Residential

  • November 25, 2024

    Condo Boards Likely Safe From Corporate Transparency Law

    New corporate reporting requirements under an anti-money laundering law likely do not apply to condominium associations, a Massachusetts federal judge ruled.

  • November 25, 2024

    Fla. Judge Won't Toss Banker's Suit Over $1.7M Stolen Funds

    A Florida judge said Monday he would not dismiss a lawsuit by a Miami banker who is the son of Ecuador's former comptroller accusing his company's ex-CFO of embezzling $1.7 million to invest in a condominium unit, but the judge ordered the banker to provide a more specific breakdown of the allegedly misused funds.

  • November 25, 2024

    Home Automation Co. Strikes $1.5M Deal To End OT Suit

    A smart home technology company reached a $1.5 million deal to resolve allegations from a collective of current and former employees who accused the company of wrongfully classifying them as overtime-exempt, costing them overtime pay, according to a filing in Georgia federal court.

  • November 22, 2024

    Ex-NFL Player Scott Turner Picked For Trump's HUD Secretary

    Donald Trump announced Friday that he nominated retired NFL player and former executive director of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council Scott Turner to serve as secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

  • November 22, 2024

    Service Fees Not 'Incidental' To Debt Collection, 11th Circ. Told

    Ocwen Loan Servicing LLC urged the Eleventh Circuit on Friday to reverse two Florida lower court judgments finding it violated debt collection practices with a fee to process phone or internet payments, saying it's not an illegal "incidental" charge because the borrower is paying for an optional service.

  • November 22, 2024

    Insurer Says Property Co. On Hook For $250K Cyber Theft

    An insurer for a Washington condominium association told a federal court that a property management services company must reimburse the carrier for nearly $250,000 its insured lost after cybercriminals allegedly hacked into the management company's computer system and made payment requests from the condo association's bank account.

  • November 22, 2024

    Flipping Report Suggests Gains Taxes, Mortgage Tax Breaks

    House flipping in New York City pushes out long-term residents and drives up home prices, necessitating interventions such as steep gains taxes on home sales and a mortgage recording tax exemption for low-income buyers, the Pratt Center for Community Development reported Thursday. 

  • November 22, 2024

    DC RealPage Antitrust Suit Will Get New Judge In 2025

    The District of Columbia's case accusing a slew of landlords of using property management platform RealPage to fix the price of rentals is proceeding on schedule, but the judge who has been overseeing the case is going to be handing the matter off to another at the end of the year.

  • November 22, 2024

    AG Doesn't Rep NJ Housing Group's Interests, Court Told 

    A nonprofit housing advocacy organization argued in New Jersey state court Friday that it should be allowed to intervene in a constitutional challenge to the state's new affordable housing obligations framework, contending that it represents parties that are not adequately represented by Attorney General Matt Platkin. 

  • November 22, 2024

    Insurer Owes $4.5M For Water Damage, Wash. HOA Says

    A Washington state homeowners association told a federal court that its insurer owes over $4.5 million in coverage to repair hidden water damage at its condominium community, arguing that no exclusions, conditions or limitations bar coverage under its policy.

  • November 22, 2024

    Debt Collector Awakened Illegal 'Zombie Loans,' Suit Says

    Real Time Resolutions Inc., a debt collection company, is facing a new proposed class action from two North Carolina homeowners, who have accused it of assessing an illegal interest on their mortgage that was charged off more than a decade ago.

  • November 22, 2024

    Property Plays: Fannie Mae, Extell, Knott Development

    Property Plays is a weekly roundup of the latest loans, leases, sales and projects around the country. Send your tips — all confidential — to realestate@law360.com.

  • November 22, 2024

    Home Sales, Supply Rise From 2023 In NAR October Figures

    Home sales and inventory each climbed in October in a sign that activity is picking up along with moderating interest rates, according to figures from the National Association of Realtors.

  • November 22, 2024

    Lender Can't Arbitrate Fired Worker's Suit Over Cancer Leave

    A California appeals court upheld a trial court's order that a mortgage lender cannot arbitrate a worker's suit alleging she was wrongfully fired after a cancer diagnosis, ruling the former employee cast enough doubt about the signature on the deal to keep her case in court.

