AFP Barcelona city hall on Tuesday announced a 20-fold hike, to €600,000 euros ($660,000), in the maximum fine that can be levied against home rental sites such as Airbnb if they promote illegal accommodation. Under a 2012 regional law, any apartment rented to visitors in Catalonia must be logged in the province’s Tourism Registry and have a permit. In ...

  AP U.S. home prices scaled new heights in April, with seven cities — Boston, Charlotte, Dallas, Denver, San Francisco, Seattle and Portland, Oregon — setting highs. The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller 20-city home price index rose 5.4 percent in April compared with a year earlier, just below the 5.5 percent year-over-year gain posted in March. Home values are now just ...

  Bloomberg In 1910, an attorney named Albert Barnes Boardman bought close to 10 acres in downtown Southampton, N.Y., and spent $250,000 (approximately $30 million today) to build a 24-room, four-story mansion modeled after the Villa Medici in Rome. There were formal gardens, fountains, sprawling lawns, a tennis court, and a gatehouse. Boardman owned it until 1927, after which the ...