Residential

  • December 09, 2024

    RealPage Says DOJ's Ended Multifamily Rental Criminal Probe

    RealPage said the U.S. Department of Justice had ended a criminal probe into the multifamily rental housing industry's pricing practices, adding that the algorithmic pricing company was never identified as an investigation target.

  • December 09, 2024

    Insurer Asks 7th Circ. To Review Faulty Work Coverage Ruling

    An insurer urged the Seventh Circuit on Monday to review a ruling requiring it to defend an architectural design firm and its owner against faulty work claims seeking more than $3.4 million in damages, saying the ruling is contrary to an Illinois Supreme Court decision involving the same issues.

  • December 09, 2024

    Supreme Court Won't Review Ex-HUD Official's Conviction

    The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case of a former staffer in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Office of Inspector General who was convicted of failing to disclose a loan from a friend who was later hired as a government subcontractor.

  • December 09, 2024

    NYC Real Estate Week In Review

    Fried Frank and Tannenbaum Helpern are among the law firms that handled work on the largest New York City real estate deals that hit public records last week, a period that saw three residential unit trades at one Manhattan building.

  • December 09, 2024

    Offit Kurman Adds Landlord Attorney In Bethesda Office

    Offit Kurman Attorneys At Law said it has added Shelbie Cook as a landlord representation attorney in the firm's Bethesda, Maryland, office.

  • December 06, 2024

    Billionaires Show New Interest In Texas' Intermediate Courts

    Billionaire-backed funding in Texas helped push a wave of Republican judges who swept races for intermediate appellate courts across the state, representing a new level of corporate spending in judicial races often marked by underfunded campaigns and low voter awareness.

  • December 06, 2024

    J&J Seeks New Talc Trial As Developer Seeks $30M More

    As Johnson & Johnson seeks to toss the underlying verdict, a real estate developer and cancer patient who was awarded $15 million in compensation from a talc trial jury has asked a Connecticut state judge to award another $30 million to punish the company for allegedly putting "profits over people."

  • December 06, 2024

    Property Plays: Valley, GSA, A's Stadium

    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.

  • December 06, 2024

    Advocates Shine Light On Rash Of Deficient Evictions In NJ

    A new report from a team of New Jersey housing experts found that as many as 29,000 tenants and tenant families may be evicted in the Garden State every year based on legally deficient complaints. Now they’re calling for greater oversight in the state’s landlord-tenant courts.

  • December 06, 2024

    CMBS Lending Is Higher Than It's Been In Years

    The comedown of interest rates this past year has been a boon for the commercial mortgage-backed securities market, with the amount of issued CMBS up roughly 172% year-to-date as of November, according to Kroll Bond Rating Agency LLC.

  • December 06, 2024

    $29.75M Deal Proposed To End Del. Latch Inc. SPAC Suit

    Attorneys for investors who bought into Latch Inc.'s Tishman Speyer-led, $1.5 billion take-public deal only to see their shares nosedive have tentatively settled consolidated class damage claims for $29.75 million, according to a Delaware Court of Chancery filing.

  • December 06, 2024

    Huizar's Big Brother Avoids Jail In LA City Hall Bribery Case

    The older brother of former Los Angeles City Councilor José Huizar on Friday avoided prison for lying to investigators about his role laundering bribes for the disgraced politician, with a California federal judge crediting the defendant's cooperation after he "finally decided to tell the truth."

  • December 06, 2024

    NYC Council OKs Mayor's Affordable Housing Plan

    The New York City Council passed a package of zoning reforms designed to spur housing production, greenlighting Mayor Eric Adams' City of Yes for Housing Opportunity plan after the city and state agreed to earmark $5 billion in funding to accompany the zoning overhaul.

  • December 05, 2024

    Property Insurance Policyholders See Hope Amid Headwinds

    In a year filled with property insurance challenges ranging from rising rates to limited availability, some policyholders saw gains in favorable state high court decisions, easing regulatory landscapes and insurer accountability.

