The decision put the new regulation on ice until at least next month, giving a victory to the real estate agents who railed against the rule when it was unearthed last week. For tenants, it could mean a return of a costly fee that has been paid grudgingly for decades by renters in New York City.

Broker fees, which aren’t common in the U.S. outside New York, can run as high as 15% of a year’s rent. The cost, which comes on top of other cash payments required to take the keys to an apartment, is often a surprise to newcomers. Even longtime city residents complain about the fee, arguing it should be covered by landlords.

The Real Estate Board of New York, an influential trade group, sued Monday to block the state’s ban, saying it “created widespread disruption for property owners, rental agents and prospective tenants.”

New York State Supreme Court Justice L. Michael Mackey in Albany responded by issuing a temporary restraining order putting the regulation on hold at least until he holds a hearing in March. The ruling means “thousands of hardworking, honest real estate agents across New York State can do business in the same way they did,” the board said in a statement.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said he was surprised by the lawsuit, adding the “system is breaking down” and the city has gotten more and more unaffordable.

“If we don’t take these kinds of aggressive actions quickly the place is not going to be livable for working class and middle class people,” de Blasio said.

The ban on fees was discovered last week in a state document dated Jan. 31. The rule, preventing brokers working for landlords from charging a fee to tenants, was issued as part of guidance meant to clarify a broader package of rent reforms that passed last year.

It added to the frustration of landlords still smarting from the broader legislation, which they’ve argued makes it difficult to raise rents or cover the cost of improvements in the city’s roughly 1 million rent-regulated apartments. Values of buildings with regulated units have declined, and interest in acquiring them has plummeted as investors mull how much they’re now worth.

The new rule, which survived less than a week, had thrown New York’s rental market into chaos. Broker Jason Haber found a tenant for a three-bedroom apartment in Greenwich Village and was set to pocket a fee of about $15,000. Then the email arrived.

“I’m sure as you know, the rent laws have changed,” the tenant wrote. “We won’t be paying the fee, the landlord will be paying it.”

Haber, an agent at Warburg Realty, was stuck. His commission had already been baked into the agreed-upon rent, which would have to be renegotiated. In the end, the tenant agreed to a higher monthly rate that would cover the landlord’s added expense, without having to pay Haber’s upfront fee.

Some listings on StreetEasy were already showing higher rents before the judge ruled on the temporary ban. A two-bedroom unit in Yorkville got a 4% hike to $5,000 a month on Friday after the broker fee was removed. The rent on an Upper West Side studio was increased 9% to $2,400.

In 2019, 45% of New York City rentals listed on StreetEasy included a fee, according to the website. And those charges make it more expensive to find an apartment.

In November, Manhattan apartment rental rates rose the most on a monthly basis since 2012. Units leased for a median of $3,502 after subtracting the value of concessions — just $19 short of a July record high, according to a report by appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate.

While Haber and other brokers argued the ban on fees would stifle the industry and eliminate jobs, the change was welcomed by tenant advocates. Groups working on behalf of renters, including the Legal Aid Society, said it would level the playing field.

Even if landlords pass along the cost, spreading it out over the term of a lease is less painful than an upfront payment on top of a security deposit, according to Judith Goldiner, head of the organization’s civil law reform unit.

“It’s very difficult for low-income people to pay broker fees, and it’s one of the ways that keeps our clients from being able to move to better places” she said. “It’s a huge amount of money even if you’re not really low-income, like people starting out in New York.”

Shareholders of conservative Berlin apartment-owner ADO Properties are questioning the rationale behind the proposed acquisition of two highly-indebted rivals, claiming the deal would destroy value. “We think this deal should never have happened,” said Michael Muders, a fund manager at Union Investment Privatfonds GmbH, which holds about 5% of ADO and is its largest independent shareholder.

The complex deal announced in December would trigger a series of changes that result in ADO effectively becoming the owner of stakes in two German property companies. One is a takeover of Adler Real Estate AG, a landlord specializing in low-cost housing across Germany, with links to Austrian businessman Cevdet Caner. The other is Consus Real Estate AG, a developer with a much higher risk profile and substantial debt.

The deal “is not in the interest of ADO shareholders, and it should be canceled,” Muders said. “Without consulting the shareholders they have decided to change the risk profile completely.”

