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Prices of Kansas City-area homes are expected to fluctuate until fall, then begin a slow, steady rise.

That prediction led off the Kansas City Regional Association of Realtors’ monthly statistical report about the metro-area housing market. According to the report, prices of new homes will rise more quickly than those of existing homes because of declining new home inventory.

“Unemployment is (another) vital ingredient in the formula,” KCRAR said in a release, “and (the National Association of Realtors) has predicted a slight decrease in 2011, which will help sales and prices of existing homes. Interest rates are still at historic lows, but are expected to rise in 2011 and, as that occurs, it may encourage some buyers to ‘get off the fence.’”

In June, KCRAR reported, 2,599 new and existing homes in the Kansas City area sold. That was down 10 percent from the previous month’s total (2,878) and down 3 percent from June 2009 (2,671).

June saw 308 new home sales, a 23 percent increase from a year earlier (251) and a 31 percent increase from May (236).

The association reported 2,291 existing home sales in June. That was down 5 percent from a year earlier (2,420) and down 13 percent from the May total (2,642).

The average new home price in June was $296,768, which was 2 percent lower than a year earlier ($302,628). The average existing home price was $167,487, up 4 percent from June 2009 ($160,487).

The number of new homes on the market continued its steady decline in June. The total new home inventory of 1,624 last month was down only slightly from 1,638 in May but represented a 37 percent drop from June 2009 (2,587).

Resale inventory in June included 15,839 homes, which was 3 percent higher than in May (15,367) and 13 percent higher than a year earlier (14,049).

The area’s supply of new and existing homes — calculated by dividing inventory by the 12-month average number of sales — rose to a 7.7-month supply in June from a 7.5-month supply in May.

When supply exceeds six months, the market is considered to favor buyers. When it’s less than five months, the market favors sellers.

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HealthPlan Holdings Inc. said that it has acquired GEMGroup.

Financial terms were not disclosed in a release announcing the purchase.

GEMGroup, headquartered Pittsburgh, specializes in accounting, pension and 401(k) administration software and services to self-funded and Taft-Hartley employee benefit plans for unionized workers, the release said.

The acquisition enhances the outsourcing technology and services that HealthPlan provides to the nation’s largest Taft-Hartley benefit plans, the release said low fee payday loans. It also expands HealthPlan’s presence in the northeastern United States, where GEMGroup has five offices employing more than 120 people.

HealthPlan Holdings, headquartered in Tampa, provides outsourcing solutions to insurers in the individual, small business and union trust markets, and employs roughly 1,100 associates.

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Initial claims for unemployment insurance climbed last week, the government reported on Thursday.

The Labor Department’s report showed that jobless claims jumped 12,000 in the week ended June 12, compared to the prior week’s revised total of 460,000 claims.

Economists were expected initial jobless claims of 450,000 for the week ended June 12, according to Briefing.com consensus.

The report took the wind out of gains in the U.S. futures market.

The report was released one day after Senate Democrats revised a jobs bill, scaling back unemployment benefits and Medicare physician reimbursement measures. This revision would eliminate a $25 weekly supplement for the jobless that had been part of last year’s stimulus act.

The cut will reduce the bill’s cost by $5.8 billion over the next decade. 

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Calorie-burning drink maker Celsius Holdings fattened up on higher sales, but its losses also bulged.

The Delray Beach-based maker of Celsius lost $5.9 million, or 40 cents a share, on revenue of $2.3 million in the first quarter. In the same quarter last year, it lost $1.2 million, or 16 cents a share, on revenue of $971,000.

Celsius Holdings had $10.2 million in cash and equivalents as of March 31, up from $607,000 as of Dec. 31. That was due to a $13.1 million secondary offering and a $5.1 million conversion of debt to equity completed during the first quarter.

Although sales increased, they were partially offset by coupon redemptions and promotions.

“We also learned that it took longer than expected for the initial pipeline of products that we shipped in the fourth quarter of 2009 to get on retailers' shelves and accordingly, first quarter 2010 refill orders were not received from some customers to the extent we anticipated,” Celsius Holdings Chairman and CEO Stephen C. Haley said in a news release. “While our pace is picking up rapidly, as a conservative measure, we've decided to take these factors into account and adjust our sales guidance for the year to a range of $18 million to $22 million.”

