Weekly Real Estate News Quiz: Think You're Up On The Biggest Headlines?
Better.com, a fintech startup aiming to digitize and streamline the mortgage process, announced Monday it's raised $160 million for its Series C funding round.
The startup has raised $254 million to date, and its latest investor round included Activant Capital, Ping An Global Voyager Fund, Ally Financial, Citi, AGNC, Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan (HOOPP) and American Express Ventures. Existing investors Goldman Sachs, Pine Brook, and Kleiner Perkins led the funding round.
A new report shows that women who work at Zillow make a tiny bit more money than their male counterparts, indicating the company has achieved something of a small-but-significant victory in a professional world still plagued by gender pay gaps.
The online portal's first ever "Sustainability Report" was released Thursday and shows that in 2018 women working at Zillow made $1.01 for every dollar men with comparable skills earned. The report also reveals that women made up 42 percent of Zillow's workforce last year, which is an increase of 1 percent over 2017 and 3 percent over 2016.
On Monday, the National Association of Gay and Lesbian Real Estate Professionals revealed its annual Top LGBT+ Agent List. Shirley Gary, of Engel & Völkers in Atlanta, grabbed the number one spot for sales volume, with $125.1 million in 2018.
Mark Lowham and Daniel Casabonne, both of Sotheby’s International Realty, rounded out the top 5 for sales volume.
In the picturesque desert town of Sedona, Arizona, 20 percent of the city’s existing housing inventory are short-term rentals. Furthermore, developers are investing millions into building new housing for the same purpose.
“We have a very good city council, and the state of Arizona has emasculated them in this area,” said Sedona resident Avrum Cohen in a city council meeting. “It's the only state in the union that has done this to its cities, and it’s a state that doesn’t like the federal government.”
In 2017, Arizona passed one of the country’s most lenient short-term rental laws. Senate Bill 1350 stripped cities, towns and counties of their right to pose limitations on short-term rentals in their jurisdiction. Moreover, the law allowed investors and developers to build additional housing solely for short-term rental use. Debbie Lasko, the senator who co-sponsored the bill, also wants to eliminate short-term rental taxes, but failed.
Murphy published a video Tuesday in which he offers to represent President Trump in the purchase of the world's largest island. Murphy is a Long and Foster agent in Chester County, Pennsylvania, and in the video he says he has the chops for the Greenland deal.
"You may be wondering how a residential Realtor like myself could possibly negotiate with Greenland," Murphy says in the video, which he sent by email to the White House and promptly received an automated response. "But my past experience, I worked for Alcoa, a company you know well. I used to call on companies like Apple computer and Tesla and Chrysler and Ford."
The National Association of Realtors' bid to transfer the smaller of two bombshell commission lawsuits in order to consolidate them has failed, likely making the 1.3 million-member trade group's legal fight costlier.
Two class-action lawsuits have been filed against the 1.3 million-member trade group and real estate giants Realogy, Keller Williams, RE/MAX and HomeServices of America that could upend the U.S. real estate industry by effectively forcing changes in how buyer’s agents are traditionally compensated.
The suits allege that the sharing of commissions between listing and buyer brokers violates the Sherman Antitrust Act by inflating seller costs. They seek to have homebuyers pay their broker directly, rather than having listing brokers pay buyer brokers from what the seller pays the listing broker.
The first suit, filed by nine law firms on behalf of homeseller Christopher Moehrl and other plaintiffs, is located in the Northern District of Illinois. The second suit, filed by two law firms on behalf of homeseller Joshua Sitzer and other plaintiffs, is located in the Western District of Missouri.
Consumer advocacy nonprofit Public Citizen has documented dozens of companies that include forced arbitration clauses, including many in the housing sector. Some of those companies are among the best-known builders in the country, including Lennar, Centex, KB Home, Beazer Homes, D.R. Horton and others. Airbnb also enforces forced arbitration clauses.
Forced arbitration clauses require consumers to settle disputes privately, and effectively blocks them from using the court system. The Forced Arbitration Injustice Repeal Act, a bill designed to make it easier for consumers to take companies to court, is currently coursing through Congress.
Very Real Estate, a 10-person boutique indie brokerage located in the Old City neighborhood of Philadelphia, is moving to Compass. A Compass spokesperson confirmed to Inman Wednesday that the entire brokerage signed independent contractor agreements to join Compass.
Very Real Estate was founded in 2013 with an emphasis on buy-side representation.
“We knew very quickly during this process that Very Real Estate’s vision for growth was aligned with Compass,” Elizabeth Convery, the founder of Very Real Estate, said in a statement.
Actor and director Vincent Gallo has paid all-cash for a condo in New York's Trump Tower building.
Gallo, 58, the actor and director of several independent films who has been outspoken in his support of President Donald Trump, reportedly made an all-cash offer on a one-bedroom, 1,026 square-foot unit at 721 Fifth Avenue. According to the New York Post, the unit sold for $1.47 million with "no condition and no contingencies."
In 2017, an asking price for the same unit would have been more than double at $3.4 million.
“Knock it off with the negative waves,” Thompson writes. "Negativity begets negativity. Negativity is the antithesis of happiness.”