Latest news with #housingcrunch
Bloomberg
16-07-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Spain Sees Historic Drop in Housing Supply With Prices Soaring
The number of homes for sale on Spain's main real estate listings website fell by 20% in the second quarter, the biggest drop since at least 2007 and a sign of the challenge the country faces to address its housing crunch. The decline was even steeper in the two largest cities, with supply dropping 25% in Madrid and 21% in Barcelona from a year earlier, said in a report on Wednesday. At the same time, house prices in the capital rose 25% in June from a year earlier, hitting an all-time high of €5,642 ($6,542) per square meter.
Reuters
15-07-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Goldman Sachs finances $270 million affordable housing project in New York
NEW YORK, July 15 (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs (GS.N), opens new tab will finance a $270 million affordable housing project to build 385 apartments in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York Governor Kathy Hochul's office said. The city's housing crunch and rising rents have become a key focus of Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani's campaign. The project financed by Goldman's Urban Investment Group will include commercial space, the governor's office said in a statement. "This project is helping us fight the housing affordability crisis while also prioritizing improvements that will make the neighborhood more livable for families," Hochul said. Mamdani aims to invest public dollars to triple the city's production of permanently affordable, union-built, rent-stabilized homes – constructing 200,000 new units over the next 10 years, according to his campaign website. His stunning victory over former Governor Andrew Cuomo has drawn concerns from business leaders, including some on Wall Street, about the costs of his proposed policies. Goldman's Urban Investment Group has invested nearly $11 billion in affordable housing and other development projects across the state and $9 billion in New York City since 2001. "Our investment is a down payment on East New York's potential, creating thousands of high-quality, affordable homes and essential services that will fuel the economic vitality of the community," said Asahi Pompey, chairman of Goldman's Urban Investment Group.
Washington Post
23-06-2025
- Business
- Washington Post
2025 Top Workplaces Leadership Award Winners
As president and CEO of Fannie Mae, Priscilla Almodovar is steering the company through a nationwide housing crunch that includes higher mortgage rates and record-high home prices in many places. She is not fazed. 'Companies evolve and improve, but it's what doesn't change that often makes them resilient,' says Almodovar in a statement.
CBC
13-06-2025
- General
- CBC
N.W.T. wants to use federal housing funds to demolish derelict homes
An N.W.T. deputy minister says the territorial government is hoping to use federal housing money to clear derelict homes from communities. The structures are falling into disrepair, and some contain dangerous materials like asbestos. Gary Brennan, the deputy minister of the N.W.T. department of Municipal and Community Affairs (MACA), spoke at a territorial committee meeting with MLAs on Tuesday. He said the territory was granted $74 million from the Canada Housing Infrastructure Fund, but the funds are not allowed to be used for demolition of derelict houses. Brennan said that's something the territory hopes to change. Multiple community leaders say that demolishing derelict homes would help with the territory's housing crunch, by making space for new homes. However, clearing those buildings is more complicated than just getting funding. Working with the owners Bertha Rabesca Zoe, Behchokǫ's incoming chief, said her community has structures that are falling into disrepair. "If some of these homes could be cleared, sure there would be available lots for additional homes," she said. Rabesca Zoe said the lots and structures are privately owned and the community needs to work with those owners. Rabesca Zoe said Behchokǫ is also taking other initiatives to address its housing issues, including working on a subdivision for new homes. Derelict structures have also been a concern in Inuvik. This past spring the town council ended up buying up some lots and clearing them so that private developers could then purchase the lots to build new houses. Demolishing and replacing derelict homes is also something Fort Good Hope is looking at. "There is some houses there, structures standing there, that are old," said Collin Pierrot, chief of Fort Good Hope. Pierrot said the community government has reached out to the owners of some of the structures to ask if they would be interested in having them removed, but he said he hasn't received a response yet. Another issue Fort Good Hope faces with clearing these structures is the community's limited space in its landfill for waste, Pierrot said. There's been some talk of building a new landfill as the current one is overfull. Brennan, the deputy minister of MACA, said the department is working with the federal housing minister to allow Canada Housing Infrastructure Fund money to cover both the demolition and removal of the waste, so that small community landfills don't have to deal with these issues. "We have issues in all of our landfills and small communities. So derelict houses have to be not just demolished, but also shipped south," he said. "There is potential funding available if we can move the lines on that agreement." Brennan said the territory had received a "soft commitment" from a "prior minister" on this and that the federal government has indicated a willingness to send the matter back to the Treasury Board, a federal cabinet committee that considers government funding proposals. Funding intended for water infrastructure CBC News reached out to Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada for an interview about the issue. That request was not granted by deadline, but the department did provide an email with details on the funding. A spokesperson wrote that the funding agreement was meant for communities across the Northwest Territories to build or improve the critical infrastructure related to drinking water, wastewater, storm water, and solid waste — which will help them build more homes. That means the cost of demolishing homes to make way for new homes is not eligible for the funding, the department says. "Such demolition would not increase capacity of municipal water or waste-related infrastructure that the fund supports," the email reads. It says that while stand-alone projects wouldn't be eligible, the removal of housing waste could be if it were necessary in order to build a project that did meet the funding criteria, for example, removing derelict buildings that are preventing the construction of something like a drinking water system.
