Residential
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March 04, 2025
4th Circ. Finds No Harm In Facebook Ads For Young Renters
The Fourth Circuit affirmed a Maryland federal court's dismissal of a would-be renter's proposed class action alleging age discrimination by the D.C. area's largest real estate firms Tuesday, finding that the plaintiff failed to show that she was harmed by the company's targeting of younger renters in Facebook ads.
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March 04, 2025
NY Creates Framework For County Tax On Short-Term Rentals
New York established a framework for counties to impose tax on short-term rentals as part of a bill signed by Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul.
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March 04, 2025
DeSantis Backs Canning Fla. Rent Tax, Cutting Property Taxes
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called on state legislators Tuesday to eliminate the state's business rent tax on commercial leases and reaffirmed his pledge to support an effort by lawmakers to draft a constitutional amendment that would cut property taxes.
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March 04, 2025
PE Firm Bascom Buys LA County Apartments For $127M
The Bascom Group, a private equity firm based in Irvine, California, has announced it acquired a 257-unit apartment complex in the Los Angeles area for $127 million.
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March 03, 2025
Real Estate Bills To Watch In Florida's Legislative Session
Florida's annual two-month legislative session officially kicks off Tuesday, but lawmakers have already been at work drafting and filing bills. With a total of 1,821 bills filed between the two chambers before last Friday's deadline, a considerable number have the potential to impact real estate, with several likely to feature prominently in upcoming debates.
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March 03, 2025
9th Circ. Rejects Redo Of Antitrust Case Against Zillow, NAR
The Ninth Circuit on Monday said it would not revive a defunct brokerage platform's case accusing Zillow and the National Association of Realtors of deception related to the online real estate company's website, saying there was no conspiracy in the way changes were made to how listings were displayed.
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March 03, 2025
Purlin Harnesses AI To Connect The Dots In Homebuying
Law360's Proptech Profile series looks at California-based software company Purlin Co., whose founder has striven to combine business and technology principles to deliver AI-powered homebuying tools that he says align with consumers' wants while delivering superior efficiency and results for real estate providers.
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March 03, 2025
Mich. Homeowners Denied Cert. In RICO Foreclosure Suit
A Michigan federal judge followed a recent string of decisions denying class certification to homeowners who allege local governments profited from the sales of their tax-foreclosed property, rejecting Wayne County residents' attempt to certify a class of people who say a racketeering scheme stripped them of their foreclosed homes' surplus equity.
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March 03, 2025
National Association Of Realtors Names New GC
The National Association of Realtors has tapped its vice president of political advocacy as its new general counsel in the trade group's Washington, D.C., office.
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March 03, 2025
4th Circ. Backs Away From Contractor's Arbitration Fight
The Fourth Circuit said Monday it doesn't have jurisdiction over a contractor's challenge to a couple's arbitration award for an incomplete home renovation project, citing the U.S. Supreme Court's holding that federal courts have jurisdiction only over motions to compel, but not vacate or confirm, arbitration awards.
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March 03, 2025
Treasury Halts Enforcement Of Corporate Transparency Act
The U.S. Treasury Department won't enforce the Corporate Transparency Act on U.S. businesses and will change regulations so it only applies to foreign companies registered stateside, according to an announcement that activists said invites criminals into the U.S. and lawyers said could provoke judicial scrutiny.
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March 03, 2025
Lennar GC Saw Comp Rise To $3.4M In 2024
For the second consecutive year, the general counsel of homebuilder Lennar Corp. saw an increase in overall compensation while the company's co-CEOs continued to see their earnings decrease, according to a recent U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
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March 03, 2025
Firms Raise $470M For Opportunity Zone Projects In 4 States
Financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald and real estate company Silverstein Properties on Monday said they have capped a fund at $470 million to invest in a group of four multifamily and mixed-use developments in four states, with nearly 2,000 housing units and 1.5 million square feet of space between the projects.