Haley said the company would launch a national advertising campaign, including TV, radio and print.

Celsius shares were down 49 cents, or 15 percent, to $2.76 in morning trading. The 52-week high was $14 on July 21. The 52-week low was 22 cents on Dec. 23.

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The number of Americans filing initial claims for unemployment insurance fell for the third straight week, according to weekly government data released Thursday.

There were 444,000 initial jobless claims filed in the week ended May 1, down 7,000 from a revised 451,000 the previous week, according to the Labor Department’s weekly report.

Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had expected new claims to fall to 440,000 in the latest week. The number of new claims was the lowest since the 442,000 reported in the week ended March 27.

The Labor Department also tracks the four-week moving average of initial claims, which smoothes out volatility in the measure. That number was 458,500 for the week, down 4,750 from the previous week’s revised average of 463,250.

"Things are lining up for recovery, but it’s slower in its evolution than we expected," said Carl Riccadonna, U.S. economist for Deutsche Bank in New York.

A lack of economic confidence could be keeping hiring managers on the sidelines, according to Riccadonna. Jobless claims at or below 400,000 could help to boost morale.

"It’s not helped when you look on TV and see developments in Europe and people worried about the impact of trans-Atlantic contagion," he said.

The number of people filing continuing claims totaled 4,594,000 in the week ended April 24, the most recent data available. That figure was down 59,000 from the preceding week’s revised 4,653,000 claims, and slightly below the 4,600,000 economists expected, according to Briefing.com. Continuing claims were down for the fifth straight week.

The four-week moving average for continuing claims totaled 4,649,000, up 8,000 from the preceding week’s revised average of 4,641,000.

Continuing claims data exclude people whose benefits expired or those who have moved to state or federal extensions. It reflects those filing each week after their initial claim until the end of their standard benefits, which usually last 26 weeks.

In April, lawmakers in the House and Senate approved an extension of unemployment insurance until June 2. The move followed a number of tax breaks andother measures designed to spur job growth and help push the current 9.7% unemployment rate lower.

Although many economists say the measures are slowly working, states are still feeling the pinch and jobless claims would have to fall further, faster, before the national unemployment rate ticks lower no fax pay day loan.

There has been increasing debate over whether the decline in continuing claims is due to real job creation or people exhausting their benefits. Riccadonna says there’s no easy way to tell, but that "if the pace of job creation continues to accelerate, we can be increasingly confident that the drop in continuing claims is people finding jobs and not just rolling off the books."

Jobless claims fell the most in Florida, with a dip of 2,766 in the week ended April 24, primarily due to fewer layoffs in the construction, service, and manufacturing industries.

North Carolina and New York also saw dips in the 2,600 range. California, Massachusetts and Oregon topped the list of states with the largest increases in initial claims.

The report follows a spate of upbeat economic data in recent weeks. But that has been overshadowed by fears that Greece’s debt crisis could spread throughout Europe.

Riccadonna said that he is not overly concerned about the impact on the United States in the short term, beyond some "exchange rate effect." However, a significant decline in the euro to $1.15 could hurt the competitiveness of U.S. exports, which he says has been a key driver in the recovery so far.

Three separate reports on Wednesday pointed to strong signs of jobs growth when the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its official read of the unemployment situation on Friday. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com forecast that the U.S. added 187,000 jobs in April, compared to a gain of 162,000 in the prior month.

Still, total hiring would need to be 200,000 or more a month to push the rate down significantly, he said. Given recent economic data, he thinks the "big one" could come as early as May.

Although the nation is expected to have added jobs last month, many economists forecast the unemployment rate, also due Friday, to remain unchanged at 9.7%. Riccadonna is a bit more optimistic, forecasting a slight tick down to 9.6%.

"Really substantial gains in excess of 300,000 should be sufficiently jarring enough to wake up hiring managers and also the financial markets," said Riccadonna. "We’re turning the corner. The question is how fast?"  

