Buying and selling

Lots of property changing hands these days, locally:

- Area housing market shows signs of recovery
   Home sales in the Buffalo Niagara region rose from a year ago for the first time in nearly a year in May, as signs of a recovery start to take hold.
   Last month, 906 homes changed hands locally, up 3.3 percent from 877 a year ago, according to new statictics released Monday from the Buffalo Niagara Association of Realtors. That’s the highest total since last October and the first time since last June that there’s been a year-over-year increase in closed sales.

 - Managers buy Town Ballroom
   The managers of the Town Ballroom in downtown Buffalo have purchased their building and property on Main Street [right] and paid off a city loan, with the help of an independent concert promoter from Nantucket Island acting as an angel investor.
   Shadigee Properties LLC, an entity registered to music promoter John Peters of Nantucket, off Cape Cod, Mass., paid $622,000 to purchase the property at 681 Main St. from MJG of Buffalo, according to Erie County Clerk records.

   And elsewhere:
- New owner planning to strengthen Maine newspapers  
- Boston newspaper for sale -- but at what price? 
- GM to sell Swedish unit Saab to Koenigsegg 
- Merck, Schering-Plough set meetings on merger 
- Irish company buys Ill. wind farms 

-- George Pyle/The Buffalo News