Realty Check

A businesswoman who was implicated in a multi-million dollar housing scam was yesterday remanded in custody after being slapped with another count of obtaining money by false pretence.

This, following fresh allegations that she collected $1.5 million for a house that had already been sold.
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The Government has decided to move four police units from their current New Kingston base to allow the construction of houses on the property.

The prime real estate at 1-3 Ruthven Road in New Kingston – valued at just over $378 million – is to be sold to the National Housing Trust (NHT), but there will be no exchange of cash.
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Black River, St Elizabeth — WHEN Ann Marie Drummond of Fort Williams, Westmoreland lost her two-bedroom “family house” in a fire last June she had no idea what to do next.

Then “two to three weeks later” she got news of the Luana 3 housing development just north of Black River in neighbouring St Elizabeth and promptly applied for a unit.
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Avia Collinder, Business Writer

Morin Seymour continues to hold visions of the Kingston waterfront as a place where cruise lines dock, and a town that operates on a 24-hour roster.

All it takes, he says, is a coherent plan and better management of the downtown district to build on the reconstruction already under way.
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Businessman Michael McMorris has been appointed to be the new chairman of the Board of Directors of the Victoria Mutual Building Society (VMBS).

McMorris, the former deputy chair of the society, will succeed Roy Hutchinson, who has served as chairman for the last seven years.
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THE Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) is seeking to have the National Housing Trust (NHT) design and build housing schemes that are more accommodating to police patrols.

According to Superintendent James Forbes, the design of some housing schemes — in Portmore, St Catherine, for instance — has created a nightmare for cops who find it difficult to traverse the maze of walkways and corridors in that municipality.
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Pulse Investments Limited, headed by Kingsley Cooper is all set to unveil a development project which will transform the nine acre estate that is Villa Ronai, located on Old Stony Hill, St Andrew into one of the country’s leading entertainment/hospitality complexes. Pulse has gained a reputation as the Caribbean’s leading model agency producing world renown models such as Lisa Hanna, Nadine Willis, Kimberly Mais and Jaunel McKenzie. It owns and operates the franchise Caribbean Fashion Week (CFW) and its spin-off television shows which are broadcasted across the region and the Diaspora. Over the last few years the company has been re-organised, has relisted on the Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE) and continues to register steady growth.

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BOSCOBEL, St Mary — The sign at the main entrance to the Ian Fleming International Airport at Boscobel in St Mary has been defaced again.

Airport officials told the Observer that the sign, which was replaced on Sunday, was again splattered with black paint yesterday morning.
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GOVERNMENT is going ahead with plans to sell its 60 per cent share of the Sandals Whitehouse Hotel in Westmoreland to Gorstew Limited, but welcomed the contractor general’s insistence that he wants to investigate the sale.

“Nothing has come to me that the Government has had any change of heart in terms of the sale of Sandals Whitehouse,” Information Minister Daryl Vaz told journalists at yesterday’s post-Cabinet press briefing held at Jamaica House in Kingston.
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How’s this for marketing material: Last Tuesday, nearly 70 percent of the contiguous United States was covered in snow, and the National Weather Service said every state except Florida reported snow on the ground — even Hawaii.

That has some optimistic Realtors and real estate agents around the state thinking that the brutal winter weather pounding huge swaths of the Northeast and Midwest could provide a spark for Florida’s sluggish home sales.

While agents have always used the weather as a plus to out-of-state residents, they are now making it more important in some of their marketing campaigns.
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