Redtony

Funny, been searching for a studio flat that have been added to right-moves website for the last 24-hours and have called the agencies to enquiry about lease etc and have found that the majority have been saying, oh , someone has already made an offer and has been accepted but you can still view the property! This has happened 4 times with different agencies in the last month - I have viewed the properties and all have been well overvalued and am surprised that anyone would make an offer so quickly !! The properties are poor investment in my opinion, bad areas, some under 90 years lease, to far to walk to station, on ground floor so you get to here all the neighbors coming in & out , cars parked just yards from your window & kids playing outside ! First time buyers tread carefully, u might have second thoughts after a night in your new hut! The agencies are making out that u will miss the boat - make sure your buy something that you can sell if u want to get out when the storm comes! It seems that many first time buyers are buying any old crap, off course with the support of many estate agents

Realistbear, just thought i drop a thankyou as i took your advice and made a tidy profit ! Im out of it now but there is still potential for the price to increase! Good luck to all that are in! Thanks again!

In todays Mail on Sunday Finanical section... IT SOUNDS impressive. UK Coal quite correctly boasts that it is Britain's largest coal producer. But look a little closer and the degree to which the nation's coal industry has shrunk over the past quarter of a century is only too striking. The company provides just 7% of the coal used in Britain's power stations. And it employs about 4,000 people, a far cry from the hundreds of thousands who used to work in the industry little more than a generation ago. UK Coal has undergone a period of painful restructuring, but results last week for the first half of the year showed that it has at last managed to haul itself out of the red. Profits for the six months were £7mn. And that understates the business's underlying profitability. UK Coal is in the unfortunate position of having agreed long-term contracts to supply coal at prices well below what could be achieved today on the open market. Most of the low-price contracts expire within the coming 18 months. Against that must be set the geological problems the company faces. This summer, it has run into snags at virtually all its deep mines and accidents at its Daw Mill colliery near Nuneaton, Warwickshire, have claimed two lives, disrupting production. Over the current-half-year, it is reckoned that the deep mines will do no more than break even. However, output from surface mining will increase substantially this year. The company has planning consent for two projects that should yield 1.6m tonnes within three years. UK Coal also produces electricity by burning methane from both operating and closed deep mines. It is developing a wind farm near Darlington, County Durham, and is planning eight more wind projects. But investors should focus on the value of UK Coal's property, valued at £274m last year. But the potential value is probably far higher and chief executive Garold Spindler has appointed property expert Jon Lloyd to try to unlock that potential. The company's attractions as a property play have not gone unnoticed and John Whittaker's Peel Land and Property Investments has built up a holding of 21%. That has helped drive up the share price over the past few weeks. But we reckon there is still plenty of upside. http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/news/columnis..._author_id=1822 Should be interesting week!

Taken From todays Daily Star Business page... "UK COAL was heavily traded as bid rumours resurfaced"..

LAND VALUES AND UK COAL - ANOTHER REASON WHY PRICE MAY GO HIGHER! Of late PEEL HOLDINGS have been buying in they owned 7,560,150 shares on 18th JULY, they have now topped up again to 10,455,150 , which is a 7.01% holding. Now for your info PEEL HOLIDINGS are a Manchester Based Property developement company .Very Succesfull .It was taken Private by John Whittaker a few years back.They own various Ports,Airports, Manchester TRAFFORD CENTRE,and 100s, of Acres of Land around the Mnachester Ship Cannal. John has done a great deal to re generate run down sites in the north West. I guess hes seen the massive potential of UKC land bank.All the redundant sites.Yes I know theres Contamination issues.But I would imagine that there could be EEC Grants to clean up these sites. Industrial land values now run to £250-£400,000 an acre.Residential well £1m an acre is common these days. I think the £50m or so land values that UKC have on there books, are worth a great deal more. Now that the Coal side is back in profit and If they start releasing/ selling off these non core sites we could see some great values being unlocked. I am sure that John Whittaker of PEEL has no ambition to be a Miner and has invested nearley £20 M for the LAND. If they have so much land then how much coal is down there:)

