U.S. home prices ended 2011 at the lowest levels since the housing crisis began in mid-2006, according to Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller indexes.

Google has expanded its Manhattan presence in the past year, adding roughly 750 people in the most prominent example of a technology company shifting its focus toward New York.

Deposits in most Caribbean countries can be spent on construction rather than locked away in escrow, posing problems for would-be buyers.

This recently remodeled three-bedroom triplex in the U.K. capital’s South Kensington neighborhood has views across the city.

The European Central Bank announced Wednesday that it provided €529.5bn in 3-year loans to 800 banks in an effort to pump liquidity into the struggling banking system and the Eurozone economy. The loans are at a low rate of 1%.

The Central Bank said today that  level of Irish bank lending to consumers and businesses fell again in January and Irish resident private sector bank deposits also dropped 7% on an annual basis.

Irish Live Register 2012: The standardised unemployment rate (SUR) in February 2012 was 14.2%, unchanged from January 2012. The latest seasonally adjusted unemployment rate from the Quarterly National Household Survey was 14.4% in the third quarter of 2011.

Eurozone annual inflation was 2.6% in January 2012, down from 2.7% in December 2011. A year earlier the rate was 2.3%. Monthly inflation was -0.8% in January 2012, according to Eurostat, the EU’s statistics office.

Markets news on stocks, currencies and commodities; Glanbia reports revenue rose 26.2% to €2.7bn in 2011; Goldman managing director in insider trading probe.

German house prices have risen to 1999 nominal levels after price rises in 2010 and 2011. Meanwhile Irish house prices are back to year 2000 levels, according to Dermot O’Leary, chief economist at Goodbody Stockbrokers, with the decline accelerating in 2011.