The National Association of Home Builders is “enthusiastically backing” President Donald Trump’s tax overhaul plan, just weeks after saying many of the proposals raised “red flags.”

One the group’s main concerns had been over the White House and congressional leaders’ push to double the standard deduction — a move the NAHB said would reduce the value of the mortgage deduction for individual filers. The framework released Wednesday still calls for almost doubling the standard deduction. But it offers other provisions that assuaged the NAHB, such as preserving incentives for home mortgage interest and cutting the rate for pass-through businesses to 25 percent from as high as 39.6 percent…

Contract signings for the purchase of previously owned U.S. homes fell in August by the most in seven months, reflecting limited inventory, the National Association of Realtors said Wednesday. The Realtors group’s revised forecast for the year calls for sales to weaken from 2016 in the wake of two hurricanes.

• Prices in Singapore to climb 10%-15% in next 12-15 months: BNP
• Chinese buyers to fuel Hong Kong gains, but no bubble risk

Singapore home prices have reached a bottom and will rebound, while Hong Kong’s “crazy” housing market will continue to defy gravity, according to BNP Paribas SA.

“Very significant” income growth will drive the first leg of a recovery in home prices in Singapore, where property ownership as a proportion of household assets is near a record low, BNP’s Asia-Pacific head of research for financial institutions and property Wee Liat Lee said in an interview while visiting the city-state. That will boost prices by 10 percent to 15 percent over the next 12 to 15 months, in turn luring foreign buyers, especially from China, Lee said…

Home prices in 20 U.S. cities climbed more than forecast in July, reflecting solid demand against a backdrop of modest listings of properties, figures from S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller showed Tuesday.

Buyers are competing for a limited number of for-sale homes, allowing sellers to boost asking prices. Property values are consistently outpacing wage growth, helping explain why the share of first-time buyers of previously owned homes in August was at a one-year low. At the same time, owners’ equity as a share of total real-estate holdings climbed in the second quarter to the highest level in 11 years…

• Her two-bedroom, two-bathroom condo is at 502 Park Ave.
• First daughter bought the apartment for $1.5 million in 2004

The asking price to rent a Manhattan apartment owned by Ivanka Trump has dropped by 30 percent since her father was elected president.

The two-bedroom, two-bathroom condo at 502 Park Ave. was listed at $15,000 a month in November, according to the real estate website StreetEasy. In February, it dropped to $13,000. The asking rent on Tuesday was $10,450, the website shows…

Ivanka Trump Drops Rent at Manhattan Apartment by 30% Since Election

A second straight decline in purchases of new U.S. homes, combined with downward revisions for prior months, show a tepid market as results begin to be clouded by the fallout from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, according to government data Tuesday.

A lot of people do not equate California with poverty.  You certainly don’t think of poverty when you look at real estate values in places like San Francisco even though the homeless issue is right in your face.  The reality is that most people do not live lavish lifestyles.  In fact, a new report highlights that more than one-third of California households have virtually no savings.  These households would not have the ability to live at the poverty level for three months if one paycheck in the household was lost due to a job loss.  You also have more than 2 million young adults living at home with their parents since the rent is too high.  This isn’t the California that is presented in Hollywood movies.

San Francisco real estate continues to operate in a land of full on self-indulged delusion and pseudo-tech worship.  I travel to the Bay Area and San Francisco often and the amount of self-delusion when it comes to real estate is amazing.  You will find all of these convoluted justifications as to why a crap shack should sell for $1.5 million and when some other chump takes the jump, they use this as some sort of reinforcement of their real estate buying acumen.  You are the amazing market timer and they are the fool (at least that is the thought process).  I’ve seen this with couples in the area where two professionals have sound financial judgment but then a kid is thrown into the mix and all hell breaks loose.  “Well I don’t want my kid living in a rental!” or “I want them to have a piece of real estate when I turn over and pass on” as if your kid wants to chase the same Full House rat race.  People are mistaking luck with skill but that is part of human nature.  And a recent survey found that 83 percent of Bay Area renters are planning on getting out of the area to settle down…

U.S. counties at the greatest risk of hurricanes, earthquakes, and other catastrophes saw the fastest home-price appreciation, a new report says.

It’s been a bad few weeks for natural disasters.  A series of hurricanes ripped through Texas, Florida, and the Caribbean, killing hundreds and racking up hundreds of billions of dollars in damage. Wildfires are raging in the Western U.S., and a pair of powerful earthquakes have battered Mexico.

