In some housing markets, all-cash deals still rule

All-cash deals made up 38% of all home sales in the second quarter, according to RealtyTrac.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

All-cash deals made up 38% of all home sales in the second quarter, according to RealtyTrac, down from 42% in the prior quarter.

One reason is that big institutional buyers, those buying at least 10 homes a year, are finding fewer deals.

They accounted for 4.7% of all homes sold, down from a peak of 6% in 2013.

Related: Best cities for Millennial buyers

As the housing market recovered, these investors were buying up homes in deeply troubled markets, like Phoenix and Las Vegas.

Those bulk buys helped to reverse the slide in home prices.

But now, home prices are up more than 20% from their 2012 lows.

This has created a "classic good news/bad news scenario" for the housing market, said Daren Blomquist, a spokesman for RealtyTrac.

Related: Most stressed out cities

The good news is that first-time homebuyers have more of a shot. The bad news is that some of them may already be "priced out of the market," said Blomquist.

Cash buyers are much more attractive to sellers because they know the investors are able to act quickly and that the sale will almost certainly go through.

There are still plenty of markets where cash rules.

Calculator: Was my home a good investment?

In Las Vegas, a recent spike in defaults has sparked an increase in cash sales to more than 50% of all home sales. Detroit, Kansas City, Cleveland and Philadelphia all had at least 45% of sales in cash.

Cities attractive to foreign investors are also seeing a lot of cash exchange hands. In the Miami metro area, with its huge demand from Latin Americans, a whopping 64% of sales were all cash. Other Florida cities like Orlando, Cape Coral, Sarasota and Tampa scored nearly as high. In New York, 48% of sales were cash.

First Published: August 19, 2014: 12:40 AM ET

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China targets executive pay at state-owned firms

China's President Xi Jinping says high executive salaries must be curbed.

HONG KONG (CNNMoney)

"State-owned companies must realize more equitable salary levels," Xi said, according to state news agency Xinhua. "Unusually high executive salaries must be regulated."

The state media report did not provide any specifics on how pay should be limited at the state-owned firms, where official executive salaries often lag international rivals.

Top executives at China's biggest banks, for example, might have an official annual salary of only a few hundred thousand dollars. Western bank CEOs can earn tens of millions.

Yet in a country where many migrant workers find it difficult to afford basic items, including housing, top executives and officials sometimes enrich themselves via other "grey" sources of income.

The inequity between rich and poor has been something of a government focus in recent years, and a subject that has drawn the attention of official state media.

Related: Why rich Chinese should worry about corruption crackdown

Last year, Beijing released a plan to help close the gap between income groups, which included proposals that would hike select minimum wages and levy new taxes.

Xi's broader anti-corruption campaign, which has affected a wide swath of foreign and domestic companies, is one of the most notable initiatives of his first term.

Related: Rich Chinese look abroad to secure wealth

Top executives have been targeted in the crackdown, along with Communist Party officials.

Xi has gone so far as to limit spending on banquets, banning certain delicacies and even gift-giving -- all in an effort to battle public discontent .

First Published: August 19, 2014: 1:36 AM ET

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America's top wireless network is...

Good choice, folks.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

The carrier took top honors in a new ranking of nationwide network performance by market research firm RootMetrics.

Verizon (VZ, Tech30) ranked number one for reliability, speed, call and data performance, with AT&T (T, Tech30) a close second in all those categories. Those two firms held a significant advantage over third-ranked T-Mobile (TMUS) and fourth-ranked Sprint (S).

RootMetrics conducted the study by sending researchers to sites across the country to test network performance, collecting 5.6 million samples in total.

T-Mobile performed well at the city level, having focused its recent network upgrades on urban rather than rural areas.

Related: How 4G speeds stack up at airports near you

Sprint, meanwhile, performed poorly across the board, underscoring the enormity of the task facing new CEO Marcelo Claure as he seeks to reverse the ailing carrier's fortunes.

Sprint and T-Mobile were reportedly in merger talks earlier this year, a deal that would have created a new company with a combined subscriber total to rival that of market leaders AT&T and Verizon. But Sprint has abandoned those plans, according to reports earlier this month, out of a belief that the deal would be nixed by antitrust regulators.

