Free Republic

As the seller’s market persists throughout most of the United States, prices continue to rise and affordable housing appears to be slipping through the fingers of the average American.(Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock)The National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported the highest ever national median sales price of $419,300 for a single-family home in May.“We’re actually forecasting that home prices will continue to grow based on the lack of inventory and demand for home ownership,” Jessica Lautz, NAR deputy chief economist and vice president of research, told The Epoch Times.A $400,000 price tag translates to a $40,000 down payment—with the...

The national office vacancy rate hit a record 19.8% in the first quarter of 2024, according to a preliminary report from Moody’s Analytics. And it could get worse, as companies continue to lease substantial space despite a decline in the in-office footprint. The 'urban doom loop' cycleWhile the shift to remote work in recent years offers plenty of flexibility to employees, some experts have concerns the decline in office building usage could spell a more sinister problem for big cities. “Everybody’s affected by this issue,” Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, a professor of real estate at Columbia Business School, told CNN. Van...

WASHINGTON – If you rent a house when you would rather own, pin some of the blame on corporate landlords. The 10 biggest institutional investors owned more than 430,000 single-family rental homes at the end of 2023, and they continue to acquire houses to rent out to middle-class families. Corporate landlords seek to dominate the neighborhoods they target, simultaneously reducing the inventory of houses to buy while expanding the stock of houses to rent. Members of Congress have introduced bills to force the largest institutional investors to dramatically cut their holdings. The United States suffers from a housing shortage of...

Did NAIOP get the memo? NAIOP (National Association of Industrial and Office Properties) is a trade group comprised of commericial real estate developers and academics. Lobbying for more office space to be built despite overbuilding, Another chink in the armor of the US economy (not the roaring economy Biden and Yellen keep screaming about). Overbuilding of office space, COVID shutdowns, remote working and urban crime. A recipe for office vacancy. Moody's predicts 24% of office towers will be vacant by 2026! During the first three months of 2023, U.S. office vacancy topped 20 percent for the first time in decades....

he former Los Angeles home of Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe was declared a historic cultural monument Wednesday, preventing it from being demolished by its current owners. The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously – in a 12-0 vote – to approve the motion introduced by Councilwoman Traci Park who represents the 11th District where the Spanish Colonial-style home is located. Monroe bought the one-story home on Helena Drive in 1962 for $75,000. It was the only residence she ever owned. She died there six months later.

Red Lobster, known for bringing all-you-can-eat shrimp to the average American and which was at on point the world’s largest seafood chain, filed for bankruptcy last month. Red Lobster now has more than one billion dollars in debt. They closed 50 locations about two months ago and just announced a list of 600 locations it plans to close. What went wrong? Same Old, Same Old Remember going to Red Lobster as a kid? You might have tried your first lobster tail, or surf-n-turf there. That experience you had as a kid, would be hardly different if you went into one...

Your government was fixing to auction off your real estate—including national parks, farmlands, precious ecosystems, and natural resources—to the highest bidder. According to a recent report by Elizabeth Nickson, the highly-credentialed journalist behind the Welcome to Absurdistan blog, there was a new federal rule set forth by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this past October is set to be implemented in November of this year—this rule would have seen public federal lands, including national parks and wildlife refuges, traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Here are the details, from Nickson:If not stopped, on November 17th, the U.S. government...

A new report is revealing how illegal drug funds have made their way through the commercial real estate market in South Florida “and beyond”, according to Bisnow. Among examples was Miami’s Sefira Capital, who agreed to forfeit over $29M in 2021 to settle a DEA investigation into money laundering, though it admitted no wrongdoing. The firm was accused of ignoring red flags about investor funds and was implicated in a DEA sting operation, revealing millions in drug money flowed through its investment fund, Bisnow reports. The probe included a $63M hotel acquisition near Washington, D.C., and an office building in...

A juror was dismissed Monday after reporting that a woman dropped a bag of $120,000 in cash at her home and offered her more money if she would vote to acquit seven people charged with stealing more than $40 million from a program meant to feed children during the pandemic. These seven are the first of 70 defendants expected to go to trial in a conspiracy that cost taxpayers $250 million. Eighteen others have pleaded guilty, and authorities said they recovered about $50 million in one of the nation’s largest pandemic-related fraud cases. Prosecutors say just a fraction of the...

President Joe Biden has imposed a huge migration tax on young Americans’ housing costs, but his tame media allies are hiding the evidence. “A shortage of housing, inflation, and high interest rates are squeezing renters around the country and pricing out potential home buyers,” the Washington Post told its readers on May 28 under the headline “Skyrocketing rents and home prices may be pivotal in the 2024 election.” The New York Times provided its readers the same don’t-blame-Biden’s-migration theme on May 27 with the vague headline, “America’s Affordable Housing Crisis”: President Biden worries about high housing costs … Tens of...

