Jamie Westenhiser, Playboy magazine's playmate of the month in May, recently declared in that magazine that her ambition was to be successful in real estate, rather than modelling. This might yet prove a misallocation of her assets.

The Dow Jones US Homebuilders Index has broadly outperformed the US stock market in the last year. While the S&P 500 has managed a 5.7 per cent return in the last 12 months, the DJ homebuilders index has advanced 38.8 per cent. So far this year, the US market has gone nowhere in a hurry, while the homebuilders have risen 5.2 per cent.