Weekly Real Estate News Quiz: Think You're Up On The Biggest Headlines?
Good things are happening for at least one real estate agent.
Aaron Kirman luxury real estate agent Dalton Gomez is reportedly in a new relationship with pop star Ariana Grande, according to several celebrity websites including TMZ and Page Six.
The Senate’s plan includes $1,200 in a one-time, direct payment for individuals and $2,400 for married couples, with $500 per child. That full amount is available for individuals making $75,000 or less in gross income and couples pulling in less than $150,000.
Citing a coming “economic standstill” caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Compass CEO Robert Reffkin announced Monday that his company had laid off 15 percent of its staff and taken other cost-cutting measures.
The U.S. Department of Labor reported Thursday that 3.23 million people filed for unemployment insurance for the week ending March 21, an increase of more than 3 million from the previous week. The rising number is a direct result of business closures across the country due to the spread of COVID-19.
For the second consecutive year, HomeServices of America reigns atop the Real Trends 500, an annual ranking of the top real estate brokerages in terms of transaction sides.
HomeServices of America, with 329,680 transactions, slightly edged out the recently renamed Realogy Brokerage Group, with 325,652 transactions. However, the latter finished with a higher total closed sales volume, with $170 billion in sales, compared to HomeServices of America’s $132.3 billion.
As the coronavirus pandemic continued to rage on Wednesday, Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman said his firm is cutting back on the number of leads it sells to non-Redfin agents, that traffic to Redfin.com remains strong and that, despite tough times, real estate will recover from the current crisis.
Kelman made the comments during the latest episode of The Daily Dispatch podcast, which Inman founder Brad Inman launched last week. During his conversation with Inman, Kelman discussed the ongoing virus outbreak at length and advised industry leaders to be conscientious of their employees’ health.
Under pressure as the coronavirus pandemic grows, Realogy is reducing salaries and employee workweeks for a majority of the company’s employees, according to Securities and Exchange Commission papers filed Wednesday.
Realogy CEO Ryan Schneider is taking the biggest hit, with a 90 percent salary reduction effective April 4. All of his direct reports are taking a 50 percent pay cut.
The coronavirus crisis has claimed its latest victim: Rent payments from extremely long menu purveyor The Cheesecake Factory.
The restaurant chain revealed in a letter to its landlords last week that the “unprecedented and rapidly evolving” pandemic situation has forced store closures and “severely decreased our cash flow and inflicted a tremendous financial blow to our business.” As a result, the company “will not make any of our rent payments for the month of April 2020,” the letter added.
Like many places in California, housing values are rising so fast that people with average salaries are unable to keep up. Located just outside of Los Angeles, the city of Bell Gardens has the highest debt-to-income ratio in the country — an astonishing 1,041 percent.
Amid the coronavirus outbreak, actress Kristen Bell and her husband Dax Shepard are not going to make the tenants in their Los Angeles buildings pay April rent.