Some Wall Street investors have turned their attention to buying single-family houses around the United States, renting them out for a monthly return and then selling when it makes sense for a capital gain. In response to private equity’s involvement in the nation’s housing market, we hear regularly that it’s a “bad thing” for Wall Street investors to own and rent houses. Some argue that Wall Street crowds out regular homeowners in favor of private equity’s participation in the market. That supposedly drives up prices and rents. Others argue that a professional class of investors is profiteering (a bad thing)…

The Lone Star State has a Texas-sized affordable housing crisis on its hands. The state stands some 306,000 units short of affordable housing goals, a shortfall looming as one of the largest in the nation. That’s the estimate from Up For Growth, a national, cross-sector member network whose mission is solving the nation’s affordability crisis via data-driven research and evidence-based policy. The organization estimates that among the 50 states, only California’s shortfall of 881,000 units is larger. Numbers from the National Low-Income Housing Coalition give further credence to the extent of the problem. Along with California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Utah,…

Property billionaire Asok Kumar Hiranandani’s Royal Group of Companies is investing about £110 million ($143 million) to develop its maiden hotel in London as the Singaporean magnate seeks to expand his company’s footprint to tap the global travel boom. Royal Group bought the former NatWest Bank (formerly Westminster Bank) building on Piccadilly in London’s Mayfair district for £65 million last month. It will spend another £45 million to transform the century-old heritage property into a luxury boutique hotel with 50 suites, Hiranandani, chairman of the Singapore-based company said. Hiranandani says he had been looking for opportunities in London in the…

Multigenerational housing is increasingly being embraced by millennials and baby boomers seeking to address housing affordability, growing caregiving needs, and extending retirement savings and security. Many younger couples struggle to access the housing market while balancing the demands of raising children and anticipating caring for their aging parents. At the other end of adulthood, baby boomers are seeking ways to extend retirement savings and plan for their future care needs. Instead of the often-discussed generational warfare in America’s tight housing market, peace may be breaking out between sandwiched millennials and their retired baby boomer parents in suburbia. Together, they are…

We hear a lot about opportunities to convert some of New York’s outdated (and often unwanted) office buildings into rental or condominium apartment projects. Those conversions are correctly seen as a sensible part of the response to New York’s long-term “housing crisis,” itself largely a consequence of decades of well-intentioned government programs such as rent regulation, protracted and difficult approval requirements for any major development project, zoning sometimes made more restrictive over time, and excessive landmarking. Legislators seem to like the idea of office-to-residential conversions and have discussed various methods to incentivize those conversions. Those discussions are important – and…

I watched with alarm as the flames blazing across Los Angeles last January crept closer to my best friend’s home. There were already massive fires west of him in the Pacific Palisades and east of him in the Altadena area. High winds were pushing sparks across hills, house tops and highways, ever closer to the midcentury home where he and his family have lived for years. My suburban San Diego residence, 150 miles south, was their evacuation site if they had to leave in a hurry. This family was ultimately spared – this time. Sadly, thousands of others were not…

Sing-Haiyi Garnet—backed by tycoon Gordon Tang and his wife Celine— submitted the top bid of S$658.9 million ($495 million) for the first residential plot the government auctioned at the Bayshore Road precinct, overlooking the beach along the East Coast Parkway. The government received eight bids for the site, according to the Urban Redevelopment Authority. The other bidders included billionaire Kwek Leng Beng’s City Developments and a joint venture between Thai drinks-to-property tycoon Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi’s Frasers Property and its Japanese partner Sekisui House. The competitive auction adds to signs the housing market in the city state is rebounding, with British consultancy…

Construction lenders have recently had to deal with a growing volume of partially constructed developments—often called “stalled assets”—where the original developers can’t finish the job. Traditionally in those cases, lenders first try to sell their loans at par—or more likely at a steep discount—to someone else. The lender hopes that the loan purchaser knows how to handle the situation while the lender reduces its risk and goes on to the next deal. As a second choice option, the construction lender will sometimes foreclose. This is usually done with great hesitation. Typically the last thing any construction lender, except the occasional…

Multigenerational housing is increasingly being embraced by Millennials and Baby Boomers seeking to address housing affordability, growing caregiving needs, and extending retirement savings and security. Many younger couples struggle to access the housing market while balancing the demands of raising children and anticipating caring for their aging parents. At the other end of adulthood, Baby Boomers are seeking ways to extend retirement savings and plan for their future care needs. Instead of the often-discussed generational warfare in America’s tight housing market, peace may be breaking out between sandwiched Millennials and their retired Baby Boomer parents in suburbia. Together, they are…

Today’s higher interest rates and downturn in many commercial real estate markets are shining an unfortunate light on the terms of nonrecourse carveout guaranties, the “limited” guaranties that lenders often require principals of borrowers to sign to incentivize the borrower to behave in certain ways. When today’s lenders (or opportunistic purchasers of defaulted loans) realize they won’t recover their principal and interest through a foreclosure sale, they often pull the nonrecourse carveout guaranty out of their drawer and see what they can come up with to make a claim against the guarantor. Those claims have produced a number of expert…