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March 03, 2025
2 Firms Guide $3.2B Canadian Senior Living Portfolio Buy
Real estate investment trust Welltower Inc. purchased a 38-property portfolio of Canadian ultra-luxury senior living communities and nine development parcels from the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan in a $3.2 billion deal guided by Stikeman Elliott LLP and Torys LLP, according to two announcements Sunday.
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March 03, 2025
NYC Real Estate Week In Review
Weil Gotshal, Vinson & Elkins and Kanfer & Holtzer are among the law firms that picked up work on the largest New York City real estate deals that hit public records last week.
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March 03, 2025
Real Estate Cos. Strike $75K Deal In Time Shaving Suit
A real estate investment company and its subsidiary will pay $75,000 to end a lawsuit alleging it underpaid cleaners by requiring them to clock out before they finished their work, according to a filing in New York federal court.
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February 28, 2025
Bills Look To Bolster Florida's Affordable Housing Efforts
Housing affordability has commanded significant attention from the Florida Legislature in recent years, and it promises to be a major topic of discussion once again in the 2025 session starting Tuesday, as two recently filed bills are proposing broad actions to take on persistent challenges.
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February 28, 2025
9th Circ. Backs Developer's Conviction For Bribing LA Pol
The Ninth Circuit upheld a developer's conviction for bribing former Los Angeles City Councilor Jose Huizar to foil a challenge to a downtown project, ruling Thursday the district court didn't have to instruct jurors that the government had to prove the developer bribed Huizar to take a specific, official act.
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February 28, 2025
Quarterly Calls: DeepSeek, Wildfires, Park Ave
See what some of the largest real estate companies and investment firms told investors and analysts about the market and the prospects for data centers, multifamily housing and offices.
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February 28, 2025
Opendoor Tops Revenue Expectations But Faces Tough Market
The new year has gotten off to a slow start in the home sales market, but leaders at Opendoor Technologies Inc. said in an earnings call that they think recent cost-saving efforts have made the home-selling platform a leaner, more efficient business.
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February 28, 2025
200 Organizations Fight To Protect COVID-Era Renter Rights
More than 200 national and local organizations urged Congress on Friday not to pass bicameral legislation introduced in February that would strike down a pandemic-era protection for renters at federally backed properties, arguing the provision dramatically reduced eviction rates.
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February 28, 2025
Dallas-Area Officials OK Features For $2.5B Mixed-Use Project
Planning officials in Frisco, Texas, have signed off on a parking garage, an amphitheater and a group of 10 retail and restaurant buildings for a developer's $2.5 billion project north of Dallas called Firefly Park.
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February 28, 2025
Taxation With Representation: Gibson Dunn, Skadden
In this week's Taxation With Representation, Blackstone acquires Safe Harbor Marinas, National Grid sells its green subsidiary in the U.S. to Brookfield, Apollo Global Management buys Bridge Investment Group Holdings Inc., and Teleflex splits into two publicly traded companies.
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February 27, 2025
Calif. State Farm Meeting Raises Solvency Concerns
State Farm's emergency request for a 22% premium increase in California has raised questions about the insurer's financial health, but a prominent consumer group says the carrier hasn't justified that request and several others that would raise premium costs.
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February 27, 2025
PennyMac Can't Avoid Investors' Suit Over Post-Libor Rate
A California federal judge has ruled PennyMac's mortgage investment arm must face a suit accusing it of using last year's discontinuation of Libor to unlawfully lock in a lower dividend for some of its preferred stock, saying the plaintiffs have adequately pled that the company violated the LIBOR Act when it issued dividends at a fixed rate.
Expert Analysis
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Debate Over CFPB Definition Of Credit Is Just Beginning
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has recently worked to expand the meaning of credit, so anyone operating on the edges of the credit markets, or even those who assumed they were safely outside the scope of this regulatory perimeter, should pay close attention as legal challenges to broad interpretations of the definition unfold, says John Coleman at Orrick.
