The property housing a recently closed Dunkin' Donuts restaurant on Kanis Road has sold in a transaction valued at $1,275,000.
AKSHAR 5 LLC was the buyer of the property at 10721 Kanis Road, Colliers International/Arkansas said in a news release. The limited liability corporation is led by Shailesh C. Vora, an El Dorado physician, who is listed as the registered agent and organizer.
The seller was Kanis Estates LLC, which acquired the property in 2016 for $1.3 million, according to records available online through the Pulaski County assessor's office. Len Falcone is the registered agent and Aaron Brooks is the incorporator for Kanis Estates.
Todd Wright and Clark Irwin of Colliers represented the seller while Melanie Gibson, also of Colliers, represented the buyer.
Colliers didn't know what AKSHAR plans to do with the 1,848-square-foot building at Kanis and South Shackleford roads.
"Its prime location ... has great visibility and access for its future tenant and will be a good investment for years to come," Gibson said in the release.
Vora's office was closed Thursday afternoon. Another AKSHAR backer, El Dorado accountant G. Peter Parks, also was unavailable Thursday.
-- Noel Oman
Rate on 30-year home loan falls to 4.56%
WASHINGTON -- Long-term U.S. mortgage rates fell this week, breaking a steady climb that pushed them to their highest levels in seven years.
It was the first decline in four weeks in long-term loan rates during the peak homebuying season. Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday that the average rate on 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages was 4.56 percent, down from 4.66 percent last week. The average benchmark rate has been running at its highest levels since May 2011. By contrast, the 30-year rate averaged 3.94 percent a year ago.
The average rate on 15-year, fixed-rate loans dipped to 4.06 percent from 4.15 percent last week.
As tensions mounted over U.S. trade policy and political turmoil in Italy and Spain, prices jumped for long-term U.S. government bonds as investors moved money into lower-risk assets. That depressed the bond yields, and mortgage rates followed suit. The yield on the 10-year Treasury bond dropped Wednesday to 2.78 percent, its lowest level since early April and the biggest single-day decline since June 24, 2016, the day after Britain's vote to leave the European Union. The key bond's yield recovered to 2.84 percent Thursday morning.
-- The Associated Press
Pending home sales down 1.3% in April
WASHINGTON -- Fewer Americans signed contracts to buy homes in April, reflecting the dearth of properties being listed for sale in the U.S. right now.
The National Association of Realtors said Thursday that its pending-home-sales index fell 1.3 percent in April to 106.4, after rising for two consecutive months. The index has drifted downward 2.1 percent from a year ago as the housing shortage has grown more intense. The association reported previously that sales listings in April had declined 6.3 percent over the past 12 months.
A relatively robust job market has led more Americans to look for homes. But the housing shortage and rising mortgage rates over the past year are putting homeownership out of reach for an increasingly large number of people.
Home prices are rising at more than double the gains in average hourly earnings, meaning that many first-time buyers are being forced into lower down payments to afford homes.
-- The Associated Press
Commercial-space transactions up 6.7%
The value of U.S. commercial-property deals rose 6.7 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, but higher interest rates and softer demand for office and retail real estate will weigh on the market in quarters to come, Ten-X Commercial said.
"Heavy supply is looming in the apartment, hotel and industrial sectors, while technological innovation is crimping demand for both office and retail space," the real-estate transaction platform said in a report that looks at data going back more than a decade. Volume for the quarter, which reached $107 billion, was down 14 percent from the previous three months -- though companies often rush to close deals before year's end, making for a big fourth period.
Expectations of rising borrowing costs help explain a meager 0.1 percent gain in commercial-property prices in April from March and a 1.4 percent decline from a year earlier. That's the first time Ten-X's pricing measure, which is indexed back to January 2011, is below its year-earlier level.
-- Bloomberg News
Electric-car boom gains speed in 3 states
In a single day, the electric-car boom lined up hundreds of millions of dollars of additional investments in three states.
First, New Jersey's biggest utility owner Public Service Enterprise Group laid out a plan to spend $300 million on electric-car charging stations. Then California cleared utilities to invest a combined $738 million on projects promoting electric vehicles. And the New York Power Authority committed as much as $250 million on charging stations, including ones at airports.
States are doubling down on efforts to replace gasoline-guzzling cars with emissions-free, electric vehicles, even as the White House moves to unravel automotive efficiency standards. Just as electric-car initiatives were gaining speed in California, New Jersey and New York on Thursday, President Donald Trump's administration was said to be seeking an end to California's unique authority to set its own fuel-efficiency limits to curb emissions.
The plan approved by the California Public Utilities Commission on Thursday marks the largest-ever utility investment toward the adoption of electric vehicles in the U.S., laying the groundwork for a statewide electric car-charging network.
-- Bloomberg News
Business on 06/01/2018