On Dec. 10, ADO’s biggest shareholder, an Israeli company that invests in German real estate, was acquired by Adler. In a complex maneuver announced five days later, after new board members were installed, ADO proposed the deal to take over Adler. At the same time, it said it would acquire a 22% stake in Consus and has options to acquire a further 51%.

ADO’s shares have plunged about 18% since the deal to buy Adler was announced in December. Consus, which had a net loan-to-value ratio of 88%, according to its 2019 annual report, has gained almost 21% since the announcement.

Adler has grown exponentially in the last decade after investors including Caner’s private foundation took over its largest shareholder, a company called Mezzanine IX, according to public filings. Two of Caner’s family members hold 63% of Mezzanine, now Adler’s second-largest shareholder, according to a document published on the Luxembourg business register in December and company filings.

Caner was the founder of a group of property companies called Level One, which became Germany’s biggest real estate bankruptcy in 15 years when it collapsed in 2008, owing about $1.6 billion (1.5 billion euros) to creditors led by Credit Suisse Group AG.

ADO plans to launch a 500 million euro rights issue after the closing of the Adler deal, according to a December statement.

“How can you justify changing the strategy, increasing the risk and raising capital at such a discount?” Muders said. “ADO management can’t defend it.”

Union joins Timbercreek Investment Management in publicly opposing the deal. The Canadian asset manager has asked German regulators to block it, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday.

ADO says the deal is an opportunity for the company, and that every existing shareholder will be able to subscribe to the rights issue.

“By acquiring a developer like Consus the company will be able to develop its own new apartments for letting, and will address the market’s housing shortage,” Thierry Beaudemoulin, Chief Executive Officer of ADO Properties, said in an emailed statement on Friday. “At the same time, it expects to achieve substantial savings by refinancing the majority of Consus’s debt, which is much more expensive than ADO’s.”

The German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority approved ADO’s offer document on Friday, triggering the start of an acceptance period for Adler shareholders that ends on March 6, according to an emailed statement from ADO. As the acquirer, ADO’s shareholders won’t be consulted.

The answer, according to an industry group: A state mandate that requires almost all new homes to have solar power starting this year.

Permits issued for new single-family houses soared 56% in December from a year earlier to 5,526, according to the Construction Industry Research Board, part of the nonprofit California Homebuilding Foundation. That followed a 19% increase in November and capped a year when permits were down 2% overall.

The numbers probably understate the burst of activity, said Bob Raymer, technical director of the foundation’s affiliate, the California Building Industry Association. That’s because they represent only permits that have been issued, and not those that are pending. Homebuilders, he said, had an incentive to get their paperwork in before the end of the year so they could avoid costs associated with the solar mandate.

There can be several months between when a permit application is submitted — which determines the rules a builder must comply with — and when it’s approved, “so, we should continue to see some rather high CIRB numbers for the next few months,” Raymer said.

The solar mandate is the first in the nation and part of a wide-ranging push by the most-populous state to get to get all its electricity from carbon-free resources by 2045. The requirement is part of why California’s installed residential solar capacity is expected to grow about 65% this year to roughly 1,700 megawatts, according to BloombergNEF.

Even so, it’s been criticized for adding a major upfront expense for homebuyers in a state where the median single-family house costs $615,000, more than double the national average.

State officials estimated the solar mandate would add an average of about $9,500 to the purchase price of a home, while noting that reduced energy costs could yield a net savings of $19,000 over 30 years. No-money-down solar leases are also available.

The jump in permits probably doesn’t say much about the long-term housing production trends in California, said Jeff Langbaum, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst.

“This is housing people would have built anyway,” he said. “You still need some sort of major change in terms of the amount of long-term construction activity — single-family, multifamily, affordable, across the board — to really fix the issue.”

Benchmark prices climbed 1% in January and are up 8.7% from a year earlier, the Toronto Real Estate Board said Thursday. That represents the biggest annual increase since October 2017, the month controversial stress tests for mortgage eligibility were announced by the country’s financial regulator. The price gains are being fueled by a combination of strong demand and shrinking supply, with new listings down 17% in January from a year ago.

“Strong sales up against a constrained supply continues to result in an accelerating rate of price growth,” Jason Mercer, director of market analysis for the realtor group, said in the statement.

