Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
While the world’s attention is glued to events in Greece, the real action continues to evolve quietly thousands of kilometers east, in China, where the near record surge in new loans remains unable to offset the dramatic slowdown in shadow banking issuance. And while China’s bubble-chasing, animal spirits have recently reoriented themselves from real estate…
(Bloomberg) — One Tuesday last month, a buyer at Manhattan’s Stella Tower completed the $5.35 million purchase of a two-bedroom condominium on the 14th floor. That Friday, the home was listed for rent at a rate that makes it one of the costliest apartments in the midtown west neighborhood. The buyer, a shell corporation listed…
NYT_INLINE_IMAGE_POSITION1 Correction AppendedPHILADELPHIAWEARING a Paul Green School of Rock T-shirt, his bangs plastered to his forehead in the summer heat, Laris Kreslins pulled in front of a handsome brownstone on Rittenhouse Square, the priciest neighborhood in the city, and hopped out of his car. Skip to next paragraph Ryan Donnell for The New York Times…
Queens Rents Get Pricier Than Brooklyn’s, Report Finds View Full Caption NEW YORK CITY — Queens’ rental prices are catching up to Brooklyn’s — and surpassing them. The ascendance of Queens has been a common refrain for more than a year now. Last month’s rents for the “hot” northwestern part of the borough that includes…
Lax U.S. rules and real estate industry’s no-questions-asked approach make it easy for dodgy characters to funnel wealth through high-end Manhattan apartments. One day during Chen Shui-bian’s second term as Taiwan’s president, several people lugged what a witness described as “five or six” fruit boxes into the presidential residence in Taipei. Inside the crates, the…
In a country beset by increasing wealth and income inequality, few places are more economically disparate than New York City. Part of what drives income inequality in New York is that it’s an extremely attractive place for the global elite to live, or in many cases to park their vast fortunes. On Sunday, The New…
One57, on West 57th Street, where a penthouse is reportedly in contract for $90 million. (Photo: Rendering Courtesy of Extell Development) Additional reporting by Michael Hudson of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. PART I. THE BUYER The buyer, an Italian, was in town for a week, with a million or so dollars to spend….
Would making all of this taller actually solve the affordability problem? (By Flickr user @sage_solar, via Creative Commons Attribution license) In San Francisco, pretty much everyone agrees on one thing: The city’s housing is crazy expensive. Apartment-hunting causes its own form of PTSD. The rent, to put it simply, is too damn high. But even…
Start Component ID: 4471 – Article Page: Video Player Main Asset End Component ID: 4471 – Article Page: Video Player Main Asset Start Component ID: 146 – Article Page: Image Gallery Begin Photos Enlarge Photo Conner Jay Sonja Trauss, the founder of San Francisco Bay Area Renters Federation, holds up a pro-development sign at 75…
41 W. 24th St. View Full Caption FLATIRON — “Affordable luxury” three-bedroom apartments are hitting the market in Flatiron, offering balconies, heated bathroom floors and granite countertops for $4,500 a month. Ten three-bedroom units will soon be available in the eight-story building at 21 W. 24th St., two blocks from Madison Square Park, in what…