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A Closer Look At Feds' Proposed Banker Compensation Rule
A recently proposed rule to limit financial institutions' ability to award incentive-based compensation for risk-taking may progress through the rulemaking process slowly due to the sheer number of regulators collaborating on the rule and the number of issues under consideration, say attorneys at Troutman Pepper.
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The FTC And DOJ Should Backtrack On RealPage
The antitrust agencies ought to reverse course on their enforcement actions against RealPage, which are based on a faulty legal premise, risk further property shortages and threaten the use of algorithms that are central to the U.S. economy, says Thomas Stratmann at George Mason University.
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Ohio Tax Talk: The Legislative Push For Property Tax Relief
As Ohio legislators attempt to alleviate the increasing property tax burden, four recent bills that could significantly affect homeowners propose to eliminate replacement property tax levies, freeze property taxes for longtime homeowners, adjust homestead exemptions annually for inflation, and temporarily expand the homestead exemption, say Raghav Agnihotri and Rachael Chamberlain at Frost Brown.
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In The CFPB Playbook: Regulatory Aims Get High Court Assist
Newly emboldened after the U.S. Supreme Court last month found that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's funding is constitutional, the bureau has likely experienced a psychic boost, allowing its already robust enforcement agenda to continue expanding, say attorneys at Husch Blackwell.
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What's New In Kentucky's Financial Services Overhaul
Kentucky's H.B. 726 will go into effect in July and brings with it some significant restructuring to the Kentucky Financial Services Code, including changes to mortgage loan license fees and repeals of provisions relating to installment term loans and savings associations, say attorneys at Frost Brown.
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A Comparison Of FDIC, OCC Proposed Merger Approaches
Max Bonici and Connor Webb at Venable take a closer look at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's respective bank merger proposals and highlight certain common themes and important differences, in light of regulators continually rethinking their approaches to bank mergers.
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Tax Assessment: Recapping Georgia's Legislative Session
Jonathan Feldman and Alla Raykin at Eversheds Sutherland examine tax-related changes from Georgia’s General Assembly — such as the governor’s successful push to accelerate income tax cuts — and suggest steps to take before certain tax incentives are challenged in the state's next legislative session.
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11th Circ. Ruling May Foreshadow Ch. 15 Clashes
The Eleventh Circuit's recent decision in In re: Talal Qais Abdulmunem Al Zawawi has introduced a split from the Second Circuit regarding whether debtors in foreign proceedings must have a domicile, calling attention to the understudied nature of Chapter 15 of the Bankruptcy Code, say attorneys at Cleary.
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A Look At New IRS Rules For Domestically Controlled REITs
The Internal Revenue Services' finalized Treasury Regulations addressing whether real estate investment trusts qualify as domestically controlled adopt the basic structure of previous proposals, but certain new and modified rules may mitigate the regulations' impact, say attorneys at Simpson Thacher.
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What CRA Deadline Means For Biden Admin. Rulemaking
With the 2024 election rapidly approaching, the Biden administration must race to finalize proposed agency actions within the next few weeks, or be exposed to the chance that the following Congress will overturn the rules under the Congressional Review Act, say attorneys at Covington.
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How New Rule Would Change CFIUS Enforcement Powers
Before the May 15 comment deadline, companies may want to weigh in on proposed regulatory changes to enforcement and mitigation tools at the disposal of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, including broadened subpoena powers, difficult new mitigation timelines and higher maximum penalties, say attorneys at Venable.
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2nd Circ. Eminent Domain Ruling Empowers Municipalities
The Second Circuit's recent decision in Brinkmann v. Town of Southold, finding that a pretextual taking does not violate the Fifth Amendment's takings clause, gives municipalities a powerful tool with which to block unwanted development projects, even in bad faith, say James O'Connor and Benjamin Sugarman at Phillips Lytle.