Home prices up 30% in Kootenai County
Coeur d’Alene Home prices continue to climb in Kootenai County.
The average sales price topped $210,000 for the first 11 months of 2005, according to figures from the Coeur d’Alene Multiple Listing Service. A year ago, the average sales price was $161,711.
Home prices were highest in the Hayden-Dalton Gardens area, where the average sales price was nearly $257,000. In Coeur d’Alene the average sales price was $210,219, in Post Falls it was $198,272 and in Rathdrum-Hauser it was $177,215.
Waterfront parcels commanded an average sales price of $628,605.
The number of homes on the market has nearly doubled since last year, which may produce a moderating effect on future price increases. Last year at this time, just more than 1,000 homes were listed for sale. In November, nearly 1,900 homes were listed for sale.
Nearly $644 million worth of residential real estate changed hands in Kootenai County during the first 11 months of the year. The number of sales crept up just 4 percent, but the average sales price per transaction increased 30 percent.
Cowles Publishing Co. making name change
Cowles Publishing Co. will change its name to Cowles Co. on Jan. 1, the company said Wednesday.
Dropping the word “publishing” from its name will “better reflect the diverse nature of its businesses,” according to a company press release. Cowles Publishing owns and operates The Spokesman-Review newspaper, plus newsprint manufacturer Inland Empire Paper Co.; television broadcasting company KHQ-TV Inc.; real estate firms River Park Square and Centennial Properties; and Western Farmer-Stockman, an insurance company.
Cowles Publishing was founded by William H. Cowles in 1912. It’s currently led by his great-grandchildren Stacey Cowles, publisher of the newspaper and president of Cowles Publishing, and Betsy Cowles, the company’s chairwoman.
“We started as a publishing company, but we have been diversifying our business base ever since,” Stacey Cowles said in the press release.
Said Betsy Cowles, “the name change just makes sense” because the company now operates more non-publishing businesses than publishing businesses.
The Cowles Co. subsidiary that operates the daily newspaper will still be known as Cowles Publishing Co.
Home Depot opening store in Liberty Lake
The world’s largest home improvement retailer will open a Liberty Lake store on Jan. 12, adding to three regional locations in North Spokane, Spokane Valley and Coeur d’Alene.
Home Depot’s new store at 21701 E. Country Vista Drive will encompass 102,000 square feet, plus an attached 35,000-square-foot garden center, according to Kathryn Gallagher, a company spokesperson.
The company hired 100 new employees from around the community to staff the store and transferred 15 other employees in from other regional stores, Gallagher said. Those employees will join the 7,600 people Home Depot already employs in Washington.
Founded in 1978, Home Depot is the second-largest retailer in the country, after Wal-Mart, with 2004 sales of $73.1 billion, according to a company news release. Home Depot employs 325,000 people and has 2,008 stores in 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, nine Canadian provinces and Mexico.
Auto sales help GDP shake off hurricanes
Washington The U.S. economy grew at the fastest pace in 1 1/2 years in the summer as booming auto sales offset the adverse effects of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. But the year is expected to end with much slower growth.
The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that the gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic health, grew at a 4.1 percent annual rate from July through September.
That was down from a 4.3 percent estimate made a month ago, but it was still the fastest pace since early 2004. The gain was even more remarkable considering that the country was hit by devastating hurricanes and gasoline prices that topped $3 per gallon.
“The bottom line is that we had a very strong quarter of growth,” said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor’s in New York.
Wyss said he believed the hurricanes had shaved about a half-percentage point from growth in the third quarter, having less of an impact than economists had originally feared.
Analysts believe growth has slowed substantially in the current quarter to between 3 percent and 3.5 percent, reflecting slower increases in consumer spending. The slowdown includes a slump in auto sales reflecting falling popularity for some sport utility vehicles now that gas prices are much higher.
Seagate Technology to acquire rival Maxtor
San Jose, Calif. Hard drives have long been unsung workhorses of the digital world – best when they’re quiet, fast and flawless. Competition among their suppliers, meantime, has been fierce.
Seagate Technology’s pending $1.9 billion acquisition of rival Maxtor Corp., announced Wednesday, will likely make the industry even more cutthroat.
Scotts Valley-based Seagate, the world’s largest disk-drive maker, hopes the move will strengthen its position in an arena where the players are fighting not only each other but also with a competing storage medium — flash memory, the hidden but powerful element in portable gadgets like the iPod nano.
Before the merger, Maxtor ranked fourth in market share, after No. 2 Western Digital Corp. and No. 3 Hitachi Ltd., according to research firm iSuppli Corp.
Coca-Cola will clear large severance deals
Atlanta The Coca-Cola Co. has quietly heeded shareholders’ demands that the world’s largest beverage maker seek their approval before awarding big severance packages to executives who leave.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters General Fund had sponsored a shareholder proposal on the issue at the Atlanta-based company’s annual meeting in April, but it failed with only 40 percent of votes. No Coke shareholder proposal has ever passed, the company has said.
Even so, Coke continued to discuss the issue internally, and its board decided in October to adopt the proposal that all future executive severance agreements that amount to more than 2.99 times annual salary plus bonus be approved by shareholders.