In an attempt to overcome its network woes and mounting losses and win back customers, Sprint announced Monday that it was increasing the data it offers in its family pack options. The new plans will be offered starting on Friday.

First Published: August 19, 2014: 1:46 AM ET

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Comcast left me on hold for 3+ hours -- until it closed

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Among the most recent: A video showing a Chicago photographer on hold for more than 3 hours trying to cancel his service, only to be told in a separate call that the office that handles disconnects was closed for the day.

Aaron Spain's video on You Tube has 1.4 million views in the three days since it was posted.

In the video, Spain holds up the phone to show the original call passing the 3 hour and 25 minute mark. "That's how long I've been on hold, and they're closed," he said. "I'm pissed."

Spain said he was able to cancel the service -- in just 17 minutes -- when he called back the next day. He said once the video went viral, a Comcast (CMCSA)executive called him to apologize. "It seemed genuine," Spain said.

"Under no circumstances is this the experience we want our customers to have," said a Comcast spokesperson. "Our goal is to be respectful of our customers' time and fix any issues the first time. We take this very seriously."

Last week Tim Davis, another unhappy Comcast customer. posted a recording of his battles to get an improper charge from a service call dropped from his bill. He was told in the complaining call that the only way to have the charge removed was to have a recording of someone at Comcast telling him that there would be no charge to fix the problem.

He called the bluff, playing back a tape of the earlier customer service representative assuring him there would be no charge, and got the charge dropped. The incident was reported by The Washington Post. The video has about 770,000 views.

Last month, Ryan Block, a former editor of Endgadget, and his wife Veronica Belmont, posted a recording of an abusive Comcast customer service representative who refused to cancel their service despite repeated requests to do so. There are more than 500,000 views of the various YouTube postings of his call.

Comcast issued statements apologizing for both the Davis and Block-Belmont calls.

"This is not the type of experience we want our customers to have. We have spoken with the customer and apologized to him," said Comcast about Davis' video.

First Published: August 15, 2014: 1:54 PM ET

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Friday Links

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

A weekly collection of design, data and interactive links.

Design/Data viz
A Spacecraft for all | Chrome experiment for the ISEE-3 Reboot Project
Marka | Beautiful icon transformations
X to close | The origins of the use of [x] in UI design
Lipsum Pro | Superfast lorem ipsum generator
Where people were born | Detailed look at every U.S. state
A better queue | Filter and browse Netflix instant movies with Rotten Tomatoes' Tomatometer

Photo/video
Steampunk gifs | Gifs made from the Smithsonian's steampunk prints
Time Collapse | Skateboarding Time Collapse: Shot with the Lumia 930
Ground Floor | Subjective city of a mistaken mind
80sTV | Relive the 80s through this video based time portal
First-person hyperlapse videos | New research from Microsoft

See last week's links

Have a nice weekend!
@dubly and @talyellin

First Published: August 15, 2014: 3:14 PM ET

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Local police get billions in military equipment

The militarization of local police in the U.S. came into focus this week as heavily armed police faced off against protesters in Ferguson, Missouri.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

The Department of Homeland Security pumped $1 billion into local law enforcement last year, according to a report from the ACLU, while the Department of Defense kicked in another $449 million worth of equipment for police forces.

Related: Complete CNN coverage of Ferguson shooting and protests

The extent to which local police in the U.S. have become militarized came into focus this week as heavily armed police faced off against protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, which itself received two Humvees from the Pentagon last fall.

The scene "resembles war more than traditional police action," wrote Sen. Rand Paul, a potential Republican presidential candidate, in an opinion piece for Time.

Attorney General Eric Holder also expressed concern. "We must seek to rebuild trust between law enforcement and the local community," he said. "I am deeply concerned that the deployment of military equipment and vehicles sends a conflicting message."

Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson denied his department has become militarized.

Related: Gun stores near Ferguson say sales are soaring

"It's not military, it's tactical operations," he said on Thursday. "That's who's out there, police. We're doing this in blue."