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Despite a drop in demand, gas prices continued to move higher last week, with the national average hitting $2.82, up from $2.79 a gallon the previous week.

However, the fundamentals don’t support higher prices and we can expect to see prices fall a few cents this week, said Jessica Brady, manager of AAA public and government relations.

“We may see retail gas prices decline a few cents this week in response to the lower crude price, and this should help postpone $3 gasoline from becoming a common sight in the Southeast,” she said in a news release payday loans.

Statewide, the price of a gallon of regular gasoline hit $2.85 last week, up from $2.84 a week earlier.

Prices held steady week over week in two of the three South Florida counties, with the average price of a gallon of regular unleaded selling at $2.90 in Miami and $2.87 in Fort Lauderdale. The average price rose by a penny in West Palm Beach, to $2.92.

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NAIROBI, Kenya — A global Internet oversight agency is reopening discussions about whether to create a ".xxx" domain name as an online red-light district where porn sites can set up shop away from the wandering eyes of children and teenagers.

Parents would be able to use the system to help block access to porn sites, though because its use would be voluntary, the ".xxx" suffix wouldn’t keep such content entirely away from minors. Religious and other anti-porn groups worry that ".xxx" would legitimize porn sites, and the proposal has already been rejected three times since 2000.

But the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which oversees the allocation of Internet addresses, may revive ICM Registry LLC’s bid yet again as ICANN meets this week in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi.

Last month, responding to complaints from ICM, an outside panel questioned ICANN’s grounds for the latest rejection in 2007. As a result, board members have been weighing the matter ahead of formal consideration of the ".xxx" bid on Friday, ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom said.

Beckstrom said he was not able to give details of those discussions for legal reasons, and he could not say when ICANN might reach a decision.

Stuart Lawley, ICM’s chief executive, said he had been the victim of a process that he considered far from open and nondiscriminatory my credit score.

ICM, which planned to charge $60 for a site to register a ".xxx" name, first proposed ".xxx" in 2000 as a way to help the online porn industry clean up its act. Those using the domain would have to abide by yet-to-be-written rules designed to bar such trickery as spamming. And parents could set up software to block any site ending in ".xxx."

Given its voluntary nature, however, ".xxx" would be unlikely to have much effect on parents’ ability to block porn sites. And because a domain name serves as an easy-to-remember moniker for a site’s actual numeric Internet address, even if its use is required, a child could simply punch in the numeric address of any blocked ".xxx" name.

Anti-porn activists, meanwhile, worry that the creation of a virtual red-light district would serve as an endorsement of the adult-entertainment industry, as ".xxx" would be sitting alongside ".com" and ".edu."

Skeptics note that porn sites would probably keep their ".com" storefronts, even as they set up shop in the new ".xxx" domain name, thereby expanding the number of porn sites on the Internet.

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Weak demand for office space and an influx of new buildings has caused landlords to drop rents for commercial buildings in the GTA.

Average asking rents fell 9 per cent or from $17.83 in 2008 to $16.20 per square foot by the end of last year, according to a report by Colliers International Monday.

"The impact of the recession still lingers on Toronto’s office market," said the real estate services firm.

Office vacancies continued on an upward trend, hitting 6.1 per cent equal to 11.3 million square feet at the end of 2009 – a 20 per cent increase. Colliers says things will get worse before they get better, with vacancies hitting 6.9 per cent before the trend is reversed.

"Historically, there has been a lag between economic recovery and its impact on the GTA office market," said John Arnoldi, managing director with Colliers.

Another problem has been with sub-leases, where troubled companies looking to reduce overhead dump part of their office space back onto the market.

The sub-lease market is up 48 per cent from a year earlier, and is now above one million square feet.

That space now competes with existing vacancies and accounts for about 10 per cent of total vacancies.

Meanwhile, commercial landlords say their biggest concern during the recession is the financial stability of tenants as tough economic times are resulting in higher rent defaults.

In a survey of Canadian commercial investors by Colliers, 92 per cent of respondents said "tenant financial credit rating" was at the top of their list when it came to making a leasing decision. This compares to 33 per cent when the survey was last taken in 2007

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Regulators closed regional banks in three U.S. states Friday, bringing the total number of failed banks this year to 133, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said.

