Residential
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March 18, 2025
99 Hudson Developer Loses Appeal In Buyers' NJ Fraud Suit
A New Jersey state judge's refusal to send a fraud lawsuit against the developer of the 99 Hudson condominium complex in Jersey City to arbitration was valid, a state appellate panel ruled Tuesday, saying the contract lacked clear language that the plaintiffs were waiving their statutory right to seek relief in court.
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March 18, 2025
Tower Capital Lines Up $85M For Build-To-Rent Projects
Tower Capital lined up more than $85 million in financing for four borrowers that will use the funds for three build-to-rent community projects and one multifamily community project, the private real estate capital advisory firm announced Tuesday.
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March 18, 2025
Conn. Atty Drops Appeal In Battle With Willkie Partner
Connecticut solo practitioner Eric Grayson has withdrawn an appeal of a state court decision to toss his lawsuit against a partner at Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP and his wife, in which he accused the couple of abusing the court process by suing him over his comments in a New York Post story about their dispute with a landlord.
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March 17, 2025
Wells Fargo Says OCC Has Closed Home Loan Consent Order
Wells Fargo & Co. on Monday said the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has closed a consent order related to its home lending business, marking the eleventh consent order against the bank that regulators have closed in recent years and another step forward in its regulatory rehabilitation efforts.
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March 17, 2025
Insurer Stands Alone Before $8.5M Condo Defect Judgment
The insurer for a contractor can't get help from third-party insurers to pay an $8.5 million judgment for alleged shoddy workmanship on a 2005 condo project because a settlement agreement released them from all claims, a Florida federal judge said Monday.
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March 17, 2025
4th Circ. Revives Tenant's FCRA Suit Over Disputed Debt
The Fourth Circuit has revived a tenant's lawsuit over an allegedly bogus charge from her landlord, ruling that collection agencies are not exempt from their obligation to investigate Fair Credit Reporting Act claims if they involve a legal dispute.
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March 17, 2025
At Distressed Assets Forum, Lenders Say They're Doing OK
Despite recent upticks in distress in commercial real estate and some foreboding statistics, bankers and private lenders speaking at a forum on distressed assets on Monday presented a rather optimistic outlook on being able to survive and even find opportunities in 2025.
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March 17, 2025
NY Tower Owner Buys Out JPMorgan Arm In $420M Deal
Steiner NYC closed a $420 million recapitalization of a Brooklyn multifamily tower and bought out equity partner J.P. Morgan Asset Management, guided by in-house counsel and a Latham & Watkins LLP team.
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March 17, 2025
Calif. Panel Sides With Tribe In Hotel Construction Fight
A California appeals panel has sided with a Native American tribe in its decision to reverse a lower court ruling and invalidate the city of Clearlake's approval of a hotel project on what was tribal land, finding that the city failed to comply with a state environmental law.
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March 17, 2025
Ginnie Mae Says Texas Bank Can't Undo Ruling On Lien
Ginnie Mae and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development have urged a Texas federal court to grant them summary judgment in a Texas bank's lawsuit, which alleges the government wrongfully extinguished the bank's first-priority lien for nearly $30 million of collateral, saying the court already upheld the authority to terminate the lien.
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March 17, 2025
HUD, DOI To Identify Federal Land For Affordable Housing
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Department of the Interior will work together on identifying federal land that could be used as the sites of affordable housing, according to a joint announcement.
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March 17, 2025
Paul Hastings Guides Artemis From Founding To Takeover
When Paul Hastings partner Joshua H. Sternoff was initially pitched on repping Debbie Harmon and Penny Pritzker in creating the first women-owned real estate investment business, he thought it was a bet worth taking. About 16 years and several fundraising cycles later, Sternoff and others at Paul Hastings steered Artemis Real Estate Partners through what might be its biggest move yet.
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March 17, 2025
4th Circ. Tosses HOA Closing Fees Suit
The Fourth Circuit tossed a North Carolina property owner's proposed class action alleging that a property management company unlawfully charged excessive closing fees when she sold two properties.
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March 17, 2025
Belkin Burden Hires Tax Exemption, Zoning Experts
Belkin Burden & Goldman LLP announced Monday it has added five new attorneys from Seiden & Schein PC who will form the firm's new tax exemptions and zoning incentives department.
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March 17, 2025
High Value Dubious In $23M Easement Dispute, 11th Circ. Told
A partnership that claimed a $23 million tax deduction for a conservation easement donation failed to consider the lack of market demand for a potential quarry it used to justify the land's high value, the U.S. government told the Eleventh Circuit.
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March 17, 2025
NYC Real Estate Week In Review
DLA Piper and Klestadt Winters are among the law firms that landed work on the top New York City real estate deals to hit public records last week, with a pair of Manhattan trades topping the list.
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March 14, 2025
Fannie, Freddie Can't Avoid $612M Investor Win, Judge Rules
A D.C. federal judge on Friday upheld a $612.4 million jury verdict against the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, ruling that the jury was provided with "ample evidence" that reasonably led to its conclusion that FHFA improperly amended stock purchase agreements related to the companies.
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March 14, 2025
4th Circ. Dubious Of Private Island's Win In Fair Housing Fight
The Fourth Circuit on Friday seemed poised to upend a lower court ruling siding with a gated community in a discriminatory housing suit brought by the developer of a proposed assisted living facility, with one judge lamenting a lack of analysis on whether the facility's accommodation request was necessary and reasonable.
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March 14, 2025
Calif. Insurance Chief OKs State Farm Rates Pending Hearing
The California Department of Insurance on Friday provisionally approved State Farm's request for an emergency rate hike following the Los Angeles fires, including a nearly 22% increase for homeowners, saying final approval will be contingent on the insurer justifying its request at a hearing.
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March 14, 2025
Property Plays: Buffalo, Swerdlow Group, Tampa Bay Rays
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.
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March 14, 2025
Demand Tightens Florida Land Market In '24, Broker Finds
Large-acreage land transactions and institutional investors drove much of the activity in Florida's land market in 2024, with agricultural land transforming into residential, solar or other development as the state's population grows.
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March 14, 2025
3 Firms Rep Franklin BSP Realty Trust's $425M NewPoint Buy
Hogan Lovells, Reed Smith and Paul Weiss guided Franklin BSP Realty Trust's $425 million acquisition of commercial real estate finance company NewPoint Holdings JV LLC, boosting the REIT's multifamily loan offerings.
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March 14, 2025
PulteGroup GC Rakes In $3M After '23 Dip
Atlanta-based U.S. homebuilder PulteGroup paid its general counsel more than $3 million in total compensation in 2024, marking a 13% increase from his 2023 total compensation as the company raked in a record $17 billion in home sale revenues last year, according to a recent securities filing.
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March 14, 2025
Mont. Ranch Claims Ranger Retaliation In Easement Dispute
A Montana landowner told a federal judge that a U.S. Forest Service official launched a retaliatory criminal investigation after the managers of a ranch complained about public parking on an access road near the Custer Gallatin National Forest.
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March 14, 2025
Ark. Bill Aims To Ban Certain Separate Property Assessments
Arkansas would not allow accessory dwelling units to be assessed separately from a principal residence through a constitutional amendment proposed by a bill introduced in the state House of Representatives.
Expert Analysis
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The Clock Is Ticking For Fla. Construction Defect Claims
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.
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Wiretap Use In Cartel Probes Likely To Remain An Exception
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.
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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.