Residential
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December 04, 2025
Gov't Watchdog To Probe FHFA Mortgage Fraud Referrals
The Government Accountability Office will review whether Federal Housing Finance Agency Director William Pulte weaponized mortgage fraud investigations against the president's perceived political opponents and flouted the agency's typical investigation process.
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December 04, 2025
Judge OKs Plan Disclosures For AmeriFirst In Ch. 11
A Delaware bankruptcy judge agreed Thursday to grant conditional approval for bankruptcy mortgage servicer AmeriFirst's disclosure statement outlining its Chapter 11 plan, finding the objections raised by the U.S. Trustee's Office are best reserved for the plan confirmation hearing.
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December 04, 2025
Mortgage Insurer Inks $650K Deal To End ERISA Suit
A mortgage insurance company has agreed to pay $650,000 to close a worker's proposed class action filed in North Carolina federal court claiming its mismanagement of an employee retirement profit sharing plan caused a $1.3 million loss.
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December 04, 2025
Morgan Stanley, MorningStar Close $305M Housing Deal
Morgan Stanley Investment Management and MorningStar Senior Living, with Morgan Stanley Real Estate Investing's managed funds, acquired a 463-unit MorningStar senior housing portfolio located near Denver for $305 million from Kayne Anderson Real Estate, the two companies announced Dec. 4.
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December 04, 2025
Yardi Reports Widespread US Rent Decline In November
Rental industry analyst Yardi Matrix reports that multifamily rents and demand each sagged for the fourth straight month in November, a broad trend that visited cities both with and without new supply coming to market.
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December 04, 2025
NAR Says Realtor Rule Changes Not Relevant To Antitrust Suit
The National Association of Realtors and local Realtor groups at the center of a proposed class action have urged a Michigan federal court not to allow real estate brokers and agents to bring recent NAR handbook changes before the court in their antitrust suit.
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December 04, 2025
Over 2 Dozen Countries Commit To Property Tax Transparency
A group of 26 jurisdictions committed on Dec. 4 to adopting a framework developed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to facilitate the exchange of real estate information among tax authorities.
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December 03, 2025
Chats Show Ex-NY Gov Aide Was Tight With Chinese Officials
Jurors weighing the fate of a former aide to two New York governors have seen a raft of chats and other documents over several days that the feds say support their case alleging she violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act, including communications that seem to suggest she had a close working relationship with several Chinese government officials.
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December 03, 2025
Cities, Groups Fight Changes To HUD Homeless Housing Grant
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development unlawfully introduced "drastic" changes to grants under a federal program to combat homelessness, a coalition of local governments and homelessness service providers has alleged in a suit filed in Rhode Island federal court.
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December 03, 2025
Monitor Will Stay In Place In $1B Broad Street Fraud Case
A private equity firm accused by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission of defrauding investors in a $1 billion fund lost its bid Wednesday to discharge the court-appointed monitor overseeing its books when a Florida federal judge rejected arguments that the monitor was acting in bad faith.
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December 03, 2025
UMB Bank Gets Partial Win In $80M Hard Rock Hotel Dispute
UMB Bank NA has been granted wins on some of its claims in a suit regarding a failed $80 million Hard Rock Hotel development project, with a Kansas federal court ruling that claims it did not properly reimburse the project developer's costs have already been decided in Minnesota court.
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December 03, 2025
Landlord Can't Nix $4M Jury Award Over Mugging, Shooting
A Florida appeals panel on Wednesday affirmed a $4 million judgment in favor of a renter who alleged that his landlord failed to protect him from a mugging in which he was shot four times, finding that the issue of whether the incident was foreseeable was properly put in front of a jury.
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December 03, 2025
Okla. Cos. Hit Simon Property Group With Antitrust Suit
A group of Oklahoma-based companies accused retail-focused real estate investment trust Simon Property Group Inc. of waging "an anticompetitive campaign" to take down their competing mixed-use project in Oklahoma City.