Toronto’s housing market is bouncing back after a dismal period that lasted through 2018 and early 2019. A combination of steady population growth, low unemployment and cheap borrowing costs have brought buyers who had been sidelined by the stress tests back into the market, Mercer said.

Still, the tightening supply has had a dampening effect on sales in recent months, with the number of transactions falling 2.7% in December. That trend reversed sharply in January, with sales rising 4.8% during the month on a seasonally adjusted basis to the highest level in more than a year.

The average sale price for a detached homes was C$1,038,247 in January, up 10.5% from a year earlier. Condo prices jumped 15.1% from a year ago, to C$630,047.

The board sees another solid year ahead for new home sales in the Toronto area, driving by migration, a strong labor market and low borrowing costs. It’s forecasting home sales of 97,000 in 2020, up by around 10% from 2019 and an almost 10% increase in the average selling price.

“Market conditions will become tighter, as transactions will continue to outpace the growth in available listings,” Michael Collins. TREB president said at the board’s 2020 outlook conference Thursday. “The resulting increase in competition between buyers will likely result in an acceleration in price growth across all major market segments.”

Mathrani, who was previously chief executive of Brookfield Property Partners’ retail group, will need to execute a plan for WeWork to refocus on co-working and abandon unrelated ventures started by its co-founder, Adam Neumann. Mathrani will replace Artie Minson and Sebastian Gunningham, WeWork said in a statement. The duo has served as co-CEOs of WeWork parent We Co. since Neumann stepped down in September following a failed attempt to take the company public.

WeWork said the new CEO will report to Executive Chairman Marcelo Claure, an executive at SoftBank Group, which committed billions of dollars to WeWork in a rescue package last fall. Mathrani will join the company on Feb. 18, with Minson and Gunningham staying on through a transition period. “I am honored to be joining WeWork at this pivotal time in its history,” Mathrani said in a statement.

Mathrani has experience with a company in crisis. He helped GGP, a shopping mall operator, emerge from bankruptcy in 2010. The company saw its stock rise, boosted by properties such as Las Vegas’s Grand Canal Shoppes and Virginia’s Tysons Galleria. Brookfield paid about $15 billion for the 64-year-old business in 2018 and kept Mathrani on to oversee the retail operation.

The challenges at WeWork are different. Neumann co-founded the startup in 2010 and rapidly built a global empire of office spaces where companies or freelancers could rent by the desk. Investors fueled the expansion, and SoftBank made by far the biggest bet, pushing the valuation to $47 billion.

The IPO process laid bare WeWork’s many vulnerabilities. The company was spending far more than it was generating in revenue and suffered from an over-dependence on Neumann, who took out loans from WeWork as it paid him rent on buildings he owned. WeWork pulled the IPO in September and agreed to part ways with Neumann in an exit package valued at more than $1 billion. SoftBank and Claure have helped recruit new management and outline a turnaround plan, which included the termination of 2,400 jobs.

That year, Portugal started offering “golden visas” to foreign investors willing to spend 500,000 euros ($550,000) or more on a property. The program has pumped 4.5 billion euros into real estate since it began, mostly from China, and helped turn Portugal into western Europe’s second-hottest property market. Prime Minister Antonio Costa now says it’s time to limit the incentives.

Costa’s ruling Socialist Party wants to restrict the golden visas to property purchases outside Lisbon and the northern city of Oporto and try to attract investors to regions with a lower population density, according to a budget proposal. Costa says the aim is to contain speculation in the real estate market that’s hurt the ability of the middle class to access affordable housing in Portugal’s larger cities.

The golden visas “should contribute to the recovery of the property market where it’s necessary or in areas of low population density,” Costa said on Wednesday in a speech broadcast by RTP. “Fortunately, it’s no longer necessary in the big urban centers.”

Isabel Sa da Bandeira, who heads a Lisbon-based organization called People Live Here, said the golden visa incentives have created “huge injustices” in the housing market. “Many locals have left the city because they can’t afford to rent or buy property.”

While real estate brokers in Portugal acknowledge that rising housing prices in Lisbon and Oporto are a problem for local residents, they fear the curbs on golden visas may prompt investors to buy property elsewhere in Europe. Cyprus, Greece and Spain offer similar programs.

