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 …