Customers of the failed banks are protected. The FDIC, which has insured bank deposits since the Great Depression, currently covers accounts up to $250,000.

In Florida, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) closed Republic Federal Bank, NA, and the FDIC was named receiver.

The four offices of the Miami-based bank will reopen Monday as branches of 1st United Bank, which is based in Boca Raton, Fla.

1st United will acquire all of the failed bank’s $352.7 million deposits. It will also buy $267.1 million of the $433 million worth of assets Republic Federal had on its books as of late September.

Elsewhere, state regulators in Kansas closed the six branches of SolutionsBank, which is based in Overland Park.

Arvest Bank, of Fayetteville, Ark., will assume all of the failed bank’s $421.3 million worth of deposits and will purchase all of its $511.1 million in assets. SolutionsBank branches will reopen Monday as branches of Arvest Bank.

The sole branch of Mesa, Ariz.-based Valley Capital Bank, NA, was closed by the OCC. Its roughly $41 million in deposits and $40 million in assets will be assumed by Enterprise Bank & Trust, of Clayton, Miss one hour payday loan.

The FDIC said customers of the failed banks can access their money over the weekend by writing checks or using ATMs or debit cards. Checks will continue to be processed, and borrowers should make mortgage and loan payments as usual.

An average of 11 banks have failed per month this year, and the FDIC’s deposit insurance fund has slipped into the red for the first time since 1991.

As of the end of September, the fund was $8.2 billion in the hole. But that figure includes $21.7 billion the agency has earmarked for future bank failures.

Friday’s failures of the three banks will cost the FDIC an estimated $252.1 million.

The fund is expected to move back into the black by 2012 as banks repay their insurance premiums over the next three years, which the FDIC says could raise $45 billion.

This year’s tally of bank failures is the highest number since 1992, when 181 banks failed. But the total is far from 1989’s record high of 534 closures which took place during the savings and loan crisis, when the insurance fund also carried a negative balance. 

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It is "inadequate" for global regulators to merely create new rules for the financial sector, because preventing another crisis also requires an equivalent focus on the day-to-day supervision of the industry, says Canada’s top banking regulator.

Julie Dickson, superintendent of the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, made the remarks Wednesday during an address at the Women in Capital Markets luncheon in Toronto. While the OSFI is updating its supervisory framework and increasing its oversight of risk management, Dickson does not want to cross the line by intruding into the management of banks.

While regulations tend to focus on issues such as banks’ capital requirements, supervision centres on when and how regulators intervene in the industry, Dickson said. When it comes to supervision, there are significant differences in supervisory regimes around the world.

"To the extent that some financial systems were more resilient than others, we need to focus on what worked well," Dickson said. "Day-to-day supervision is one such area that deserves focus and that has not been discussed as yet in any great depth internationally; it should be."

Supervision can involve more on-site visits and proactive intervention when a company’s risk management process appears weak. Dickson made it clear that the regulator will not hesitate to step up its on-site verification if it feels that a financial institution is being deliberately opaque about its business. "We have considerable powers to use if required," she said cash advance now.

While some U.S. supervisors have established permanent offices in the banks, the OSFI prefers to take a "balanced" approach. That’s because its mandate stipulates "regulation and supervision must be carried out having regard to the fact that boards of directors are responsible for the management of financial institutions."

Still, whenever a company appoints a new chief risk officer, the OSFI does consider how that appointment affects its own risk assessment.

"We discuss how much depth the new CRO (chief risk officer) has, the person’s clout and general disposition toward risk. At times, I have to say we have expressed, within OSFI, positive and negative views about such appointments," Dickson said.

Nonetheless, she is wary about the regulator being involved in the actual selection of those individuals. "I think you are crossing the line when you do that," she said.

The OSFI, meanwhile, is "developing guidance on minimum expectations for firms in setting risk appetite," while bolstering its scrutiny of risk management around the use of models.

With respect to board composition, Canadian financial institutions should be filling more of those seats with bankers in an effort to "deepen" expertise on financial issues, she said. "It’s something all institutions should be paying attention to."

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