Word: shopped
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More important than absolute prices, though, is how they relate to what people earn. To gauge housing affordability, the data shop Fiserv compares the cost of houses with household income. By that count, homes nationwide at the end of March were only 7% more expensive than they were in 2000, before the bubble. In some markets - including Phoenix, Atlanta, Las Vegas and San Jose, Calif. - they were actually cheaper. In a way that they haven't in a very long time, home prices are starting to make economic sense...
...good. Really good. First stop is a New York City jewelry shop, where she wants to buy two gold chains. "You've got such a nice selection," she tells the salesman. Always butter 'em up. Gault borrows another sales technique by inching into the seller's personal space - not in a menacing, I'm-going-to-steal-something way but in an enthusiastic, we're-on-the-same-team way. At first the salesman looks suspicious but quickly decides that she's serious about buying (and that this isn't a stickup...
...routinely documented by human-rights activists. A week later, however, Tehelka, a prominent national weekly, published a series of photos of the events surrounding the supposed shoot-out. Chungkam Sanjit, a former militant, is shown standing unarmed, putting up no resistance as the commandos push him into a shop. Moments later, he is dragged out by his feet, dead, and dumped, oozing blood, into the back of a pickup...
...take a while, however, to persuade the locals to change their shopping habits. "I'll come here only once in a while," says Dalvinderjit Kaur, a housewife, whose son is filling out a form to get membership at Best Price. "I have shopped at the same kiryana shop for 18 years." There are many reasons customers like Kaur prefer their kiryana shops: they deliver for free, even for small orders; they allow regular customers credit; and they are close by and personal. "He knows us so well," she says. "When my daughter went to America to study, he called...
Best Price has tried to match this, but customers have to pay for home delivery. It has also linked up with Kotak Mahindra Bank to offer "business cards" with which customers can shop on credit for 14 days. Kalia, the restaurateur, laughs at this: "In a country where half the economy is a black economy, how do they expect a shopkeeper to give checks and put all transactions on record...