  • December 05, 2024

    Rocket Mortgage Sues HUD, Hits Back At DOJ Race Bias Suit

    Rocket Mortgage, the largest U.S. mortgage lender, has punched back against housing discrimination claims brought by the U.S. government, countersuing in Colorado federal court to challenge what it argues are "conflicting and irreconcilable" mandates at play.

  • December 05, 2024

    Freddie Mac Beats Suit Over Payoff Statement Fees, For Now

    A Washington federal judge has tentatively let Freddie Mac off the hook in borrowers' proposed class action alleging loan servicer Nationstar Mortgage illegally charged fees for payoff statements, ruling Thursday that Freddie Mac can't be liable for conduct it didn't authorize — even if it did own one loan at issue.

  • December 05, 2024

    Yardi Must Face Rent-Fixing Suit With Tough Standard

    A Washington federal court has refused to dismiss an antitrust case accusing multifamily building owners of conspiring to use Yardi's revenue management software to inflate rental prices and found the claims should be treated as classic price-fixing allegations.

  • December 05, 2024

    Ohio Court Affirms Nix Of Bid To Double $42M Property Value

    An effort to nearly double the $42 million taxable value of a property to its recent sale price was correctly dismissed, an Ohio state appeals court said, upholding a state law barring complaints based on the untimeliness of a sale.

  • December 05, 2024

    Real Estate Fintech Co. Lands $350M Blue Owl Investment

    Real estate fintech company Splitero announced Thursday that it inked a deal with asset management firm Blue Owl Capital, which will use its managed funds to buy up to $350 million worth of home equity investments.

  • December 05, 2024

    Detroit Needs More Evidence In Census Row, Judge Says

    A Michigan federal judge gave the city of Detroit another chance Thursday to prove the U.S. Census Bureau undercounted the city's population and negatively impacted its federal funding, telling the city it wouldn't have standing to sue the federal government without such evidence.

  • December 05, 2024

    Airbnb Customers Drop 'Assistance Fee' Suit Against Insurers

    A proposed class of Airbnb customers permanently dropped a suit accusing two of the company's insurance providers of violating Washington state law by charging an "assistance fee" when selling travel coverage.

  • December 05, 2024

    Worker Claims Four Seasons Cheated Employees On Wages

    A former Four Seasons employee said the hotel chain cheated Los Angeles employees out of wages, telling a California state court that employees weren't paid for all hours worked.

  • December 04, 2024

    Amazon, Others Settle With Calif. Over Ex-Criminal Hiring Bias

    The California Civil Rights Department has announced it has reached individual settlements with Amazon, Ikea, the Los Angeles Dodgers and other employers over allegations they unlawfully rejected otherwise qualified job applicants based on their criminal history.

  • December 04, 2024

    Insurer Owes Coverage In Florida Keys Property Sale Dispute

    A Florida state appeals court partially reversed a lower court's ruling that an insurer didn't owe two insureds a defense in an underlying suit accusing them of conspiring with a Key West property seller, finding Wednesday there were insufficient allegations to trigger a policy exclusion.

  • December 04, 2024

    Lowenstein Sandler Adds Real Estate, Capital Markets Attys

    Lowenstein Sandler LLP has hired partners for its business litigation and capital markets and securities teams in New York City, the firm announced Wednesday.

Expert Analysis

  • The Clock Is Ticking For Fla. Construction Defect Claims

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    Ahead of the fast-approaching July 1 deadline for filing construction defect claims in Florida, Sean Ravenel at Foran Glennon discusses how the state's new statute of repose has changed the timeline, and highlights several related issues that property owners should be aware of.

  • Wiretap Use In Cartel Probes Likely To Remain An Exception

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    Although the U.S. Department of Justice's Antitrust Division has recently signaled interest in wiretaps, the use of this technology to capture evidence of antitrust conspiracies and pursue monopolization as a criminal matter has been rare historically, and is likely to remain so, say Carsten Reichel and Will Conway at DLA Piper.

  • 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.