Real Estate Investment Analysis (data provided) Case Study

Real Estate Investment Analysis (data provided) - Case Study Example Also the rate at of absorption is very high. Meaning if a new investor comes into the market, more tenants are likely to shift to the new property. Finally, most of the occupants are employed, thus paying rent won’t be an issue. Discounted cash flow (DCF) is used in valuing projects, assets or investments by taking into account the time value of money. The concept of time value for money states that a shilling today is worth than a shilling tomorrow. As a result investors would rather get cash now rather than wait. The market is dynamic and factors such as inflation are unpredictable. The appropriate rate of discounting is known. This is not the case as the rate can be determined using methods such as Capital asset pricing model (CAPM) and the weighted average cost of capital (WACC). Secondly, the cash flow forecast was created based on the assumptions made. In the cash flow, projected income is subtracted from expenditure and taxes. The cash flow only considers cash. Depreciation and interest expense is non-cash item thus excluded from the cash flow. Income tax is charged against the taxable income. Therefore, in computing income tax, depreciation and interest were subtracted from the NOI to get the taxable income. Interest is computed using the amortization schedule as 8% on the beginning balance of loan in each year. NPV is an appraisal method that calculates returns on investments by discounting future cash flows and deducting them from the initial cost of the investment (Brigham & Houston 2009, p 338). It is a modern method in capital budgeting and it takes into account the time value for money. It also uses cash flows and not profits in assessing the viability of an investment. Cash flows are forecasted first, initial cost of investment determined and a required rate of return is given. The rate of return is the return that investors expect from their investments. The initial capital outlay is based on the value of assets. The value is 1.5M. This

Using the Barack Obamas Health Care Reform Speech to Democratic Essay

Using the Barack Obamas Health Care Reform Speech to Democratic Caucus, decide which comparative ideological models(Political Spectrum,Political Compass,Nolan Model,Ideological Space)the speech represents - Essay Example e considers the intrusiveness in the free market of Medicare, Veteran’s Administration benefits and the massive regulatory apparatus of Health and Human Services (HHS) to envelop the entire health care delivery system in the United States under a Federal framework. â€Å"The director of the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday that the health care reform legislation would cost, over the next ten years, $115 billion more than previously thought, bringing the total cost to more than $1 trillion. (Tapper)† The government is conducting a wholesale takeover of what was essentially a market provided service. Whatever one may think of the merits of the issue, the Nolan Chart allows the reader to determine with fair precision where the speech lands in the political pedigree on the chart itself. â€Å"Now, there are some who wanted a single-payer government-run system.   That’s not this bill.   The Republicans wanted what I called the â€Å"foxes guard the henhouse approach† in which we further deregulate the insurance companies and let them run wild, the notion being somehow that that was going to lower costs for the American people.   I don’t know a serious health care economist who buys that idea, but that was their concept.† Obama is admitting that an authoritarian model is being employed through the use of increased regulation of the health care providers in the nation. If that were not the case, why would the legislation be necessary in the first place if it were not designed to increase the power of the government to regulate and control the industry? â€Å"The second thing this does is it creates a pool, a marketplace, where individuals and small businesses, who right now are having a terrible time out there getting health insurance, are going to be able to purchase health insurance as part of a big group -- just like federal employees, just like members of Congress.   They are now going to be part of a pool that can negotiate for better rates, better

