Month: July 2018

Sen. Charles Grassley after the Senate Policy luncheons in the Capitol on July 10, 2018 (Credit: Getty Images) As the Treasury Department increases its efforts to crackdown on money laundering in real estate, legislation that would force shell companies to disclose their true ownership is stalling in Congress. “All I can say is I’ve been…

Fortress executives Fred Sands and Randal Nardone with the property Fortress Investment Group has fallen out of its roughly $58 million contract to purchase a Brentwood high-rise developed by the late real estate impresario Fred Sands, The Real Deal has learned. Sources said the deal fell through during renegotiations, when New York City-based Fortress tried…

Servers in a data center, one of the sectors where specialty REITs are thriving Speciality real estate investment trusts are posting strong gains and attracting an increasing amount of investment dollars. These nontraditional REITs home in on particular property types, like data centers and self-storage warehouses. Many have posted double-digit growth in so-called funds from…

MLS stadium, Francis Suarez and David Beckham Miami voters will get to decide whether David Beckham’s latest pitch for a Major League Soccer stadium passes muster — if a legal challenge doesn’t derail it first. On Wednesday afternoon, following another marathon meeting, city commissioners voted 3-2 to place on the Nov. 4 ballot a no-bid…

Compass CEO Robert Reffkin (Credit: Compass and iStock) UPDATED, July 19, 3:50 p.m.: By 2028, Compass CEO Robert Reffkin wants agent commissions to account for only 20 to 30 percent of their earnings. The rest can come from title and mortgage, escrow and move-in services — and even furniture sales. To get there, the venture-backed…

Toronto skyline and an American construction crane (Credit: The City of Toronto via Flickr) The U.S. likes its construction projects, but the latest count of crane activity around North America shows that Canadian cities are in the middle of a building boom. Toronto had 97 active cranes in the air, up from 88 in January,…

(Composite by Kerry Barger for The Real Deal) Since landing $450 million in funding from Softbank last year, Compass has been aggressively scooping up brokerages and agents across the country. And now, the venture-backed company is employing a new line of business: licensing its technology to other firms. On Wednesday, Compass announced its inaugural licensing…

Santa Monica Pier, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, and Santa Monica Mayor Ted Winterer The number of Airbnb listings in Santa Monica fell by 17 percent over the last year, a possible indication that the city’s stricter home-sharing laws are having a cooling effect on the industry. There were 1,016 listings in Santa Monica in June,…

1001 N Seward St and Victor Coleman Hudson Pacific Properties, the film and TV studio-space giant, is making headway on its plan to deliver 575,000 square feet of new development on the Sunset Las Palmas Studio campus. The Los Angeles-based REIT published marketing materials for Harlowe, a 128,000-square-foot office building set to rise in the…

Rendering of the space (Credit: Public Domain Pictures) Bow West Capital is giving new meaning to “green spaces” in commercial real estate. The Santa Monica-based developer is repositioning a seven-story office building in Downtown Los Angeles to cater to cannabis-related industries, the company announced Wednesday. Located at 718 S. Hill Street in the Historic Core…