million last year on only 1 per cent of screens it played on, he said. "The movie industry is generally fairly recession-proof," Gelfond said. "People see the movies as a simple pleasure."
There are currently about 175 commercial Imax theatres in the world, Gelfond said.
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