CTV News
03-06-2025
- Business
- CTV News
Despite pushback, Montreal forges ahead with strict new short-term rental rules
Fog hangs over the skyline of Montreal on Jan. 1, 2025. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes.) Montreal is forging ahead with new rules banning many short-term rentals for nine months a year, hoping to alleviate a housing crunch and strike a blow in a lengthy battle against unauthorized listings. City council in March passed a new bylaw that will allow people to rent their principal residences for periods of 31 days or less only during peak tourist season, between June 10 and Sept. 10. They must also obtain a $300 permit from the city and meet previous requirements to register with the province. Full-time Airbnb units run by commercial enterprises are still allowed in parts of the city, but are restricted to a few streets and areas. Despina Sourias, a city councillor in charge of housing, said previous rules were hard to enforce because they allowed some property owners to avoid getting fined by stating a rental property was their main residence. The new rules, she said, will shift the burden of proof onto listing owners instead of inspectors. 'Before it was like, we have to go out and catch people, we've got to roam the streets,' she said in a phone interview. Banning short-term rentals in principal residences for nine months a year makes issuing fines much easier, Sourias said. 'You don't have your permit, you get a ticket,' she said. 'If you're doing it outside the time that you're allowed to do it, you get a ticket.' The new rules are the next step in a progressive crackdown across the province that began after seven people died in a fire in an Old Montreal building in March 2023. Six of the victims had been staying in Airbnb rentals, which the mayor confirmed were not allowed in that part of the city. After the fire, the provincial government tabled new legislation requiring platforms like Airbnb to only display ads that include a tourism licence number and expiry date. The city also hired a squad of inspectors to try to crack down. Before the new bylaw, it was easier for people to rent their main residences for short periods, such as during a vacation. That led some people to use different schemes to falsely declare a full-time rental as a principal residence, forcing inspectors into lengthy investigations to prove otherwise, the city said. Montreal's mayor said in January that despite the provincial law, more than half of the 4,000 units on short-term rental platforms did not comply with the rules. The new rules have received pushback from the province's tourism department, as well as from platforms such as Airbnb, which claim that they will hurt the city's economy and do little to improve housing affordability. Alex Howell, Airbnb's policy lead from Canada, called on the city to reverse what she called an 'extreme and short-sighted' rule change. 'This poorly thought-out decision will drive up hotel prices and make travel more expensive for Quebecers – nearly 140,000 of whom stayed in an Airbnb in Montreal last year – and weaken Montreal's ability to attract visitors for major events that fuel tourism throughout the year,' she said in a statement. Saif Yousif, a property manager for Park Place Properties, believes the new rules are overly restrictive. Yousif manages about 80 short-term rentals in the Montreal and Mont-Tremblant areas, including many owned by clients who want to rent their homes when they're travelling. Yousif feels the existing rules were already strict enough to prevent people from falsely claiming an investment property as a principal residence. The regulation, he said, 'makes it difficult for (homeowners) to take vacations or take some time off and leave the city' and is unlikely to result in units being returned to the long-term rental pool. The best way to keep rental prices down would be to build more housing, he added. Likewise, the province's tourism department said the new rules would not put an end to illegal rentals or the housing crisis. 'On the contrary, they could even worsen the situation by pushing more operators into illegality, returning Montreal to the Wild Web of before our reforms,' it said in a statement to The Canadian Press. But David Wachsmuth, the Canada Research Chair in urban governance at McGill University, believes Montreal may succeed where other cities have failed at cracking down on illegal rentals. He said platforms leave it up to cities to track down rule-breakers, which forces municipal officials to 'play detective' and figure out who's actually a principal resident and who isn't. He said enforcement will be easier under these rules, because anyone running an Airbnb outside the designated full-time rental areas can be automatically fined outside the summer season. 'Anybody who's running an Airbnb in March, if you're not on one of those very small number of corridors where you're allowed to do this (legally), it's just guaranteed that you're breaking the law,' he said. 'So that's just a really fundamental shift in how the overall process of being a short-term rental host is going to interact with the laws here in Montreal.' He said that most Montrealers who want to rent out their principal residence would likely do so mostly in the summer anyway. Therefore, the rules will only inconvenience legitimate home sharers while making it much harder for full-time unauthorized rentals to turn a profit. Wachsmuth also dismisses any claims that limiting short-term rentals won't help alleviate housing pressures, saying the research shows 'beyond any possible shred of a doubt' that communities that put short-term rental rules in place see their rents rise less slowly than those who don't. This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 2, 2025.