Tv Advertising And Peer Group Pressure Marketing Essay

Tv Advertising And Peer Group Pressure Marketing Essay Children also exert a powerful influence over their parents to buy them the latest products, influenced by TV advertising and peer group pressure. TV/film and the latest toy crazes are also important drivers, so a strong stream of new products heavily supported by the media will help to ensure regular uplifts in toy sales. The big challenge is for toy retailers to avoid competing too heavily on price, so as to drive value growth in sales. This will be difficult given the slow pace of the economic recovery and the squeeze on incomes that will increase in 2011 due to austerity measures being introduced to cut the government borrowing deficit. Licensed products will continue to be a major focus of new product launches, with ranges related to new TV or film releases supplementing long-established licensed ranges that continue to be popular. Educational toys that aid learning are also likely to see growth. Nostalgic toys with a modern twist are another important area of the market and in terms of retailing the multi-channel combination of websites, catalogues and stores with a bit of added retail theatre will help drive incremental sales and reduce the heavy reliance on Christmas. This portable Mini Photo Studio is designed to steer children away from video games and towards the artistic passion of photography. The concept came with the increase in popularity of social media and photo sharing, as well as a high percentage of digital camera ownership. Market Description Mini Photo Studio is primarily focused in the market of arts and crafts products; selling a product that will help develop the creativity of the children and teenagers by learning the beautiful art of photography. Demographic Analysis of Consumers The main target market of the Mini Photo Studio is the young teenagers (9-16 years) who are interested in the artistic passion of photography. Children and young teenagers, who are aged between 9-16 years old, are generally interested in social networks, fashion, make-up, latest technology mobile phones and photography (Mintel, 2008). In addition, according to a 2008 Mintel Report the second feature used on mobile phones by young teenagers is the camera facility. Starting with 2003, young teenagers also have more disposable pocket-money to buy their own things and when shopping with parents their own decision is the most important. There are different types of consumers interested in buying the Mini Photo Studio such as consumers interested to learn or develop the photography skills, or interested in modelling which are usually connected more with the celebrity. As Mintel Report says Celebrity endorsement is apparently more influential among children than among adults, with almost a quarter of parents claiming that their child/children aged 12+ are influenced by some kind of celebrity/pop/ sports star. The above characteristics of consumers were among the top factors that came with the increase in popularity of social media and photo sharing, as well as a high percentage of digital camera ownership. With the main focus on creating a product designed to increase the creativity of the teenagers and to keep them away from the use of the video games, which according to Mintel, parents are concerned that video games can become addicted to their children, so it is beneficial for us to focus on this type of consumer. The consumers are those whose attitudes, behaviours, and use of goods are significantly important for their personal development and interest. They make brand choices based on new trends and celebrity endorsements. In fact, according to Mintel Children claim to place heavy emphasis on their own opinion when making purchasing decisions, with around 4 in 10 children claiming to be confident about their own opinions. Therefore any use of celebrities must not appear to dictate or lecture to children, instead allowing them to make informed purchase or usage decisions. This is especially important among older children, who are exerting their independence.

The Scarlet Letter: Tales Of Sin And Confession :: essays research papers fc

The Scarlet Letter: Tales of Sin and Confession â€Å"The happiness of the wicked passes away like a torrent!† This quote from Jean Baptiste Racin summarizes The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne in one sentence. The novel’s main focus is on three main characters and how the sins they commit affect their lives in the strict Puritan town of Boston around the year 1642. Hawthorne was very knowledgeable of his Puritan ancestry and shows it by incorporating some important thoughts and traditions into this story about sin and confession. Throughout the novel, the physical, social, mental and emotional changes that result from sin in the lives of the characters are never positive and the outcome of their spiritual battles are not always good; but the author makes it perfectly clear to us that concealing sin is not wise. Hawthorne begins the first chapter of the novel with Hester’s punishment. She had committed adultery, a crime that the Puritans often punished by death. She was sentenced to stand on the scaffold, a symbol of shame, for three hours in front of the whole town and to wear a scarlet letter â€Å"A† (meaning Adultery) for the rest of her life. She stayed loyal to her new partner and refused to expose his identity. Although she is not justified, Hester did not commit the greatest sin in the novel. Hers was a crime of passion and love, not premeditated or intended to hurt others. The sin in her actions was that her desire was of more importance to her than the Puritan moral code. This is proven when Hester says to Dimmesdale, â€Å"What we did had a consecration of its own. We felt it so! We said so to each other!† Hester fully acknowledged her guilt and displayed it with pride to the world. The elaborately decorated scarlet letter and the style in which she clothed he r daughter, Pearl, was proof of this. Hester is, indeed, a sinner and her crime was very serious. The book is named after the punishment she received for committing this crime and it made life incredibly difficult for herself and her partner, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale. In overcoming the hardships, she learned many important lessons that could be used to prevent future problems. â€Å"Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wilds ones, and they had made her strong†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Her comfort to the broken-hearted, charity to the poor, and unquestionable presence in times of hardship were direct results of her quest for repentance.