Amid the terrifying recent events is a worrisome finding from a new report: The parts of the U.S. most at risk of natural disasters are also the places where property values are highest and increasing most quickly…

Home Prices Soar in Disaster-Prone Areas

• Water, electricity, tattletales to identify absent investors
• ‘Shall we tax people who buy new shoes and don’t wear them?’

On a wet, midweek evening when most Australians are home cooking dinner, less than a third of the lights are on in the apartments in Melbourne’s Docklands. Most shops and restaurants are closed. The only people passing through seem to be on their way elsewhere.

These “ghost towers,” as the high-end residential property with three-bedroom apartments costing almost $1 million have been dubbed, are popular with Chinese investors who mostly live abroad. Their darkened blocks loom as sparsely occupied symbols of a property market where even solidly middle class households have increasingly found themselves priced out…

Sales of previously owned U.S. homes declined to a one-year low in August as affordability continued to hamper demand and Hurricane Harvey caused a slump in Houston-area purchases, a National Association of Realtors report showed Wednesday.

• Connecticut property will start operating after artist’s death
• Will be open to visual artists, poets, musicians, dancers

Jasper Johns, America’s most acclaimed living artist, has a plan to make sure his bucolic Connecticut estate remains a creative haven long after he’s gone.

Johns, 87, whose 1950s depictions of the American flag are among the most influential contemporary works, received a green light last week to turn his 170-acre property in Sharon into an artists’ retreat after he dies…

Jasper Johns Plans to Turn His 170-Acre Estate Into an Artists’ Retreat

Steady U.S. new-home construction in August together with a jump in permits indicate the housing market was moving ahead before a likely temporary hit from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, government figures showed Tuesday.

Sentiment among America’s homebuilders fell more than forecast in September as companies grew concerned about the cost of construction materials and labor shortages in the wake of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, according to data Monday from the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo.

• Quail Ridge Apartments in Plainsboro has 1,032 units
• Kushner Cos. sold the property 11 years ago to buy NYC tower

Kushner Cos., the real estate firm owned by Jared Kushner’s family, repurchased an apartment complex in Central New Jersey that it sold 11 years ago.

The 1,032-unit Quail Ridge Apartments was sold by Angelo Gordon & Co. for $190 million, Kushner Cos. said Monday in a statement. The 52-acre Plainsboro property, near Princeton, was among buildings it sold in 2007 to help finance a $1.8 billion purchase of a Manhattan office tower. The deal was completed Sept. 14…

Canadian home sales had their first increase in five months as tumbling prices in Toronto coaxed buyers back following government moves to cool the market in the nation’s largest city.

Toronto sales jumped 14.3 percent in August from July, leading a nationwide sales gain of 1.3 percent. Toronto activity remains 36 percent below a peak set in March, the month before the Ontario government brought in measures such as a foreign buyers tax, the Canadian Real Estate Association said Friday from Ottawa…

Canada Home-Sales Rebound as Lower Toronto Prices Entice Buyers

• Vacancies climbed even as leasing reached a record in August
• Landlords rushing to fill units ahead of slower winter months

Manhattan’s construction boom has crowded the borough with so many apartments that even in a month where leasing hit a record, the vacancy rate climbed.

Renters signed 7,061 new leases in August, the most for any month in data going back to January 2008, according to a report Thursday by appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate. Despite all those deals, vacancies climbed to 2.27 percent from 2.14 percent a year earlier, the first annual increase since February…

For many market-rate renters, incomes appear to be keeping up. But are you one of them?

Most people paying attention to the cost of renting an apartment in the U.S. would tell you that prices have gotten out of hand.

That’s certainly true at the extremes where, say, the typical two-bedroom in the Bay Area suburb of San Mateo, Calif., clocks in at $4,300 a month. More broadly, the supply of new housing isn’t keeping up with demand, pushing rents up in cities across the country…

You Can Afford That Apartment (According to This Chart)

• Shareholders reject Berkshire bid to almost double stake
• Offer would have increased Buffett holding to 38 percent

Warren Buffett’s bid to double his stake in Home Capital Group Inc. was rejected by shareholders of the Canadian mortgage lender in a vote Tuesday.

About 89 percent of investors voted against the offer, which would have boosted Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s stake to 38 percent from about 20 percent. Stockholders including CIBC Asset Management had objected to the deal, arguing it would dilute the stock by selling shares to Berkshire at an almost 30 percent discount…

• Insolvency case against Jaypee Infra stalled by Supreme Court
• Homebuyers approach top court to safeguard their savings

Fifteen miles east of India’s capital lies Jaypee Wish Town, a sprawling 1,162-acre site spotted with unfinished residential towers that embody the human cost of the nation’s bad-loan mess and point to the difficulty of resolving it.

