Real Estate

  Bloomberg Fewer US housing markets are seeing double-digit gains in prices as affordability becomes more of a challenge in some areas. In the second quarter, prices rose 10 percent or more from a year earlier in 25 metropolitan areas, down from 28 markets in the first quarter and 34 in the second quarter of 2015, the National Association of …

Bloomberg London is famous for its numerous parks and gardens, but even those green spaces aren’t safe from pollution. The air in many city parks surpass legal limits for nitrogen oxide set by the European Union, according to data website Asiopendata.com. The pollutant is largely from vehicle exhaust. The finding’s support Mayor Sadiq Khan’s effort to keep the issue at …

  Bloomberg You just sold your home for $400,000. Good going, nice job, congratulations. Kudos are also due to the real estate agents who helped you close the deal. If you live in a part of the country where the standard commission is 6 percent, you probably just paid them $24,000. Or maybe not. Real estate commissions are set by …

  Bloomberg An apartment-construction boom in Brooklyn is putting a cap on rents in the New York borough as a surge of new units erodes landlords’ pricing power. The median monthly rent declined last month for the first time this year, dropping 0.8 percent from last July to $2,826, according to a report Thursday by appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and …

  Bloomberg Billionaire Hui Ka Yan’s China Evergrande Group, which last week made a surprise entry into an ownership tussle for the nation’s largest residential developer, signaled its ambition to obtain control in another Chinese firm. Evergrande, which boosted its stake in Shanghai-traded Langfang Development Co. to 15 percent in the past four months, plans to further increase its holdings …

  Bloomberg Brexit is undermining the near-term outlook for the UK housing market, with both demand and sales dropping in July, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. The London-based group said new buyer inquiries fell for a fourth month, while its index of sales is pointing to the fastest decline in transactions since the global financial crisis in …

  Bloomberg According to real-estate website StreetEasy, 12 of the condos in Manhattan currently listed at over $20 million have had their prices cut by 5 percent or more in recent months, while only 2 of them have seen any increase in their listing price. Among the cuts is a condo at 1 Central Park South. It’s been on the …

  Bloomberg New Jersey’s Local Finance Board approved a plan to use an out-of-state lending agency that specializes in risky securities to finance an $800 million bond sale to resurrect American Dream, the unfinished mega mall begun more than a decade ago. The project in East Rutherford, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) west of Manhattan, has failed to fulfill several …

  Bloomberg What is the price of a view of Paris’s best-known monuments? France’s Socialist government will tell you. For all Saint-Germain-des-Pres’ charm, long gone are the days when a tiny 11 square-meter (118 square feet) furnished studio flat commanded 656 euros ($724) in monthly rent. Real-estate agency Inter Immobilier last month had to explain to the new owner of …

  Bloomberg Shares of Obayashi Corp. fell for a seventh day after a unit of the Japanese construction company was found to have done work on a San Francisco tower that is sinking. The shares dropped 4.9 percent to 956 yen at the close in Tokyo Tuesday after earlier falling as much as 8.6 percent, the largest decline since May …