5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids so

GEVER TULLY: 5 DANGEROUS THINGS YOU SHOULD LET YOUR KIDS DO Welcome to â€Å"Five Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Children Do. †Ã‚  I don't have children. I borrow my friends' children, so  (Laughter)  take all this advice with a grain of salt. I'm Gever Tulley. I'm a contract computer scientist by trade,  but I'm the founder of something called the Tinkering School. It's a summer program which aims to help kids to learn  how to build the things that they think of. So we build a lot of things. And I do put power tools into the hands of second-graders.So if you're thinking about sending your kid to Tinkering School,  they do come back bruised, scraped and bloody. So, you know, we live in a worldthat's subjected to ever more stringent child safety regulations. There doesn't seem to be any limit on how crazy  child safety regulations can get. We put suffocation warnings on all the — on every piece of plastic film  manufactured in the United States or for sale  with an item in the United States. We put warnings on coffee cups to tell us  that the contents may be hot.And we seem to think that any item  sharper than a golf ball is too sharp  for children under the age of 10. So where does this trend stop? When we round every corner and eliminate every sharp object,  every pokey bit in the world,  then the first time that kids come in contact with anything sharp  or not made out of round plastic,  they'll hurt themselves with it. So, as the boundaries of what we determine as the safety zone  grow ever smaller, we cut off our children from valuable opportunities  to learn how to interact with the world around them.And despite all of our best efforts and intentions,  kids are always going to figure out  how to do the most dangerous thing they can,  in whatever environment they can. So despite the provocative title, this presentation is really about safety  and about some simple things that we can do  to rais e our kids to be creative, confident  and in control of the environment around them. And what I now present to you is an excerpt from a book in progress. The book is called â€Å"50 Dangerous Things. †Ã‚  This is five dangerous things.Thing number one — play with fire. Learning to control one of the most elemental forces in nature  is a pivotal moment in any child's personal history. Whether we remember it or not,it's a — it's the first time we really get  control of one of these mysterious things. These mysteries are only revealed  to those who get the opportunity to play with it. So, playing with fire. This is like one of the great things we ever discovered, fire. From playing with it, they learn some basic principles about fire,  about intake, about combustion, about exhaust.These are the three working elements of fire  that you have to have to have a good controlled fire. And you can think of the open-pit fire as a laboratory. You don't know what they're going to learn from playing with it. You know, let them fool around with it on their own terms and trust me,  they're going to learn things  that you can't get out of playing with Dora the Explorer toys. Number two — own a pocketknife. Pocketknives are kind of drifting out of our cultural consciousness,  which I think is a terrible thing. Laughter)  Your first — your first pocketknife is like the first universal tool that you're given. You know, it's a spatula, it's a pry bar,  it's a screwdriver and it's a blade. And it's a — it's a powerful and empowering tool. And in a lot of cultures they give knives —  like, as soon as they're toddlers they have knives. These are Inuit children cutting whale blubber. I first saw this in a Canadian Film Board film when I was 10,  and it left a lasting impression, to see babies playing with knives. And it shows that kids can develop an extended sense of self  through a tool at a very young age. You lay down a couple of very simple rules —  always cut away from your body, keep the blade sharp, never force it  Ã¢â‚¬â€ and these are things kids can understand and practice with. And yeah, they're going to cut themselves. I have some terrible scars on my legs from where I stabbed myself. But you know, they're young. They heal fast. (Laughter) Number three — throw a spear. It turns out that our brains are actually wired for throwing things  and, like muscles, if you don't use parts of your brain,  they tend to atrophy over time.But when you exercise them,  any given muscle adds strength to the whole system  and that applies to your brain too. So practicing throwing things has been shown to  stimulate the frontal and parietal lobes,  which have to do with visual acuity, 3D understanding,  and structural problem solving, so it gives a sense —  it helps develop their visualization skills and their predictive ability. And throwing is a combi nation of analytical and physical skill,  so it's very good for that kind of whole-body training. These kinds of target-based practice alsohelps kids develop attention and concentration skills.So those are great. Number four — deconstruct appliances. There is a world of interesting things inside your dishwasher. Next time you're about to throw out an appliance, don't throw it out. Take it apart with your kid, or send him to my school  and we'll take it apart with them. Even if you don't know what the parts are,  puzzling out what they might be for  is a really good practice for the kids  to get sort of the sense that they can take things apart,  and no matter how complex they are,  they can understand parts of them and that means that eventually,  they can understand all of them.It's a sense of knowability, that something is knowable. So these black boxes that we live with and take for granted  are actually complex things made by other people  and you can understand them. Number five — two-parter. Break the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. There are laws beyond safety regulations  that attempt to limit how we can interact with the things  that we own — in this case, digital media. It's a very simple exercise — buy a song on ITunes, write it to a CD,  then rip the CD to an MP3 and play it on your very same computer. You've just broken a law. Technically the RIAA can come and persecute you.It's an important lesson for kids to understand —  that some of these laws get broken by accident  and that laws have to be interpreted. And it's something we often talk about with the kids  when we're fooling around with things and breaking them open  and taking them apart and using them for other things —  and also when we go out and drive a car. Driving a car is a — is a really empowering act for a young child,  so this is the ultimate. For those of you who aren't comfortable actually br eaking the law,  you can drive a car with your child. This is — this is a great stage for a kid.This happens about the same time  that they get latched onto things like dinosaurs,  these big things in the outside world  that they're trying to get a grip on. A car is a similar object, and they can get in a car and drive it. And  that's a really, like — it gives them a handle on a world  in a way that they wouldn't — that they don't often have access to. So — and it's perfectly legal. Find a big empty lot, make sure there's nothing in it  and it's on private property, and let them drive your car. It's very safe actually. And it's fun for the whole family. So, let's see. I think that's it. That's number five and a half. OK.