Jaypee Infratech Ltd., Wish Town’s developer, is among the first 12 corporates that the central bank pushed into insolvency court after it was armed this May with new powers to expedite resolution of the nation’s more than $180 billion in soured debt. Hundreds of homebuyers have filed suit saying the loan-recovery proceedings threaten to leave them without homes or compensation, prompting the Supreme Court to halt the case on Sept. 4…

• Prices up 1.1% in August, annual rate rises first time in 2017
• Low mortgage rates, shortage of houses to stoke gains: Halifax

U.K. house prices rose the most this year in August, possibly signaling that a slowdown in the market is easing, according to Halifax.

The 1.1 percent jump was the biggest since December 2016 and followed a 0.7 percent gain in July. Over the three months through August, prices rose an annual 2.6 percent, with the measure increasing for the first time this year, the mortgage lender said in a statement on Thursday…

• Knight Frank study gives five-year returns for world markets
• India’s residential market delivered 70% return, Hong Kong 65%

With all the buzz around Hong Kong’s housing market, one might mistake it for Asia’s best performer. To be fair, it is over a 12-month period — but over five years, the region’s top returns came from India, according to Knight Frank LLP…

India Trumps Hong Kong as No. 1 for Home-Price Gains in Asia

• Prices for homes not damaged by the flood waters heading up
• Rental market could also see inflation amid supply crunch

Just a week after Hurricane Harvey struck Houston, Irma Jalifi was doing something that might sound crazy: closing on a home.

In fact, Jalifi, a real-estate agent with Redfin, closed on not one but three Houston houses Tuesday at their asking prices — two at $1 million and a three-bedroom at $450,000 — as the new economics of Houston housing began to take hold…

How Harvey Will Affect Houston’s Housing Market

• Mainland graduates staying in city add to housing pressure
• CLSA’s Nicole Wong sees demand for 4,000 units in coming years

As Hong Kong struggles with the world’s priciest housing market, a shortage in supply is being exacerbated by mainland Chinese students who come to study and then decide to stay.

The graduates may help boost housing demand by 4,000 units a year in the medium term, estimates Nicole Wong, the regional head of property research at CLSA Ltd. in Hong Kong. That compares with 25,500 private residential units completed in 2016…

Young Chinese Graduates Are Fueling Hong Kong’s Property Boom

• Average price falls 1.9% from July, real estate board says
• Sales decline 35% from August last year to 6,357 deal

Housing prices in Toronto continued their summer slump in August as government regulations and fears about a market softening curbed demand in Canada’s biggest city.

The average price for all housing types declined 1.9 percent last month from July to C$732,292 ($591,225), according to the Toronto Real Estate Board. That’s down 20 percent from the March peak, when the average cost of buying a home in the Toronto region climbed close to C$1 million…

If this publishing thing doesn’t work out, newspapers may have a future in real estate.

The owner of the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune said Monday it wasn’t only buying the New York Daily News, but also a stake in a joint venture that will own a 25-acre (10-hectare) parcel of land on which its printing facility is located and which overlooks the Manhattan skyline.

It wasn’t enough that Tronc Inc. bought a storied New York City tabloid for just $1. A Tronc executive told the Chicago Tribune the land was “an added inducement to this transaction.” With print advertising in a downward spiral ever since the internet became a commercial force, newspapers have seen the value of their once-formidable brands dwindle…

• Dormitory-style accommodation takes off in priciest city
• Young finance workers join students in shared living

Young finance industry workers are bunking down in dormitory-style accommodation in Hong Kong as “co-living” developments take off in the world’s priciest city for property.

An investment banker and a bank intern are among those renting rooms in an upmarket development called Mini Ocean Park Station on the south side of Hong Kong island, said marketing manager Cynthia Cheung…

Sky-High Rents Force Hong Kong Bankers Into Dorm Life

• Province-backed companies asked to suspend new investments
• Hubei’s SASAC makes decision as companies face high debt

The state assets regulator in China’s Hubei province has asked companies backed by the province and their subsidiaries to suspend new property investments from Sept. 5 amid a push to reduce financial risks, according to people familiar with the matter.

The State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission in Hubei has also asked province-backed companies to accelerate the construction or sales of current property projects and get money back as soon as possible, said the people, who asked not to be named because they weren’t authorized to comment on the matter publicly…

• Demand for Greentown China’s dollar notes 13.3 times offer
• Moody’s sees negative outlooks for builder debt tailing off

Dollar bonds sold by China’s property developers are being lapped up by investors, lured by the companies’ stronger earnings and improving credit profiles.

