Residential
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December 09, 2025
MLS General Counsel Eye NAR Settlement In Rearview
When the National Association of Realtors unveiled nationwide buyer commission rule changes amid a $418 million antitrust settlement in 2024, multiple listing services and their counsel took on the heavy lift of implementing those changes as their members sought guidance.
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December 09, 2025
Dentons Guides Initial $283M Home Equity Securitization
Dentons-advised financial technology company Splitero, as well as funds managed by Blue Owl Capital, Antarctica Capital and Kingsbridge Investment Partners, closed on $283.3 million in a home equity investment securitization.
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December 08, 2025
Ex-NY Gov. Aide's Mom Says Alleged FARA Cash Wasn't Dirty
The mother of a former top aide to New York governors Monday told a Brooklyn federal jury large amounts of cash she held were from legitimate sources, as opposed to prosecutors' claim it was tied to her daughter's alleged scheme to secretly further the People's Republic of China's interests.
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December 08, 2025
Trump Admin Backs Exxon In Cuba Property Seizure Case
The Trump administration is pressing the U.S. Supreme Court to rule in favor of Exxon Mobil Corp. and find that a federal law allowing U.S. victims of property seizures by the Cuban government to seek damages from entities that subsequently used the property abrogates the sovereign immunity of Cuban agencies and instrumentalities.
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December 08, 2025
The Real Estate Matters Keeping GCs Up At Night
As the general counsel of real estate companies cope with fast-changing market dynamics and consider how to implement new technology, outside counsel can play an important role in helping them make better decisions.
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December 08, 2025
One Sotheby's Agent Tells Jurors $3.7M Theft Was Not Fraud
A former One Sotheby's International Realty agent accused of stealing $3.7 million in proceeds from the sale of a Miami-area beachfront luxury condo told jurors Monday that while there may have been wrongdoing on his part, there was no fraud.
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December 08, 2025
RealPage Asks To Block NY Rental Pricing Software Law
Property management software company RealPage is asking for a preliminary injunction to block enforcement of a New York law that prohibits building owners from using software to set residential rental rates while its case challenging the statute plays out.
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December 08, 2025
Independence Realty's General Counsel Will Retire In March
Independence Realty Trust Inc.'s general counsel will retire March 31 and is expected "to provide an orderly transition of her duties through her retirement date," the real estate investment trust announced in a regulatory filing.
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December 08, 2025
Madison Realty Capital Lands $285M Brooklyn Multifamily Refi
Real estate private equity firm Madison Realty Capital has secured $285 million in refinancing for the recently completed Greenpoint Central multifamily property in Brooklyn, broker Walker & Dunlop announced in a Monday news release.
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December 05, 2025
Feds Wrap Up FARA Case Against Ex-NY Gov. Aide Linda Sun
Brooklyn federal prosecutors on Friday rested their case against a former top aide to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, after about three weeks of trial over alleged violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act and other charges.
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December 05, 2025
7th Circ. Won't Revive Ex-Tenant's Palestinian Flag Bias Suit
The Seventh Circuit has backed the dismissal of a Palestinian American's Fair Housing Act lawsuit that accused an apartment building's owner and operator of wrongfully evicting her after she refused to remove a Palestinian flag outside her apartment window.
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December 05, 2025
Manufactured Housing Cos. Ditch Price-Fixing Claims
An Illinois federal judge has tossed a proposed price-fixing class action against multiple manufactured housing companies and a data company, ruling the proposed class failed to show the businesses conspired to jack up rent prices.
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December 05, 2025
Mass. IOLTA Panel Says It's Owed Slice Of Residual Funds
A Massachusetts panel that oversees Interest on Lawyers' Trust Accounts asked the state's highest court Friday to at least partially unwind a $4 million class action settlement, saying a lower court didn't give it a chance to argue for a portion of what it says are "significant" residual funds.
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December 04, 2025
Dems Press CFPB's Vought On Mortgage Rate Shutdown Plan
Senate Democrats are demanding clarity on the fate of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's benchmark mortgage-rate work if the Trump administration lets the agency go dark, warning of imminent potential chaos for the $13 trillion mortgage market.
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December 04, 2025
Miami Resident Claims City Extorts Land For Permits
A Miami resident told a Florida state court that the city is subverting the eminent domain process by unconstitutionally extorting land from homeowners in exchange for building permits.
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December 04, 2025
Zillow's Climate Score Removal Sparks Insurance Concerns
Zillow's recent decision to reduce the visibility of a climate-risk feature attached to its real estate listings highlights a need to provide consumers with more information on a key driver of insurance costs, given differences in climate-risk modeling practices.
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December 04, 2025
OFAC Fines Real Estate Firm $7M Over Sanctions Violations
The Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control fined a New York property management company more than $7 million for allegedly violating Russian sanctions by receiving payments on behalf of a company owned by a sanctioned Russian oligarch.
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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.
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.