Residential
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December 02, 2024
Kirkland Adds 2 Real Estate Partners To NYC Office
Kirkland & Ellis LLP has hired ex-Fried Frank partner Matthew Bettinger and former Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP partner Seth R. Henslovitz as new partners for its real estate team in New York City, the firm announced on Monday.
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December 02, 2024
NYC Real Estate Week In Review
Goodwin Procter and Blank Rome are among more than half a dozen law firms that guided the top New York City real estate deals that hit public records last week, a busy period for filings despite the holiday-shortened week.
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December 02, 2024
Partnership Offers Proptech Players Range Of Legal Expertise
Goodwin Procter LLP and the Center for Real Estate Technology and Innovation have teamed up to try to help proptech companies capitalize on a potential upswing. Law360 Real Estate Authority recently spoke with the founder and co-leader of Goodwin's proptech group and the founder of CRETI about what they think they can provide to help companies succeed.
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November 27, 2024
Landlords Tell NY High Court To Nix Kingston's Rent Rollback
A nonprofit representing property owners and a group of Kingston, New York, landlords urged the state's highest court to reverse a lower court's March ruling that upheld the city's rent stabilization resolution, its 15% rent rollback and its retroactive rent threshold that could result in refunds for illegal rent overcharges.
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November 27, 2024
Developer Reboots Plan For Miami Beach Deauville Project
Miami Beach officials have reviewed a new plan to bring a hotel and condominium towers to the city's former Deauville Beach Resort location, with developers relying on a new state law preventing voter opposition of the sort that ended a previous intended development at the site two years ago.
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November 27, 2024
Developer Settles Landslide Claims From Ryan Homes, Town
The bankrupt developer of a housing project that was beset by landslides has settled with a construction company and a Western Pennsylvania township in exchange for finishing some of its remaining cleanup work and giving the township the remaining lots, burying a six-year dispute.
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November 27, 2024
Compass NJ Tapped To Sell $33M Miles Guo Mansion In Ch. 11
The trustee handling the Chapter 11 of exiled Chinese businessman and convicted fraudster Miles Guo asked the Connecticut bankruptcy court to let him hire four agents with residential real estate firm Compass to sell a historic 58-room mansion in Mahwah, New Jersey.
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November 27, 2024
Mich. Bill Would Bar Local Property Tax Caps Tied To Rate Cut
Michigan would bar local governments from imposing caps on annual property tax revenue that require an automatic rate reduction as part of a bill introduced in the state House of Representatives.
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November 27, 2024
Data Cos. Lose Challenge To NJ Judicial Privacy Law
A federal judge has ruled that the New Jersey judicial privacy and security measure known as Daniel's Law is constitutional, handing a defeat to a large group of data brokers accused of illegally posting judges' names and addresses online.
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November 27, 2024
Howard Hughes Corp. Beats Hurricane Harvey Flood Suit
A Texas state appellate court has sided with Howard Hughes Corp. and an engineering company in an appeal brought by homeowners who claimed the companies were liable for property damage caused by Hurricane Harvey in August 2017.
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November 26, 2024
NAR Buyer-Broker Settlement Approved Over DOJ Concerns
A Missouri federal judge granted final approval Tuesday to the National Association of Realtors' antitrust settlement with home sellers, signing off on a $418 million payment and changes to broker commission rules, as NAR and the plaintiffs assailed the U.S. Department of Justice for raising last-minute concerns about the deal.
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November 26, 2024
NYC Lawmakers Detail Breakdown Of $5B Housing Plan
The New York City Council's $5 billion "City for All" initiative aims to provide more funding for affordable housing development and preservation, a down payment assistance program, infrastructure investments and more, the city lawmakers announced.
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November 26, 2024
9th Circ. Pauses Ruling For VA To Build Vets' Housing
The Ninth Circuit paused a federal judge's order for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to build housing for veterans on a Los Angeles campus, allowing time for several constituents to weigh in on the matter.
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November 26, 2024
New Orleans Property Owner Revives Bid To Nix Arbitration
A New Orleans property owner has again urged a Louisiana federal judge to overturn his order forcing it to arbitrate a $7 million Hurricane Ida damage claim with 11 insurers for a block of luxury apartments and retail shops, pointing to a recent ruling by the state's top court.
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November 26, 2024
Nonprofit Wins Right To Buy In LIHTC Verdict Against Investor
A California federal jury allowed an affordable housing nonprofit to take possession of a 320-unit Long Beach complex built with low-income housing tax credits over arguments from an investor challenging the transfer after buying into a partnership for the development.
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November 26, 2024
NY Authorizes County, City To Raise Tax Rates On Hotel Stays
New York authorized Dutchess County and the city of Hudson to increase taxes on hotel and motel stays under legislation signed by Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul.
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November 26, 2024
7th Circ. Says Insurer Must Defend $3.4M Faulty Work Row
An architectural design firm's commercial general liability insurer must defend it and its owner against faulty work claims seeking more than $3.4 million in damages, the Seventh Circuit ruled, after the Illinois Supreme Court overturned prior appellate precedent siding with insurers in such disputes.
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November 25, 2024
Gov't Defends EB-5 Rule That Hikes Up Petition Fees
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and its U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency pushed for an early win in Texas federal court against a suit challenging increases for filing fees for petitions related to USCIS' EB-5 immigrant investor program.
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November 25, 2024
NY State Court Strikes Rent Stabilization In Poughkeepsie
A New York state court judge vacated the city of Poughkeepsie's recent adoption of rent stabilization, finding that an underlying housing vacancy survey too broadly interpreted a state law that raised the stakes for landlords that failed to cooperate with such surveys.
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November 25, 2024
Feds Want Ex-FBI Agent's Bribery Appeal Tossed
Federal prosecutors have told the D.C. Circuit to reject an ex-Federal Bureau of Investigation agent's appeal of his bribery convictions in a property buying scheme, arguing there was "sufficient evidence" against him.
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November 25, 2024
US Bank Loses Bid To Block Fla. Case Over Condo Ponzi Debt
A federal judge denied a motion from U.S. Bank in abstaining from a Florida condo association's state court moves to free itself from a bond debt tied to a development district that was established nearly two decades ago by the architects of a Ponzi scheme.
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November 25, 2024
NJ Judge Allows Nonprofit To Join Affordable Housing Fight
A New Jersey nonprofit is aligned with the state's government in a challenge to a new affordable housing obligation framework it adopted, but that alignment of goals does not mean the nonprofit should not also be allowed to intervene on the case, a Garden State judge said in an order.
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November 25, 2024
Tenant's Death Excluded From Coverage, Kansas Judge Says
A Kansas federal judge granted an insurer an early win in a coverage dispute with an apartment complex over an underlying lawsuit in which a tenant's son says his father died of hypothermia because of a faulty furnace, finding that a "habitability exclusion" barred coverage for the suit.
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November 25, 2024
Mortgage Co. Unfairly Inflated Borrowers' Balances, Suit Says
Shellpoint Mortgage Servicing was hit Friday with a proposed class action alleging the company and its predecessor in interest, Specialized Loan Servicing LLC, inflated borrowers' balances on long-dormant second mortgages through "unfair, deceptive and unconscionable means."
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November 25, 2024
4th Circ. Stands By HELOC 'Offset' Ruling Against PNC
The full Fourth Circuit has declined to reconsider a panel decision that extended protections under the Truth In Lending Act by barring banks from dipping into a cardholder's deposit account to cover outstanding payments on a home equity line of credit without the borrower's consent.
Expert Analysis
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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.
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How New Rule Would Change CFIUS Enforcement Powers
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.