  • November 21, 2024

    DOD Needs To Do More To Fix Military Housing, OIG Says

    The U.S. Department of Defense failed to properly identify and fix health, safety and environmental hazards in military housing, according to a Thursday report from the DOD's Office of Inspector General.

  • November 21, 2024

    Tenant Class Attys Get $1.1M Fee In Race Bias Suit Deal

    A federal judge awarded a nearly $1.1 million fee to class counsel for housing applicants who accused a tenant screening company of disproportionately excluding Black and Hispanic renters, saying the requested fee was reasonable for the $2.2 million settlement the attorneys struck.

  • November 21, 2024

    Insurers Sued Over Defense Costs In Fort Bragg Housing Row

    An infrastructure company and related entities providing housing for military families told a North Carolina federal court that three of its primary commercial general liability insurers must cover their defense bill from a class action accusing them of providing "unfit and uninhabitable" housing at Fort Bragg.

  • November 21, 2024

    Concerns Remain Over Pricing In Final Calif. Insurance Rule

    Insurers in California will be able to price policies using catastrophe models meant to predict future climate risks, but they must adhere to one of several options for increasing coverage availability, under a final rule that has left lingering concerns. Here, Law360 provides a background and overview of the regulation on catastrophe modeling and ratemaking.

  • November 21, 2024

    NYC Watchdog Calls Stadiums Bad Bet In Willets Point Report

    New York City's Independent Budget Office said Thursday that stadiums have proved a poor use of tax dollars in the first tally of expenses since Mayor Eric Adams announced a project to bring a soccer stadium, hotel and affordable housing to the city's Willets Point district in Queens.

  • November 21, 2024

    Progress Hit With Fair Housing Suit, Class Action Sought

    Progress Residential LLC has violated the Fair Housing Act of 1968 with a discriminatory application denial policy that disproportionally affects Black renters, according to a complaint filed Wednesday in Indiana federal court that seeks a class action.

  • November 21, 2024

    Justices Urged To Uphold Alaska Beachfront Boundary Ruling

    Alaska and an Alaskan property owner told the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold an Alaska Supreme Court ruling that determined that the boundary between two beachfront properties owned by feuding neighbors is set by where a shoreline ended up in 1938.

  • November 21, 2024

    EB-5 Experts Eyeing 4 Suits For Needed Clarity

    A 2022 law that revived and revamped the EB-5 immigrant investor visa program has left stakeholders with unanswered questions, and immigration attorneys said at a webinar Wednesday that they're eyeing four current cases for potential answers.

  • November 21, 2024

    Data Co. Gets Remand Of Suits Over Judicial Privacy

    A federal judge sent 39 lawsuits alleging violations of a New Jersey judicial privacy law back to state courts, finding the district lacks subject matter jurisdiction.

  • November 21, 2024

    Suit Against Mortgage Co. Axed Despite Atty's Bad Faith Claim

    A Texas state court judge has dismissed for good an attorney's lawsuit against the mortgage company she formerly worked for in-house, despite a dispute over whether the matter should have ended with or without prejudice.

  • November 21, 2024

    La. Parishes Can't Change Property Values After Court Rulings

    Louisiana parish assessors lack the authority to unilaterally change a property's assessment if they become aware of an error in the assessment after a local board or the state Tax Commission sets the property's value, the state attorney general's office said.

Expert Analysis

  • Debate Over CFPB Definition Of Credit Is Just Beginning

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    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.

  • A Closer Look At Feds' Proposed Banker Compensation Rule

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    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.

  • The FTC And DOJ Should Backtrack On RealPage

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    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.

  • Ohio Tax Talk: The Legislative Push For Property Tax Relief

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    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.

  • In The CFPB Playbook: Regulatory Aims Get High Court Assist

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    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.

  • What's New In Kentucky's Financial Services Overhaul

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    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.

  • A Comparison Of FDIC, OCC Proposed Merger Approaches

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    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.

  • Tax Assessment: Recapping Georgia's Legislative Session

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    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.

  • 11th Circ. Ruling May Foreshadow Ch. 15 Clashes

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    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.

  • A Look At New IRS Rules For Domestically Controlled REITs

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    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.

  • What CRA Deadline Means For Biden Admin. Rulemaking

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    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.

  • How New Rule Would Change CFIUS Enforcement Powers

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    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.

  • 2nd Circ. Eminent Domain Ruling Empowers Municipalities

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    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.