Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
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…
U.S. home sales dropped sharply in January even as mortgage rates fell to their lowest point in more than three years, a disconnect that has left the housing market in an unusual bind. Pending home sales fell to the second-lowest level shown in Federal Reserve Economic Data, while the National Association of Realtors reported a…
The U.S. Department of Commerce has sharply increased antidumping duties on Canadian softwood lumber, nearly tripling the rate most exporters face and adding fresh cost pressure to an already strained housing market. At the same time, climate-driven insurance premium spikes are eroding home values in disaster-prone regions, squeezing buyers from both the construction side and…
Federal prosecutors and state regulators across the country have taken enforcement action against faith-based health plans that collected millions in member contributions while leaving families responsible for nearly all of their own medical bills. A co-founder of Medical Cost Sharing, a Christian health care sharing ministry based in St. Joseph, Missouri, pleaded guilty to an…
Los Angeles’s voter-approved transfer tax on high-value property sales, formally called the United to House L.A. Real Property Transfer Tax, has triggered steep declines in building permits, land transactions, and multifamily housing production across the city. A growing body of academic research from UCLA, UC Irvine, UC San Diego, and Harvard now links the levy…
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…
Federal data through November 2025 shows U.S. home prices cooling sharply in several regions, with the Pacific division posting an outright annual decline. For buyers who entered the market during the high-rate environment of 2024, that drop threatens to erase equity faster than monthly payments can build it, leaving some households owing more than their…
More than one in four adults aged 65 and older fall each year in the United States, producing roughly 3 million emergency department visits and 1 million hospitalizations annually. Many of those falls happen inside the very homes where older adults plan to spend their remaining years, raising a hard question about whether “aging in…
Chicago’s downtown office market closed 2025 with a vacancy rate of 26.6%, a figure that reflects not just empty floors but a widening fiscal crisis for the city’s homeowners. As commercial property values crater across the Loop, Cook County has begun resetting assessments on hundreds of buildings, and the resulting tax burden is shifting squarely…