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December 03, 2025
K&L Gates Deepens Its CMBS Servicer Attorney Bench
K&L Gates LLP announced Wednesday that it has brought on two experienced real estate finance attorneys whose practices focus on advising commercial mortgage-backed securities servicers.
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December 03, 2025
Judge Halts Suit Over Texas Law Blocking Foreign Land Buys
A Texas federal judge sided with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in pausing a lawsuit from three Chinese nationals pending a Fifth Circuit decision in a parallel challenge to a policy preventing citizens of China, North Korea, Iran and Russia from buying land in the state.
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December 03, 2025
Ore. Homeowner Can't Appeal Home's Value, Court Says
An Oregon homeowner cannot appeal the real market values of his home because the difference between the homeowner's and the assessor's valuations failed to meet the statutory requirement for an appeal, the Oregon Tax Court ruled.
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December 03, 2025
MVP: Sullivan & Cromwell's Ralston Turbeville
Ralston Turbeville, a partner in Sullivan & Cromwell's real estate practice, guided Tishman Speyer's $3.5 billion refinancing of Rockefeller Center as well as the company's $2.85 billion refinancing of the Spiral in Hudson Yards, earning him a spot as one of the 2025 Law360 Real Estate MVPs.
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December 03, 2025
Walker & Dunlop Lines Up $153M Multifamily Refi Deal
Walker & Dunlop Inc. has procured $153.3 million worth of refinancing loans for 876 luxury apartments located across "three garden style multifamily properties" in North Carolina, Florida and Louisiana, the commercial real estate financier announced Tuesday.
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December 03, 2025
Greystar Reaches $24M Deal With Gov't In 'Hidden' Fees Suit
The major multifamily landlord Greystar, along with the Federal Trade Commission and the state of Colorado, asked a federal court to approve their $24 million settlement to end a lawsuit alleging the company wrongfully charged tenants "hidden" fees.
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December 03, 2025
Texas Firm Polunsky Beitel Hires Mortgage-Focused Tech Chief
Texas law firm Polunsky Beitel & Green LLP has announced the hiring of a former technology lead at Codvo.ai and Wells Fargo as its chief technology officer, as it seeks to expand its use of artificial intelligence and automation.
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December 03, 2025
Home Contractor Platform Changes Hands In $190M Deal
California technology company QuinStreet Inc. said Wednesday it will pay a total of $190 million to acquire HomeBuddy, a homeowner-focused digital marketplace for home improvement contractors.
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December 02, 2025
NY AG Claims Peak Capital Illegally Deregulated Apartments
A New York City developer wrongfully took advantage of a rent-stabilization exemption for building renovations to profit from illegally deregulating rent-stabilized apartments, New York State and its Division of Housing and Community Renewal alleged in state court.
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December 02, 2025
PennyMac Can't Shed 'Pay-To-Pay' Borrower Class Action
Residential mortgage servicer PennyMac Loan Services LLC can't shed a proposed class action alleging it unfairly charged borrowers "pay-to-pay" fees, a North Carolina federal judge has said, saying the servicer's assertion that it doesn't collect or receive the relevant fees is an issue for a later stage in the proceedings.
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December 02, 2025
Nuveen Real Estate Caps $650M Debt Fund
Asset management firm Nuveen Real Estate capped its first closed-end fund focused on commercial property debt at $650 million, beating the investment vehicle's target, the company said Tuesday.
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December 02, 2025
Two Firms Advise $130M Brooklyn Waterfront Parcel Buy
Two firms advised on the $130 million purchase and financing of a waterfront parcel in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Expert Analysis
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The Clock Is Ticking For Fla. Construction Defect Claims
Ahead of the fast-approaching July 1 deadline for filing construction defect claims in Florida, Sean Ravenel at Foran Glennon discusses how the state's new statute of repose has changed the timeline, and highlights several related issues that property owners should be aware of.
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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.