The Defense Department began arming local police with surplus equipment in 1997 as the Cold War wound down. Since then, the DoD has distributed more than $5 billion worth of vehicles, weapons and other supplies. Separately, after 9/11, a Homeland Security program launched providing cash grants to help small towns and big cities alike prepare for terrorist attacks and other disasters.

Critics say that local police don't need much of the equipment. For instance, twenty mine-resistant, ambush-protected (MRAP) vehicles were distributed to police departments all over Missouri in the last eight years, although none went to Ferguson.

"An MRAP is built to withstand armor-piercing bombs. This is not something that we need in American communities," said Kara Dansky, who authored the ACLU report on militarization. "Increasingly the police are trained to view the people in the communities that they're supposed to be protecting and serving as enemies."

Related: Ferguson's economy - Tough times but signs of progress

Some experts worry all this heavy equipment could lead to the use of more deadly force than might otherwise occur.

"You bring out the equipment, you add to the likelihood that you might be shot at," said Tom Fuentes a former FBI assistant director and a CNN Law Enforcement Analyst.

Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin said in a written statement Friday that Congress established the program out of concern that local law enforcement agencies were literally outgunned by drug criminals. But he said his committee will review the program to determine "if equipment provided by the Defense Department is being used as intended."

But others say there can be a legitimate need for the supplies, and that anticipating who will need it is impossible in advance.

"When it comes to equipment like this, it's better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it," said Mike Brooks, a CNN law enforcement analyst.

-- CNN's Evan Perez, Brian Todd and Dugan McConnell contributed to this report.

First Published: August 15, 2014: 4:43 PM ET

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Ferrari GTO sells for $38 million in new auction record

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

The price included a 10% "buyer's premium" paid to the auction company, Bonhams.

While the sale was easily a record price for any car ever sold at auction, some experts had predicted the classic car would go for more than $50 million.

Gallery: World's most valuable car

"We've always maintained that we would exceed the current world record and that the car would bring between $30 million and $40 million and today the GTO did just that," said Robert Brooks, chairman of Bonhams.

More optimistic predictions were based on reports that a similar car had sold privately for more than $50 million.

Gallery: 12 fun cars for sale at Pebble Beach

The previous auction record was $30 million, paid last July in London for a 1954 Mercedes-Benz race car. That car was also sold by Bonhams.

"The GTO is the most highly sought after car in the world and was very well bought by the new owner," said McKeel Hagerty, the president of Hagerty Insurance, a company that insures collectible cars.

In the car auction business, "well bought" is a phrase used to indicate that a car was sold for considerably less than it is worth.

First Published: August 14, 2014: 11:15 PM ET

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Big dogs suffer as Hong Kong status symbols

HONG KONG (CNNMoney)

Large dogs -- Siberian Huskies, German Shepherds, Vizslas and Tibetan Mastiffs -- are highly coveted and considered symbols of prosperity in the Chinese territory.

"People who have say, a St. Bernard -- you can see these people strutting around, so proud they have this dog," said Sally Andersen, founder of Hong Kong Dog Rescue.

"It's like buying a designer label; it's a status thing," she said. "It makes them feel good in the same way that men like to drive Ferraris and Maseratis."

Huskies -- a common sight in the city -- can easily sell for more than $1,000, while the price for an exotic Tibetan Mastiff can top $1 million.

These dogs are more than just furry slobber-machines. Having a big dog signals the owner is wealthy enough to afford an equally giant home.

Going big isn't cheap: Luxury apartments in Hong Kong are roughly twice as expensive as in New York City. And the average sale price on a standard 400 square foot apartment in the city is $650,000.

"When we first got Huskies, not many people had them in Hong Kong," said resident Nicole Tam. "People think if I have a big dog, I must have a nice living place."

Related: Doggie dates have come to Tinder!

Yet animal rights activists are worried about the big dog trend. They say some animals are not suited for Hong Kong's hot weather and density, and unscrupulous breeders are concerned only with profit.

Critics also say the logic behind "big dog, big house, big money" can be misleading. In reality, a large dog might be housed in a very small apartment -- an arrangement that can lead to problems.

Tam, a massage therapist, shares her family's 700 square foot apartment with her two Huskies. She would upgrade to a larger place if she could. "Ideally, I do want to have a house with a garden," she said.

