1st Home? Try, 2nd (or 4th) According to the developer of 432 Park, there are already signed contracts for nearly $1 billion worth of apartments at the building; total sales are expected to surpass $3 billion. About half the buyers are foreigners; only about a quarter of the units will be occupied at any one time....Read More
“Relative” Reality “The level of reality is very high.” –Bravo producer, “Million Dollar Listing New York”; The Real and Unreal on Reality TV (NYT, May 2, 2013) First, there was the Crime Scene Investigation (“CSI”) franchise. As in, “CSI: Las Vegas,” “CSI: Miami,” “CSI: New York,” etc. Next came The Real Housewives of . ....Read More
“Pick a Card House, Any Card House!” I’ve certainly heard the insinuation: by shuffling the order they show a series of homes, Realtors can subtly (or not so subtly) “guide” their Buyer’s decision to buy the home they want them to. Specifically, the supposed strategy is to show the most promising property either first or...Read More
“The Senate’s Muckraker” Against a backdrop of epic Wall Street corruption and captured regulators — just look at the resumes of the top 20 SEC officials, starting with Mary Jo White, nominated by Barack Obama to lead the agency — it’s easy to forget that there also good guys out there. Former Senator Ted Kaufman,...Read More
Taxing (Wall Street) Labor at Capital Gains Rates: “Heads I Win, Tails I Don’t Lose” Of all the disingenuous, self-serving, cockamamie lies arguments served up by the leveraged buyout — er, private equity — crowd to protect the (very) favorable tax treatment on their labor (called “carried interest”), the one that rankles the most is...Read More
“Zillow-Pulsenomics What?!?” I’ve certainly taken my share of potshots on these pages at housing predictions by so-called industry experts. See, “Housing Market Predictions 2013;” “Barrons: ‘Home Prices Headed Up 7%“; “Predicting Home Prices in . . . 2022?!?” So, who do I find more credible? Try Robert Shiller, professor of economics and finance at Yale...Read More
