Modern life demands certain pleasures and luxuries from its residents in order for them to be happy and productive. In this pursuit, housing most definitely has become an art in itself for such people and their aspirations to live better. Regardless of how beautiful, fortified or secure a house or an apartment is, it should also be properly insured against possible problems. This has made insurance also an issue of modern day concern and reality. As established companies compete with one another for future clients, new ones also join the market and help further expand and develop it for the benefit of the clients. This statement of course only holds ground if the company and its policies are well-intended. Fortunately, too, legal structures have developed in the modern world. Housing or apartment insurance refers to insurance policies for protecting homes against possible issues such as theft, fire, earthquake or any other potentially damaging issue. These policies utilize periodic payments by the property owner to compensate for the financial losses incurred due to such occurrences. In today’s banking and financial sectors, this type of insurance is a great business for many, both as investors or employees and as customers or clients. Quite naturally, the modern media has paid attention to this sector through various publications and broadcasts.
Margarita Hakobyan for the Huffington Post focuses on real estate as a smart investment sector for entrepreneurs by initially stating that it is a long-term investment which will yield results in the long run. As for a key component for success in this sector, Hakobyan advises upcoming businessmen to learn about successful investments that took place in the past within a certain region while also keeping a balance between availabilities and dreams. The latter piece of advice refers to how successful real estate entrepreneurs should not opt only for the firstly available property or wait for a dream home to cross their way. According to Hakobyan, location is presumably the only element of a building which a businessman cannot change and therefore it is important to pick the right location from the very start. Being a complicated and compartmentalized business, the real estate market demands its entrepreneurs to understand its unique tax implications and always have a plan to counter unexpected occurrences. Hakobyan’s ideas are extremely insightful in the sense that they reflect realities of the real estate business while also providing precious advices for newcomers into the game about what and what not to do. In the end, nothing teaches a person better than experience, and Hakobyan’s research into the issue has been based on observed and recorded incidents and realities along with her own observations.
Erin Griffith for the Business section of Wired Magazine reports on SoftBank as an innovator in this specific business sector, with its huge investment projects in recent years which amount to hundreds of billions of dollars. Michael Marks of Katerra, a startup that was financed by SoftBank in this process to the amount of $867 million, utilizes such funding to research new construction technology that makes construction easier, faster and more secure. Similarly, SoftBank also invested $450 million into another startup Compass, which is a brokerage company for houses and apartments. Additional investments included a $120 million package granted to Lemonade, a home-insurance agency, as well as a breathtaking investment sum of $4.4 billion to the co-working giant WeWork for similar purposes. The company utilizes its SoftBank Vision Fund for procedures of this nature. This branch has a gigantic budget of $93 billion, with an active crew of investors and analysts who constantly investigate into the giant $228 billion global real-estate market to bring innovation into its projects and deposit profits into the company’s own accounts. In the future, the company seeks to continue operations of such nature to help develop a better construction market for its players, and a more likable, secure and comfortable physical domain for residents of buildings, both previously and newly constructed ones.
Scott Woolley for Forbes Magazine reports on the company First American, which is the largest title-insurance company in America with a $5.8 billion annual revenue. They interview Parker Kennedy, the company’s current president about the company’s functions and innovations. Founded more than a hundred years ago, in a time when insurance and property fraud were seriously popular in America, the company has managed to become the leader in this $18 billion industry. With an average charge of $1472 per client, out of which approximately $1373 constitutes the overhead and profit, the company’s ongoing financial success has made headlines in several publications. It has also led Kennedy to understand the true importance of observing the boom and bust cycles in an economy, technological innovation, and job offshoring. The law has always been on the side of such insurance companies as well with a required insurance statute for every homeowner, which has created a vast market for such a business. All in all, Kennedy repeats that his position and company are both safe. Even though the laws or the markets change in the future, there will always be room for companies like First American and executives like himself. Everything is going well over in California it seems.
Tom Rendell for Newsweek magazine reports on the general state of being for the global real-estate market to refer to CBRE (United States Commercial Real Estate Services), “the world’s largest commercial property advisory firm”, which has carried out research regarding the real-estate market in 2014. According to the report, Spain, Ireland, Sweden and the United Kingdom experienced a huge boom in real-estate related investment in this year. This is quite shocking, considering the global crisis of the same year which has pushed several sectors into complete self-destruction. The real estate market is unique in this sense as it is one of the few business fields which can combine local and international capital for its projects while creating significant employment and business opportunities in the process. As an example, Rendell refers to a skyscraper on the 25 Bank Street in London’s Canary Wharf that underwent several changes in ownership and rent between Enron and Lehman Brother, beginning in 2004 and ending in 2010, when it was finally sold to JP Morgan Chase for £495 million. Considering the bad reputation associated with these companies due to their catastrophic business deals and practices, the author cannot help but ask the question, “what other financial asset – bond or equity – would continue to hold such a high proportion of its value despite such a turbulent sequence of events?” After all, these companies utilized domestic resources to contribute to the global economy with catastrophic endings to their endeavors. Meanwhile the end-result, the acquisition of the building, did not concern itself with any of the given charade to create a wonderful sales operation to benefit virtually every player involved.
Laura Howard for the Independent takes a look at a very different aspect of the real-estate and insurance sectors: home moving insurance business. This has become quite popular in the recent years. In her report, Howard refers to the hardships of the process of moving a home, which also bears significant potential for causing damage to the items being carried and necessitates some sort of an insurance policy and practice. The reporter advises her readers to pay attention to the physical status of the new home they move into. This is in hopes of protecting their furniture and equipment against possible problems already in existence at such locations. Howards also points out it is important to insure both the home and the artifacts against unlikely events such as fire or severe weather conditions, as many individuals sign their home insurance contract for the date of completion and not the date of exchange. As their furniture and apparel sit inside the new home for as long as a couple of weeks, they remain uncovered by law or a proper insurance policy. This then leads to significant financial losses for the owner. Home-moving insurance covers such occasions to bring safety and security to the process, and this is precisely why many new customers have joined the home moving insurance networks recently. Their goal is to deter such problems and save their money and property. Although it will most probably not become a dominant field of insurance ever, home moving insurance surely will benefit those in need of insurance for the mentioned purposes in the future years to come and add value both to the related institutions of credit and finance as well as the properties themselves.