Envy Apartment

SAN FRANCISCO — More than 60 stories above the ground, construction workers climb makeshift stairs and cross narrow steel planks to put the finishing touches on Salesforce Tower , now San Francisco ’s tallest building. The $1.1 billion skyscraper has already changed the city’s skyline, towering over old favorites like Coit Tower and the Transamerica Pyramid. Unlike in New York and Chicago, the new 1,070-foot high-rise is a gargantuan presence in this liberal West Coast city . Salesforce Tower and a massive adjoining transit center also embody a larger transition in San Francisco — one that pits the technology industry against the city’s charming neighborhoods. Tech giant Salesforce .com, which provides online software for business, bought the naming rights to the 61-story steel and concrete building, adding to concerns that the tech economy is steamrolling through the city. “All the tech and people the industry is bringing in, you can work two jobs and barely make a living for yo...

Lon Horwedel | AnnArbor.com Ann Arbor’s Hidden Valley Club apartment complex is a local example of a $ 70 billion national real estate problem : Securitized commercial loans that are in default. A foreclosure notice on the 324-unit complex near Briarwood was filed in late April, despite months of ongoing conversations initiated by the owner to modify the loan. The loan itself - which totals $18.1 million - is complicated, since it’s one among billions in real estate investments that were repackaged and sold to Wall Street investors during years of peak real estate prices . So are the circumstances behind the loan default, said Hidden Valley Club co- owner Jeff Starman . The most obvious is the drop in the property’s value as rental rates fell below levels to cover loan payments . Other factors include a national real estate climate in which banking consolidations after the lending crisis and the sheer volume of properties in securitized loans - known as Commercial Mortgage B...

House-flipping hit its highest levels last year since before the recession as investors seek to capitalize on rising home prices and a seller’s market with tight inventory. But the process is nothing like what you see on TV, where it looks like a home can be bought, gutted, renovated and resold in less than an hour – not including commercial breaks . The truth is often much messier, real estate professionals in Charlotte said. “It’s a lot easier to lose money in this business than it is to make it,” said Jeff Johnson, owner of NewPath Properties , which specializes in buying and rehabbing distressed properties . Still, that’s not deterring people from giving it a try in Charlotte. First-quarter figures from Attom Data Solutions show flips – defined as the same property selling twice in a 12-month period same year – made up more than 6 percent of sales in the Charlotte region, or 540 sales. House-flipping increased almost 4 percent from a year ago, though it remains well below the cit...