The Real Deal - New York Real Estate News

Can architecture and mass texts enliven Palm Springs’ reputation as a sleepy retirement town?

Posted: 14 Oct 2018 04:00 PM PDT

Palm Springs’ efforts to attract younger people to the area and make it into a thriving tourist destination began nearly a decade ago with a mass text. In 2009, Palm Springs’ tourism bureau slid into the DMs of about 55,000 college students with a bold request: “Skip Cabo, come to Palm Springs.” It was the beginning of a concerted effort to attract youth to the area best known recently for its retirement communities, according to […]

No down-payment, no problem: BoA underwriting $10B in subprime mortgages

Posted: 14 Oct 2018 12:00 PM PDT

Bank of America is giving out $10 billion in mortgage commitments to borrowers with non-traditional backgrounds at a series of events across the country. The fixed-rate loans for 15- or 30-year terms carry an interest rate of about 4.5 percent and approved borrowers put no money down. The bank is partnered with Boston-based brokerage Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA) for the events, which have drawn a crowd of about 10,000 across cities like Charlotte […]

Multifamily properties in Westchester are selling “like hotcakes”

Posted: 14 Oct 2018 11:00 AM PDT

Multifamily is the new single-family for those looking to buy in tony Westchester County. The assessment comes from Houlihan Lawrence broker Candace Evans, who said, in an interview with Bloomberg, multifamily properties in the county are “selling like hotcakes.” Evans’ observation is backed up by Miller Samuel and Douglas Elliman’s third quarter report, which shows purchases of multifamily properties — categorized as two- to four-family homes — rising by 28 percent year over year. The […]

Why Hurricane Michael is a test for Florida’s odd property insurance market

Posted: 14 Oct 2018 10:00 AM PDT

Hurricane Michael’s damage to property in the Florida’s Panhandle region on Wednesday will provide a fresh test of the state’s unusual property insurance market. Florida is odd because such industry leaders as Allstate and State Farm play a much smaller role in protecting home owners than they do in other states. Small Florida property insurers with backing from larger reinsurance companies around the world will pay for the bulk of Michael’s damage. Early estimates of […]

Warren Buffett’s Laguna Beach beach house sells for 32% less than asking price

Posted: 14 Oct 2018 09:10 AM PDT

Trust Warren Buffett to finagle a winning deal no matter what. When his six-bedroom beach house in Laguna Beach’s Emerald Bay finally sold, it was at a heavily discounted $7.5 million–almost a third lower than the price he initially listed it for, as the Wall Street Journal reported. However, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway only paid a mere $150,000 for the 3,500-square-foot house in the 1970s. The sale is further proof — in case anyone […]

Morgan Stanley’s offices are getting a millennial makeover

Posted: 14 Oct 2018 08:00 AM PDT

Morgan Stanley is revamping its offices to bring techies and brokers closer — and to attract millennials. Over the next 15 months, roughly 1.2 million square feet of the bank’s office space will get a makeover, Bloomberg reported. The changes come as the bank builds up its focus on blockchain, automation and other technologies. The renovations will bring the company’s technology experts in closer proximity to its brokers. “The workplace needed to be designed around […]

San Fran’s ‘dirtiest block’ defies tech-fueled housing boom

Posted: 14 Oct 2018 07:00 AM PDT

The “dirtiest block” in San Francisco is only a short walk from the offices of multi-billion-dollar tech companies that have helped push the median price of a home in the city to over $1 million. The 300 block of Hyde Street, in the city’s Tenderloin neighborhood, received 2,227 complaints about street and sidewalk cleanliness in the past decade — more than any other in San Francisco, according to a report in the New York Times. […]

As Sears totters on the edge of bankruptcy, talks are reportedly underway to save part of the chain

Posted: 14 Oct 2018 06:00 AM PDT

Sears Holdings’ executives and lenders are supposedly negotiating over the fate of the long-standing, much-beleaguered retail chain. According to Bloomberg, Sears could declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy as early as Sunday, as the Oct. 15 maturation date of a $134 million debt package looms large. The retailer would then file for court protection, secure a loan of between $300-$500 million and a smaller version of the chain would emerge from the ashes to continue operations, according […]