Free Republic

PHOENIX — Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes is suing several owners of apartment complexes throughout the Valley for allegedly engaging in illegal "price-fixing" and creating a mechanism that's exacerbated Arizona's housing crisis. The state's top legal official announced Wednesday her office had filed a lawsuit against nine major residential apartment landlords in Arizona and RealPage Inc. for allegedly conspiring to inflate rental rates and eliminate competition in the market. "One reason renters in the Phoenix and Tucson metropolitan areas are paying more is because RealPage has facilitated a price-fixing conspiracy among a large share of multifamily apartment lessors in Arizona,"...

The Supreme Court supposedly put an end to “home equity theft” last year. But some state and local governments have found a loophole.In Arizona, citizens can still lose their houses over minuscule tax bills, despite a unanimous 2023 Supreme Court ruling that was supposed to paralyze the practice nationwide. A disturbing chasm is growing between the letter of the law and the spirit of justice. Christine Searle, a 70-year-old retiree, faces the loss of her home—valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars—over a mere $1,607.68 in back taxes. Sadly, her story is not uncommon in Arizona. For nearly two decades,...

Last week, a court in Hong Kong ordered that Evergrande, China’s massive property developer, must be liquidated. Real estate accounts for about one-quarter of China’s GDP, and Evergrande isn’t the only troubled part of the Chinese real estate sector. While I’d always like to see China constrained, not only is a collapsing China dangerous, but real estate collapse also reminds us of what’s happening domestically. Business Insider reported on Evergrande’s liquidation, which has long been expected and which will be carried out in an orderly fashion. The assets are valued at $245 billion (which I suspect is inflated), while the...

A San Diego law would force landlords to allow their tenants operate childcare facilities in their units. Not only that, but landlords have to notify tenants of their right to do so. This law brings with it a lot of liability for landlords if a child is hurt.

Americans are growing increasingly frustrated at property tax levels, a new poll has shown. According to a new UChicago Harris/AP-NORC poll, around two thirds of Americans surveyed believe their property tax rate is too high. The poll was conducted in 2023, between December 14 to 18, with 1,024 participants across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The survey found 69 percent of adults in the U.S. believe their property tax rates were "unfair", with 27 percent saying they were "about right", and 3 percent claiming they are taxed too little. Across the country, property taxes, also known as...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/putin-orders-hunt-for-property-of-russian-empire-soviet-union/ar-BB1gW27F?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=HCTS&cvid=5a8da436df714788b011cfd688399a27&ei=34

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear a case involving whether cities in Western states can ban homeless people from sleeping in public areas. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals previously ruled against anti-camping ordinances in Grants Pass, Oregon, saying it’s unconstitutional because it violates the Eighth Amendment of no "cruel and unusual punishment." Grants Pass appealed the ruling, with the backing of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose own state faces a homelessness crisis. The ruling applies to nine western states, including Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. *** Former MLB great and...

Last summer, I wrote a brief article about how China’s property sector is, structurally, a bubble. And as with all bubbles, policymakers are equipped with a toolkit limited to delaying, mitigating, or perhaps even changing (genco.substack.com/p/the-great-financial-reset-of-2009) the inevitable “burst”. And while Beijing has done a mostly admirable job over the past decade of delaying the debt crisis, a sort-of countdown to D-day has begun.

We all deserve a place where we can hug our loved ones, cook, bathe, make memories, tuck our children into bed at night, and live without fear — a home. Currently in Colorado, a stable home is out of reach for people evicted by landlords without reason. As a result, each year, thousands of families facing eviction across our state are launched into a cycle of temporary housing or homelessness. A recent point-in-time (PIT) Count conducted by the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative found the top self-reported cause of homelessness in Denver is an inability to pay rent. The number two...

Ever since San Francisco hired a pricey PR firm to help improve the city’s image by placing positive spin in papers like the NY Times, you see a lot fewer articles speculating that the city is in the midst of an urban doom loop. And yet, the PR firm can’t actually stop the bad news from getting out. Case in point, the city’s commercial real estate vacancy rate just jumped up to another record high.San Francisco’s amount of vacant office space has reached the highest level ever recorded in the city’s history.According to preliminary fourth quarter data provided by real...

The dream of net-zero carbon emissions—and its vision of blanketing hundreds of millions of acres of American land with wind turbines and solar panels—is running up against the reality that most of the land in America is still privately owned and many Americans don’t want these massive industrial installations near their homes. But that may prove to be a temporary impediment. “There is a major effort under the Biden administration to consolidate power over land and resources, because whoever owns the land and resources of a nation, controls the people,” Margaret Byfield, executive director of American Stewards of Liberty, a...