“Without Freedom it is Impossible to Make Moral Choice” Discuss

Kant, a soft determinist, said that in order to make a moral decision we must have freedom. Kant believed that the ability to make moral decisions lay within the existence of freedom; stating that if we are not free to make our own decisions those decisions could not be moral as we were never free to make that decision in the first place. Kant thought that a person could be blamed for an action if they could have acted differently; for example if a person’s family is held at gunpoint and they are forced to open a safe they cannot be blamed as they did not have a choice.If we are to have free will we must have the ability to make a decision that is unhindered; Kant believed that we must have free will if we are to be help morally responsible for our actions, if God did not give us free will then our decisions cannot be considered immoral or moral as we would have had to act in the way we did. Thus we cannot be held responsible; a good moral action cannot be praised as you had n o other option, whilst an immoral action cannot be punished as once again there was no free choice.John Locke who was also a soft determinist as he believed that morality and the ability to make moral decisions developed throughout your lives. Locke believed that the mind was a tabula rosa, a blank slate that is shaped and filled by the person’s life experience and that ultimately creates a person’s morality. However the sensory data that creates this moral framework within the mind is already determined; therefore using Locke’s idea freedom is not required in order to make a moral decision it is the determined experiences you live through that create your morality and result in you making immoral or moral decisions.Another soft determinist was David Hume who believed in a limited form of free will, he ultimately believed that nature was in control of human destiny. That freedom was also subject-based, meaning that you are free to make a moral decision and free to follow through with that action. He went on to argue that determined events create human free will and that each individual is free to respond in their own way to those determined events; the morality of the choice the person makes is down to them.Hume believed that nothing occurred by chance or luck but we do have the free will, even if limited, to make our own decisions A libertarian would state that human’s decisions and actions are strictly uncaused; that no choices we make are determined and that we are completely free to make our own choices, these can either be moral or immoral, thus we are completely responsible. Libertarianism is incompatible with determinism, this is because they believe determinism is incorrect as everyone is free to all act differently in the exact same event, not all of humans would act morally in such an event.Kant would have been against Libertarianism because despite being a compatibilist Kant thought that some actions were determined. Othe rs believe that it is not necessary to be required to accept responsibility for your actions thus there is no need to be free in order to make moral decisions. Hard determinism also covers the problem of free will and moral decision making; one of the most famous hard determinists is Clarence Darrow. Darrow was a defence lawyer who in the trial of Leob and Leopold used hard determinism to suggest that we are not free thus we cannot make moral decisions.In the trial Darrow blamed their actions upon the way the two were brought up thus were predetermined to murder Robert Franks; their upbringing determined how they would make moral decisions in the future. This means that using Darrow’s idea Leob and Leopold did not have free will and thus could not make a moral choice; their predestination meant that they would only make an immoral decision. Ted Honderich was another hard determinist who approached the idea of free will using the physics as his base; using the Aristotelian ide a that nothing occurs without a cause.Honderich believed that events within the universe are determined and humans act in response to those events and are therefore not responsible for their actions. Using this belief one would argue that moral decisions cannot be made as there is no freedom to do so, everything is already determined beforehand. Saint Augustine was a religious determinist who believed that humanity required God’s help to do good; this is granted by God to humans, therefore God determines who will be saved and who will not. This is known as predestination; there irrelevance of our actions whether moral or immoral as God has already chosen those who shall be saved.John Calvin argued that people have no free will in regard to moral decision making; stating that God makes his choice about who to save, therefore does not look at a person and recognise them as good. Calvin stated that people only do good because God made them that way and placed them in an environm ent that would only make them do good. Logically Calvin concluded that if we have no control over our actions due to being made to act in a certain way, we cannot be considered responsible for them, thus we cannot make a moral decision as the decision and way we act was already determined by God.