Coal may surpass oil as best performing energy investmernt Coal, the hard, black byproduct of fossilized plants used as fuel since China's Western Han dynasty 2000 years ago, may overtake oil as the best performing energy investment. That, at least, is the emerging consensus from a diversity of speculators, investors and giant corporations including Wilbur Ross, the billionaire bankruptcy specialist, BHP Billiton Plc, the world's largest mining company, and Merrill Lynch & Co, the third-largest U.S. securities firm. Because “coal is the cheapest, most abundant energy source,” from North America to China, ``the surge in oil has encouraged people to plan new coal-fueled power plants and to start using conversion technologies such as coal-to-diesel,'' said Richard Price, an investment banker at Westminster Securities in St. Louis. Coal is poised to top its recent highs because of record oil and natural-gas prices, said Francisco Blanch, chief commodity analyst at Merrill Lynch & Co in London. In Europe, coal was $62.55 a ton last week and reached a 10-month high of $66.83 in March, broker ICAP said. Prices paid by U.S. utilities will climb 5 percent in the next year and double by 2021, said Price, a former vice president at Peabody Energy Corp., the largest U.S. coal producer. Converting coal into liquid fuel or natural gas becomes economical when oil remains above $40 a barrel, said Stephen Leer, chief executive officer of Arch Coal Inc., the second-largest U.S. producer. Oil more than doubled since January 2004, reaching a record $78.40 a barrel on July 14 and averaging $68 in New York this year. It hasn't traded below $40 since June 2004 and will fall 19 percent next year to $60, according to the median forecast of 19 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Ross, the 68-year-old chairman of International Coal Group Inc., is convinced the search for a cheaper alternative to oil and natural gas will enable coal to outperform oil. “We certainly bet on that,'' Ross said in a telephone interview from Paris. “The argument against it is not an economic one,'' he said. “It's about the environment and emissions.'' Ross, who was worth about $1 billion last year, according to Forbes magazine, made much of his fortune transforming troubled companies into money makers. He founded Ashland, Kentucky-based International Coal in 2004 after acquiring mines from bankrupt producers. Coal in the U.S. is forecast by analysts to recover from a drop this year caused mainly by a mild winter. Prices in Wyoming's Powder River Basin, the largest U.S. producing region, have fallen from a record $21.50 a ton at the end of last year to $11.50, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, while the eastern coal benchmark has declined 15 percent to $49 a ton. For the U.S. and China, the world's biggest energy users, coal offers the chance of reducing their reliance on Middle East oil that has tripled in cost since 2002. The U.S. has enough coal to last almost two centuries and today imports two-thirds of the oil it uses. Coal producers are acquiring reserves after the U.S. government estimated demand will increase by 3 percent a year, almost twice the rate for oil. St. Louis-based Peabody Energy on July 5 offered A$1.83 billion ($1.4 billion) for Excel Coal Ltd., Australia's third-biggest coal producer. “A lot of the future energy requirements globally will have to be satisfied by coal,'' said Michael Schroder, head of resources at Old Mutual Asset Management in Cape Town, which manages the equivalent of $55 billion, including shares in mining companies BHP Billiton and Anglo American Plc. “Coal seems to be on the agenda of lots of countries.'' Using more coal is part of President George W. Bush's initiative to make the U.S. less dependent on imports. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in May authorized the Air Force, which burned 3.2 billion gallons of jet fuel last year, all refined from crude oil, to begin testing 100,000 ga

back to 196p

So where we at , have we seen the bottom earlier than expected or will August be the month that it really drops? Now at $633 Any opinions?

Add Wood Green to the list of godforsaken places. Northolt doesnt come close. Its an Eye opener especially if your from devon!

Yes, Halfaxs report is on page 2 of the Daily Mail Today but yet no mention anywhere in the Daily Express

i was waiting after the FED news and thought it would decrease more, how wrong i was! I was waiting for the $550 mark, yikes!

$582 ! the price changes with the weather!

Is it something i said now at $587!

Maybe missed the boat again but isnt there news coming from the US banks next week? Why is it going up now and not after news?

It seems Gold is on the increase - it looks as though bargain hunters are buying up gold, what are you thoughts now? Are we still in for more drops or is this the start of better times? it dropped to $545 at one stage! Still uncertain to bite the bullet