The tallest building in Fort Worth has a commanding position in the city’s skyline, but the 1M SF building only commanded a price of about $12 per square foot at a foreclosure auction. The price per square foot amounted to less than 10% of the previous sale price for Burnett Plaza, which at 40 stories towers over the other buildings in Fort Worth. The winning bidder was one of Burnett Plaza’s lenders: Pinnacle Bank Texas bought back the building at this month’s auction with a bid of $12.3M, according to a report in the Dallas Business Journal. The previous owner,...

Barry Sternlicht, a prominent figure in the real estate industry as the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Starwood Capital Group, has sounded the alarm regarding the precarious state of regional and community banks across the United States. His apprehension stems from the challenges faced by these institutions amid the current economic landscape characterized by higher interest rates, increasing vacancies, and inflationary pressures. Sternlicht’s concerns point to a potential wave of bank failures, with implications for the broader financial system.

Judge Arthur Engoron is now under investigation after claims surfaced that he received unsolicited advice from a prominent New York City real estate attorney, Adam Leitman Bailey, weeks before ordering former President Donald Trump to pay a hefty $454 million judgment. This investigation by the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct seeks to determine whether Engoron violated judicial conduct rules, NBC New York reported

Months after saying on air that he was done with New York, Sean Hannity’s 10,600-square-foot estate has been put on the market. Sean Hannity of Fox News has listed his Long Island estate after moving to Florida. Photo Credit: OneKey MLS/Wikimedia Commons via Gage SkidmoreLocated in the town of Oyster Bay village of Centre Island, it's now listed for $13.75 million, according to its listing. The estate, which has seven bedrooms and nine bathrooms, is owned by Fox News star Sean Hannity, the Wall Street Journal reported, who announced on his television show that he had officially left New York...

Starting in July, the real estate industry is bracing for a sweeping shake-up thanks to a $418 million settlement offered by the National Association of Realtors to overhaul its long-entrenched commission structure for agents and pay compensation to the sellers and real estate brokerages who sued. The NAR got a further blow on April 5, when a federal court cleared the way for the Justice Department to reopen an antitrust probe into the group and its rules regarding home-sale commissions. While the settlement awaits final approval later in the year, a preliminary sign-off by a federal judge on Tuesday means...

The already insane cost of purchasing a home has hit a new high, thanks to the ongoing horror show that is Bidenomics. Fox News: Findings from Redfin show the combination of steep mortgage rates and elevated home prices has pushed the median monthly housing payment to a record $2,775 – an 11% increase from the same time last year. … There are a number of driving forces behind the affordability crisis. Years of underbuilding fueled a shortage of homes in the country, a problem that was later exacerbated by the rapid rise in mortgage rates and expensive construction materials. And...

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Real estate tycoon Truong My Lan was sentenced Thursday to death by a court in Ho Chi Minh City in southern Vietnam in the country’s largest financial fraud case ever, state media Vietnam Net said. The 67-year-old chair of the real estate company Van Thinh Phat was formally charged with fraud amounting to $12.5 billion — nearly 3% of the country’s 2022 GDP. Lan illegally controlled Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank between 2012 and 2022 and allowed 2,500 loans that resulted in losses of $27 billion to the bank, reported state media VnExpress. The court asked...

The share of San Francisco sellers losing money on their home sale is sitting near its highest level in more than a decade, largely because prices have come back down to earth after skyrocketing during the pandemic. Nationwide, the share of sellers losing money is much smaller (4%) because home prices remain near their record high. In San Francisco, the typical seller who’s parting ways with their home for less than they originally paid is losing $155,500. Nationwide, the median loss is roughly $40,000. New England sellers are least likely to lose money, with less than 2% of Providence, RI...

The perjury charges were brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is prosecuting Trump on charges of falsifying business records as part of a hush money scheme. . . . Weisselberg falsely testified that he was unfocused on the details of Trump’s triplex apartment, which was valued at almost three times its actual size on Trump’s financial statements.

The number of cities where the typical home price is at least $1 million has dramatically increased over the past year. There are now 550 U.S. cities where an average home is worth $1 million or more, according to a new analysis from Zillow. The lack of available homes for sale is keeping prices elevated and pushing values even higher. Even as sales inventory has begun to tick up this spring, a typical home in the U.S. is currently worth 4.2% more than it was last year. Homes in million-dollar cities saw values grow 4.6%. Zillow anticipates interest rate decreases...