Diamond News Archives

The role of residential mortgage lending has been shifting from large banks to non-banks with the growth of Quicken Loans (and their products Rocket Mortgage). Now we are seeing investors jumping into the housing arena such as FlyHomes.^[1]

The idea is relatively simple: ^[2]A house hunter hires FlyHomes as her broker. When she’s ready to bid on a home, she gives the startup a deposit of 5 percent of the bid price. FlyHomes then makes an all-cash offer for the property, using its line of credit from a bank. After the deal is done, it sells the house to the homebuyer once she’s gotten a mortgage. In return, the company earns the typical 3 percent commission from the original seller.

In tight housing markets, this pitch can be seductive. Stories of house hunters “losing” several homes before getting a bid accepted are legion in greater Seattle, where prices have shot up faster than any other big metro area in the country for 20 months. Cash has long appealed to sellers, because it gives them certainty and puts money in their pocket more quickly. FlyHomes says more than half its offers are accepted.

Yes, the buyer still needs to be taken out of the transaction by a lender. FlyHomes simply acquires the property in hot markets using cash (and a 5% deposit from the borrower). This is an interesting way to bypass the traditional bank lending model in hot property markets.

This approach is useful in areas such as Seattle, San Francisco and … Las Vegas. Chicago? Not so much. Here is the growth rates of twenty housing markets according to S&P Case-Shiller:

The problem with Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and other metro areas is … land...

(IDEX Online) – Sarine Technologies Ltd noted that the major industry focus at the JCK Las Vegas 2018 trade show in early June was the issue of responsible diamond sourcing and provenance traceability.

Major miners, including De Beers who hosted a panel on its Tracr blockchain proposition, Alrosa and Canada’s Dominion, all commented on the growing importance of diamond traceability.

“Sarine strongly supports and is actively involved in several blockchain initiatives. Any blockchain application is only as good as the data it contains, and it is a key requirement that the data be verifiable, and provided by objective and trustworthy sources. Due to Sarine’s unique position and neutrality in the diamond pipeline’s midstream, and the vast use of our technology during that crucial stage, we can provide a powerful solution to support the diamond industry’s need for accountable traceability.

“As previously reported on numerous occasions, Sarine has been actively discussing responsible sourcing with leading industry organizations, miners, wholesalers and retailers, for the better part of a year. Specifically, Sarine has spoken out against the brazen nature of the infringement of its IP in India, and the adverse impact this could have on the import of polished diamonds into the U.S. Leading U.S. retailers, including Tiffany and Signet, have responded very positively to these issues. Steps taken by these industry leaders and other retailers include augmenting their suppliers’ contractual terms and conditions and codes of conduct to specifically address IP infringement issues.

“As expressed by Tiffany’s Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Ms. Leigh Harlan, to Bill Weisel, Sarine's General Counsel, ‘Tiffany itself has faced infringement issues, making the company acutely aware of the importance of rigorously protecting and enforcing intellectual property rights.’"

At JCK, during...

HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: nginx/1.13.5 Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2018 14:15:08 GMT Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Content-Length: 191881 Connection: keep-alive Vary: Accept-Encoding, Cookie Cache-Control: max-age=3600, public X-UA-Compatible: IE=edge Content-language: en X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN Expires: Sun, 19 Nov 1978 05:00:00 GMT Last-Modified: Thu, 28 Jun 2018 14:15:02 GMT ETag: W/"1530195302" X-Backend-Server: drupal-69955bbf6d-wx2k5 Age: 5 Varnish-Cache: HIT X-Cache-Hits: 5 X-Served-By: varnish-0 Accept-Ranges: bytes ...

References

1. ^{^} Skip to main content (www.zerohedge.com)

(IDEX Online) – Lucara Diamond Corp. reports that the remaining Indicated Mineral Resource for Karowe's AK06 kimberlite includes 7.9 million carats hosted in 57.85 million tonnes (in situ and stockpile) at an average grade of 13.7 carats per hundred tonne (cpht) with an average modelled diamond value of US$ 673 per carat.

These new results will be used for mine planning and to support the preparation of current feasibility-level studies for the potential development of an underground mine, after the completion of the current open pit mine, at its Karowe Mine in Botswana.

Eira Thomas CEO, stated, "Going forward, the Karowe mine plan is dominated by South Lobe ore, with the high grade, high value EM/PK(S) unit becoming increasingly prevalent as we mine deeper.  We now understand that some of Karowe's large, high value diamonds originated from the EM/PK(S) unit including the historic 1109 carat Lesedi La Rona and the 813 carat Constellation which sold for a record US$63 million. 

“This resource update supports the continued recovery of large high value diamonds from the South Lobe throughout its remaining open pit mine life and the likelihood for underground mining until at least 2036.  Feasibility work assessing the potential for underground mining, including hydrogeological and geotechnical drilling together with several mining trade off studies is ongoing."

The Karowe Mine has been in commercial production since July 2012. The mine has produced and sold over 2 million carats from 13.9 million tonnes of processed kimberlite at an average sales price of $US 606/carat.  Karowe is firmly established as one of the world's foremost producer of large and high value diamonds. ...