This is the moment an elderly employee scared off a gang of robbers with a gun after they attempted to ransack his Bay Area store on Monday. Albert Marcu faced down a group of would-be robbers with sledgehammers after they stormed the Estates Consignment Store in Pleasant Hill. Surveillance video shows an apparent coordinated attempt to rob the store as a woman on the phone held the shop door open, allowing a group of men to run in. The footage shows two masked men standing at the door threatening and holding back the security guard while three others made their...

To anyone who tracks the efforts of environmentalists, their policies often have an ulterior motive. They neither result in a better society nor do they produce better habitats. Their policy preferences also do not consider how using the land improves the land for man and wildlife. Instead, many environmentalists advocate for policies at the expense of farmers, miners, and others who create usable, tangible, societal benefits from the land. This often leaves observers to wonder: what are environmentalists really after? The answer is power and money. On September 29, the SEC, at the request of the NYSE, proposed a rule...

The Local Government Revenue Recapture Act, is a law that allows cities, counties, and the state’s hundreds of different taxing bodies to “reacapture” their “lost” revenue [tax appeals] and also to shift the higher tax burden from the disappearing business property taxes to home owners, causing a near 30 percent jump in some cases in the burden on the state’s families. The act allows state taxing bodies to take the amount they “lost” to appeals refunds, total that up, and then just raise taxes that amount, effectively nullifying the appeals decisions and acting as a yearly new stealth, backdoor tax...

There is a new law in New York State that allows tenants to stay in the home they are renting even if they do not pay. If you know anyone who owns a rental property, hopefully, things are going well. New York State has put a ton of new laws in place that makes things more clear in a ton of different aspects of the landlord-tenant relationship. If you have someone who is a horrible tenant, look how long they can LEGALLY and technically live in your rental unit! An entire year! The new Attorney General, Letitia James, has a...

“My background is partially in extremism,” Rep. Emily Dievendorf, D-Lansing, told WKAR News recently while defending legislative proposals supported by a group of progressive lawmakers. Dievendorf is the author and key sponsor of a series of housing bills and ideas that would upend the rental market in Michigan. This includes rent control and preventing landlords from using criminal background checks for renters. More bills were introduced recently, including: HB 5235 – Requires housing providers to accept renters on a “first come, first serve” basis (unless legally obligated not to, as in cases of low-income housing). HB 5237 – The state...

Our freedom to roam is under assault from a plan to close everything off and make us ask permission before we enjoy it.. There is a plan underway to close the great open spaces of the American West to you, me, our children, and our children’s children. The federal government — which owns most of this land — is determined to move from a “use and let use” system of accessing Western public lands to a permission-based system that will mean reservations, permits, and closures. Just last month, the Bureau of Land Management issued a final decision to close 317...

Older Chinese who have survived the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution and other tumultuous events are not so naive as to stand idly by as their government fails to effectively cope with the country's property slump. For these and other Chinese, overseas markets, notably Japan, are presenting an escape route of sorts for their money, partly thanks to smartphone apps. In fact, a massive capital flight being engineered by rich Chinese has given President Xi Jinping a serious headache, even as his administration celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative by hosting a forum in Beijing this week. That...

The trial ended for the day before 5 p.m. Appraiser Douglas Larson was cross-examined by defense attorneys in the afternoon, and the questioning will continue Wednesday. Prosecution Shows 2 Appraisals With Different Numbers, Same Date–3:48 p.m. Prosecutors showed former Cushman and Wakefield appraiser Douglas Larson two appraisal reports he dated Nov. 1, 2012. The reports had different numbers, and Mr. Larson was questioned as to which one he submitted to Capital One first. Mr. Larson said he didn't know. Prosecutors then showed the 2011 and 2012 appraisals in granular detail, pointing out that the cost per square foot in 2011...

In addition to the off-year elections to be decided this November in Virginia, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi, a number of ballot initiatives will be voted on in other states. Perhaps the most consequential measure appearing on the November 2023 ballot, at least when it comes to fiscal policy, is found in Colorado, where voters will be asked whether they want to weaken the nation’s strongest tax and expenditure limit in exchange for property tax relief. Proposition HH, which was referred to the November ballot by Colorado lawmakers with the support of Governor Jared Polis (D), would weaken the state’s Taxpayer’s...