Notes sold in July and August by Chinese developers attracted orders 6.3 times the issue size, compared with 2.5 times in May and June, according to data compiled by Bloomberg where deal statistics are available. The firms are taking advantage of the better sentiment, with bond sales rising to a record $35.2 billion this year…

A condo on New York’s Roosevelt Island listed at $2 million missed that mark, but still set a price record

The 1,433-square-foot (133-square-meter), three-bedroom apartment — with a view of the midtown Manhattan skyline — sold for $1.87 million, according to listing broker Ben Garama of Corcoran Group, who said the deal was completed Thursday.

The price for the home at 415 Main St. tops the previous record of $1.75 million on Roosevelt Island, a sliver of land on the East River where a new Cornell University campus is under construction. Garama was also the broker for that deal last year, which was for an identically sized apartment in the same building…

• Lender experienced a ‘sharp increase’ in investor home loans
• Heritage Bank’s temporary restrictions took effect on Sept. 1

One of Australia’s biggest customer-owned banks, Heritage Bank Ltd., has temporarily stopped accepting new loan applications from property investors as it seeks to comply with regulation limiting how much it can expand its investment lending book.

The Toowoomba, Queensland-based mutual is freezing lending to new investor customers as it looks to meet stricter lending conditions put in place by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority. Regulators have grown increasingly concerned about the risks posed by high and rapidly rising home prices in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, which have fueled record levels of household debt…

• Demand for Greentown China’s dollar notes 13.3 times offer
• Moody’s sees negative outlooks for builders tailing off

Dollar bonds sold by China’s property developers are being lapped up by investors, lured by the companies’ stronger earnings and improving credit profiles.

Notes sold in July and August by Chinese developers attracted orders 6.3 times the issue size, compared with 2.5 times in May and June, according to data compiled by Bloomberg where deal statistics are available. The firms are taking advantage of the better sentiment, with bond sales rising to a record $35.2 billion this year.

An unexpected decline in July contract signings for the purchase of previously owned U.S. homes shows the continuing impact of limited supply on the real-estate market, National Association of Realtors figures released Thursday showed.

Key Takeaways

The decline in contract signings, the fourth in the last five months, highlights that a limited number of properties for sale remains the biggest hurdle for the housing market. That’s particularly true for those wanting to buy for the first time as rising home prices are outpacing gains in wages…

• Boomers banking on homes for retirement in the money — so far
• ‘People told me I was crazy,’ says 45-year-old investor

In the spring of 2012, Dustan Woodhouse, then a 40-year-old Vancouver mortgage broker, broke the cardinal rule of saving for retirement: he liquidated his retirement fund, took the tax hit and plowed the rest into the local real estate market.

“People told me I was crazy,” says Woodhouse, 45, whose plan is to buy and have paid off 10 such investments by his late sixties. “But that’s our pension — that’s what that property is.”…

Five months before he got married, Tim Koogle, Yahoo’s first chief executive officer, was in the market for a house. It was early 2003, and he and his fiancée, Pam Scott, “were looking for our first house together,” Koogle said. “I asked her: When you walk out of the door in the morning, do you want to have your feet land on dirt, or asphalt?” The answer was an emphatic “dirt,” and so, after a brief search, they purchased a midcentury modern house on 12 acres in Los Altos, Calif., for about $8 million…

Yahoo’s First CEO Is Selling His House for $19.4 Million

• Home Capital investors to vote on additional stake Sept. 12
• Some investors say stake sale is dilutive and not needed

It’s not every day shareholders say no to Warren Buffett. Yet that’s exactly what Home Capital Group Inc. investors may do next month, adding to a series of rare setbacks for the billionaire investor this year.

Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. needs shareholder approval to boost its stake in Home Capital, part of a C$2.4 billion ($1.9 billion) cash and stock lifeline for the Canadian lender that was on the verge of collapse just two months ago…

The homes and businesses that were flooded and lost power after Hurricane Harvey slammed into Texas’s coast last week may spend months waiting for their lights to come back on.

Even once the region’s utilities have repaired damaged power lines, electricians have to certify flooded homes before they can reconnect service, said Scott Aaronson, executive director for security at the utility trade group Edison Electric Institute. The group is working with government officials on expediting that certification, pointing to prolonged outages that followed hurricanes Sandy, Matthew and Katrina, he said…

Homes Worst Hit by Harvey May Wait Months for Power to Come Back

Steady growth in home prices in 20 U.S. cities in June reflects a limited number of available houses for sale, according to S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller data released Tuesday. Nationwide, values posted their largest advance in three years.