Hello! Its Caroline Davis here. Peter is on holiday, so Ill be writing the Letter this week. I hope you can tune in tonight for Look North at the usual time of half past six. If theres anything you want to comment on from the programme or if theres a story you think we should know about, then get in touch with me. You can email me direct to [EMAIL PROTECTED] I look forward to reading your emails!
House Prices Im going to continue where Peter left off with this one and talk about house prices. Its a subject thats not far from most peoples mouths. But for once Ive got some good news and bad news. Lets get the bad news out of the way first UK house prices have fallen by 10.9% in the month of August. Thats the first double digit drop since 1983 according to one high street building society. Compared with the previous month, thats a drop of 1.8% leaving the cost of an average home in the UK at £174,178. So theres the bad news. The good news is that there is a little ray of hope and some rays of sunshine I expect as some very cheap properties come onto the market! Youll have to move from the UK, and learn Italian, but I hear that Sicily is a lovely place to live! Some villas have come onto the market in this little town in Western Sicily for just one euro, which works out about 81pence. Not bad! These villas are fixer-uppers though. When you move down to Italy, youll have ! to fit in your belt sander and electric screwdriver into your suitcase as most of these villas for sale were damaged by an earthquake forty years ago and since that time have been left empty and crumbling. This marketing ploy is all the idea of the mayor of the town, Vittorio Sgarbi, who hopes the cheap price will help revitalise the historic centre of his town. But theres a catch - isnt there always? Those, who buy these crumbling town houses, will have to sympathetically renovate them within two years. And I expect that will be to strict town planning regulations and at quite a large cost! But a house in Italy for one euro sounds good to me! Vet Bills You dont get this sort of problem with a cat! My cat is far too fussy about his food to get into this amount of bother. Ive read about a dog that had to have thirteen golf balls removed from its stomach after eating them on walks around a golf course. Oscar the black Labrador had started to rattle, which prompted his owner to take him to the vets. The owner had seen Oscar playing with the golf balls, but didnt think the dog had actually eaten any! Oscar is recovering though, but has to wear a muzzle at the moment so that he stays away from eating any more golf balls!! Have a nice day, Caroline Your email address will be held by the BBC and kept confidential, and will only be used in relation to this newsletter. You will be given the option to unsubscribe from this newsletter each time you receive it. Please visit the BBC's Privacy & Cookies Policy (www.bbc.co.uk/privacy) for more information And for the latest news and more where you live, go to: http://bbc.co.uk/humber and http://bbc.co.uk/lincolnshire ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the BBC Look North newsletter, go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/england/looknorthhull/newsletter/newsletter_index.shtml, enter your email address in the unsubscribe box. 1.94.4
