Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
Homeowners routinely sabotage their own property values through preventable mistakes that range from botched renovations to willful ignorance of environmental hazards, according to warnings from real estate professionals surveyed for the latest national remodeling data. With buyers growing more cautious and federal disclosure rules tightening scrutiny on everything from lead paint to flood risk, the…
Federal regulators and antitrust enforcers have spent years documenting how real estate agents mislead buyers and sellers, from disguised referral kickbacks to inflated property claims. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Department of Justice, and the Federal Trade Commission have each flagged specific deceptive practices that cost consumers thousands of dollars per transaction. With commission…
The investor group led by developer Michael Shvo has agreed to sell the Transamerica Pyramid, San Francisco’s most recognizable skyscraper, to a Cyprus-based entity backed by German pension fund Bayerische Versorgungskammer, according to Bloomberg reporting on February 24, 2026. The deal caps a rapid investment cycle in which Shvo’s group acquired the 48-story tower and…
A group of at least 17 Senate Democrats introduced the American Homeownership Act on February 24, 2026, targeting private equity firms and hedge funds that have been buying up single-family homes across the country. The legislation, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sen. Jeff Merkley, would strip tax breaks from large institutional landlords and…
San Diego County is preparing to auction 600-plus tax-defaulted properties in March 2026, with opening bids on many parcels listed below $100,000 on the county’s auction map. The sale is scheduled to run from March 13 through March 18, according to the county portal, and arrives as Southern California housing costs continue to strain household…
California families who expected to inherit a parent’s home along with its low property tax bill are running into an unwelcome financial reality shaped by Proposition 19. The measure, approved by voters in November 2020, rewrote the rules for intergenerational property transfers starting February 16, 2021, and a recent adjustment to its exclusion cap has…
Surging home values have turned the family house into the single largest asset most parents will ever pass on. Between 2019 and 2022, median home equity jumped $47,900 across U.S. households, according to Census Bureau data drawn from the Survey of Income and Program Participation. That windfall makes the decision to leave a home to…
Mayor Zohran Mamdani has ignited a fierce backlash from New York City’s real estate industry by proposing a 9.5% property tax rate increase as part of his Fiscal Year 2027 preliminary budget, a move he frames as a fallback if Albany refuses to pass a state wealth tax on millionaires. The proposal would push the…
Buying a home in the United States has become so expensive that most Americans now view it as a bad financial move, and federal data shows the gap between housing costs and wages is widening at an alarming rate. Median home prices have climbed 54% over the past five years while wages rose just 29%,…
Homeowners routinely pour money into kitchen countertops and bathroom tile, yet a growing body of peer-reviewed research and industry data points to a different set of upgrades that deliver outsized returns. From strategic tree planting backed by federal forestry studies to lead paint remediation that yields roughly $2.60 in benefits for every dollar spent, the…