Related: China swaps pandas for uranium in trade deals

Experts say that in Hong Kong -- where dog meat used to be considered a delicacy -- owning a pet dog is still a relatively new idea, gaining popularity only in the past two decades.

New owners are sometimes overwhelmed once a cute puppy grows to full size, and are forced to give them up, said Sheila McClelland, founder of the Lifelong Animal Protection Charity.

McClelland's group frequently rescues large breeds including Huskies and Golden Retrievers. She recently found a Pyrenean Mountain Dog -- a breed that can weigh up to 160 pounds -- wandering the city's streets.

High demand means many breeders try to produce dogs rapidly on the cheap in poor conditions. An estimated 10,000 dogs are destroyed in the territory each year, according to the Hong Kong Dog Rescue.

Yet dogs continue to be seen as status symbols, and owners spend lavishly at dog salons, spas and wardrobe shops. Local services include dog yoga, carbonated spring hot baths and acupuncture.

"There are many people who regard dogs as commodities, but I think it's becoming less acceptable," McClelland said. "Having them must be for life, and not just for status."

First Published: August 14, 2014: 10:46 PM ET

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Coca-Cola takes a big gulp of Monster

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

The company announced Thursday it is buying a 17% stake in Monster, the energy drink company, and that the two will swap ownership of some brands.

The $2.15 billion deal will allow each company to focus on its core strengths.

For example, Coca-Cola (KO) will hand Monster (MNST) its energy drink brands, like NOS and Full Throttle. In exchange, the non-energy drinks that Monster produces -- Hansen's Natural Sodas, Peace Tea, Hubert's Lemonade and Hansen's Juice Products -- will become part of Coca-Cola's portfolio.

Related: Food stamp soda ban can save 141,000 from obesity, study says

A deal between the two companies has been rumored for some time, with Coca-Cola trying to reposition itself as Americans consume less soda. Coca-Cola's soft drink production slumped by about 2% last year, while Monster grew by nearly 7% to become the sixth-largest player in the carbonated beverages space, according to data from Beverage Digest.

Related: Coke is coming to K-Cups

The deal also expands Monster's access to Coca-Cola's distribution network. The two have partnered in this area for about six years.

Following the announcement, Monster climbed 21% in after-hours trading. Coke gained about 1%.

First Published: August 14, 2014: 5:52 PM ET

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Oregon has a bridge to sell you. Seriously

The Sellwood Bridge in Portland was built in 1925, but must be moved to make way for a new one.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

County officials are taking bids in an attempt to save the historic 1,000 foot-long Sellwood Bridge in Portland from demolition. An online ad for the bridge reads: "For sale - one 90 yr old steel truss bridge. Very used. As is."

Work is already underway to replace the aging steel bridge. Because of its historic value, county officials are trying to find it a new home.

The Sellwood Bridge has spanned the Willamette River since 1925, but can't handle today's traffic demands. It's the busiest two-late bridge in the state, currently handling 30,000 cars a day, said Mike Pullen, a spokesman for Multnomah county, where the bridge is located.

Prospective buyers would have to move it and could use it for bikes and pedestrians, for example.

The county has no asking price and officials are ready to deal.

"We would expect (bids to) be very, very low because the real goal is to save the bridge," said Pullen.

The purchase price would likely be small compared to the moving costs. Preventing the bridge's lead paint from contaminating the environment will also be expensive, he said.

To put the costs in perspective, Pullen said construction crews recently shifted the bridge 60 feet downstream as part of the construction plan. That cost $1 million.

A committee will evaluate the bids based on criteria, including where the bridge would be placed, how it would be used and "evidence of financial ability to accomplish the move," the county said.

They'll even consider bids to buy just one or two sections of the four-piece steel structure.

If there are no buyers, the contractor building the new bridge will tear down the old one and recycle the scraps.

Bids are due Sept. 12 and an open house for prospective bidders will be held on Aug. 26.

But county officials aren't holding their breath for a buyer to step forward. Last time the county listed a bridge -- about eight years ago -- the bidder dropped out after realizing how much it would cost to move, Pullen said.

First Published: August 13, 2014: 5:47 PM ET

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