Apartment Look

At the end of one sticky month during the summer of 2017, Elizabeth Bolles will have finished packing the contents of her Riverbend apartment. She, her partner, their two young sons and two dogs will then pile into her Subaru and drive 350 miles to Houston, where her partner will start a new job.   The move is the upshot of six years of frustration and disappointment for Bolles since she graduated from Tulane University's law school in 2011. Since then, she's struggled to find a well-paying job in New Orleans; she's been runner-up for several positions and has worked odd jobs and short-term gigs to make ends meet . She's in the same boat as many of her friends and acquaintances in the city — a one- time National Merit Scholar who's been waiting tables for a decade, a buddy with two doctorates who can't find a professional job .   "You hear one person's story," Bolles says, "and you think maybe there's something going on with them, maybe...

The kids are not all right—or so the click-bait headlines would lead you to believe. There are countless stories about those flighty millennials who job-hop every year, are crazy-obsessed with their iPhone phablets and shell out too much on  Instagrammable avocado toast or kale smoothies to move out of their parents’ basements and ( gasp !) pay their own rent. There's more than a hint of truth to that last part. About 15% of 25- to 35-year-olds were still crashing with their folks in 2016, according to a  Pew Research study . And that leaves 85% either cramming into apartments with friends or living solo. The young-at- heart data team at realtor.com® decided to dig into these numbers. As it turns out, where millennials are living plays a big role in whether they   are   most likely to live alone, as opposed to with their folks. And there's a lot of variation across the country, we learned. Related Articles "We definitely see a larger percentage of millennials living at...

Vanguard Group is fast becoming a dominant investor in the U.S. real estate industry . Securities and Exchange Commission reports compiled by Bloomberg show that the company’s mutual funds and exchange-traded funds are now the leading owners of real estate investment trusts (REITs), the tax- protected investor funds that own many of the nation’s offices, shopping centers, apartments, hotels, warehouses, and data and storage centers. Including its indexed stock and REIT-focused funds, Malvern- based Vanguard owns 18 percent of Host Hotels & Resorts, whose portfolio includes Ritz -Carlton, Marriott, and Westin hotels; 15 percent of Simon Property Group , the national mall owner that counts King of Prussia Mall among its holdings; and a similar share of Prologis, the warehouse giant. Locally, Vanguard funds control 16 percent each of Brandywine Realty Trust , which owns a majority of Center City’s highest buildings; Liberty Property Trust ...

When it comes to condominium development , Cascadia’s two largest cities couldn ’t be more different. Last year nearly 60 percent of new housing starts in the city of Vancouver, BC , were condominiums; meanwhile, Seattle saw no new condominium buildings open . And that’s not changing anytime soon: less than 10 percent of all building slated for downtown Seattle in the next three years will be condos. What’s the difference—why the blossoming of condominium construction in one city and the almost complete dearth in the other? The short answer is economics. In Vancouver, apartments are saddled with an unfavorable tax code , making condos the more lucrative multi- family housing investment even despite high rental demand . In Seattle’s skyrocketing rental market , one that’s climbed even faster than the condo market in recent years, apartment buildings are much more financially attractive, while condos come with bigger risks and, typically, lower returns. Compounding this profit differe...