Real Estate

  Bloomberg It turns out that even the well-off need help in a housing market as crazy as the one in the San Francisco Bay area, and lenders are elbowing each other in a rush to provide it. They’re courting Silicon Valley workers with tailored loans, guaranteed 24-hour approval and financial-planning services. Social Finance Inc. has deals with Google and ...

  Bloomberg With Americans buying more new homes than at any time since the recession, the cost of the wood used to build them is getting a lot more expensive. Lumber prices are off to their biggest rally in more than a decade, touching a 19-month high last week as demand increased from builders. But almost a third of all ...

  Bloomberg Komatsu Ltd., the Japanese maker of construction and mining machinery that last week offered to buy Joy Global Inc. for about $2.89 billion, said first-quarter profit fell 52 percent as demand languished in strategic markets such as the Middle East and Indonesia and the stronger yen crimped overseas revenue. Net income fell to 15.6 billion yen ($149 million) ...

  Bloomberg Star Mica Co., a Tokyo-listed real-estate company founded by an ex-Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker, plans to double returns from apartments using Airbnb to house tourists from abroad. The company owns about 2,500 apartments mostly in Tokyo, and is considering renting some of them to overseas visitors from as early as next year using services such as that ...

  Bloomberg Schneider Electric SE raised its earnings forecast for the year on improving construction markets in the U.S. and Europe with the exception of the U.K., where the company is expecting a slowdown following the Brexit vote. The world’s biggest maker of low- and medium-voltage equipment increased the target for adjusted Ebita margin improvement to 0.6 to 0.9 percentage ...

  Bloomberg Developers racing to turn Brooklyn into a thriving technology office market may be finding Manhattan a less-fruitful target for poaching tenants. Leasing in Manhattan by tech, advertising, media and information tenants — known to real estate brokers by the acronym TAMI — fell in the second quarter to the lowest level in more than three years, according to ...

  AP Americans bought new homes in June at the fastest pace in more than eight years, a sign that a solid job market and low mortgage rates are bolstering the U.S. housing market. The Commerce Department said that new-home sales rose 3.5 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted rate of 592,000, the best level since February 2008. Purchases ...

  Bloomberg Apartment construction in New York and San Francisco is taking its toll on landlords, with Equity Residential, the largest publicly traded U.S. multifamily owner, cutting its revenue forecast for the third time this year. Equity Residential expects revenue growth from properties open at least a year to be 3.5 percent to 4 percent in 2016, according to the ...

  AFP Chinese mainlanders are underpinning high-end residential apartment rents in Hong Kong as expatriate housing budgets in the financial industry are being slashed, according to Savills Plc. Vacancies for luxury apartments remain low and budgets of HK$40,000 (just over $5,000) to HK$100,000 per month are the most popular, according to a note from the London-based real estate services company. ...

  Bloomberg Billionaire Wang Jianlin’s $4.4 billion proposal to privatize Dalian Wanda Commercial Properties Co. drew support from Glass Lewis, which advised investors to vote for the plan. The buyout offer’s rationale is “fairly standard,” and “straightforward,” according to a Glass Lewis report seen by Bloomberg. The proxy advisory firm is “inclined to agree” that the buyout of listed shares ...