“You can’t change the rules in the middle of the game, especially when Lisbon and Oporto account for more than half of all property purchases by golden visa investors,” said Luis Lima, head of Portugal’s Real Estate Professionals and Brokers Association. “It’s counterproductive.”

The prime minister said the proposed changes won’t affect existing golden visa holders.

“Don’t come with ghosts saying that we’re changing the rules in the middle of the game because those who have already obtained golden visas won’t lose them,” Costa said. “Those who now want to obtain a golden visa are also welcome, as long as their investment is made where it’s necessary.”

Parliament will have a final vote on the 2020 budget on Feb. 6. The government targets the first budget surplus since Portugal’s return to democracy four decades ago and the economy is set to expand for a seventh year. Property prices increased 10.3% in the third quarter of 2019 from a year earlier, the second-biggest gain in western Europe after Luxembourg, according to Eurostat.

In a separate proposal, the Socialists plan to stop some foreign residents from paying no tax on their pensions, an arrangement that led Finland and Sweden to criticize Portugal for having an unfair tax system. If approved, foreign residents who apply for the so-called non-habitual resident program will have to pay a flat 10% levy on their pensions. The program will continue to allow some foreign workers to pay a flat 20% income tax rate.

Tiago Caiado Guerreiro, a Lisbon-based lawyer who specializes in tax legislation, said the move will help silence critics of the non-habitual residence program while having little impact on demand for that regime.

“A 10% tax rate on pensions is still very low and remains very attractive for foreigners,” Caiado Guerreiro said.

An index of pending home sales decreased 4.9% from the month prior, the largest decline since May 2010, according to data out Wednesday from the National Association of Realtors. The median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for a 0.5% gain. Treasury yields and stocks declined after the report. Compared with December 2018, however, contract signings were up 6.8% on an unadjusted basis.

The monthly drop indicates housing demand is being thwarted by lean inventory that’s driving up asking prices and keeping prospective buyers from taking advantage of lower mortgage rates. A strong job market and income growth have also helped underpin home sales.

A report earlier today showed a gauge of loan applications to buy homes increased to an 11-year high in the week ended Jan. 24, suggesting firmer home sales at the start of 2020.

Pending home sales are often looked to as a leading indicator of existing-home purchases and a measure of the health of the housing market in the coming months.

“Due to the shortage of affordable homes, home sales growth will only rise by around 3%,” Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the NAR, said in a statement, adding that mortgage rates will probably hold below 4% for most of the year. “Home prices and even rents are increasing too rapidly, and more inventory would help correct the problem and slow price gains.”

Contract signings fell in all U.S. regions, led by a 5.5% decline in the South and a 5.4% decrease in the West.

The pending home sales index stands at the lowest level since February.

Estimates from economists in the Bloomberg survey ranged from a 2% drop to a 1.5% gain.

The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller index of property values increased 2.6% from the same month the previous year, data released Tuesday showed. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a 2.4% annual advance. Home prices climbed 0.5% from the previous month – also topping forecasts – matching the October increase for the best back-to-back gains since early 2018.

– – –

– Further home-price appreciation is likely amid stronger sales and a limited number of available properties. Demand strengthened in the second half of 2019 as a drop in mortgage rates and faster income growth led to improved affordability.

– All 20 cities in the index showed year-over-year home-price gains, led by Phoenix; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Tampa, Florida. A broader national index of home prices was up 3.5% from a year earlier, the most since April.

– The figures follow recently released data showing firmer sales and limited supply. Purchases of previously owned homes rose in December to the strongest pace in almost two years, while the number of properties for sale dropped to an all-time low. Despite easing in December, the average sales pace of new homes in the fourth quarter was the fastest of the expansion.

– – –

– Prices increased from the previous month in all 20 cities, led by Charlotte, Boston and Seattle.

– The FHFA — which derives its data from mortgages that conform to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac limits — reported that prices in November rose 4.9% from a year earlier, marking a slowdown from the previous month.

FPT announced a highly successful performance last year with growth in consolidated revenue and consolidated net profit of 56 per cent year on year to Bt21,545 million and 62 per cent year on year to Bt3,484 million respectively.

Earnings per share last year almost tripled year on year to Bt0.96 with dividend of Bt0.46/share.

All matters proposed at the AGM for shareholders’ approvals, as set out in the company’s notice of meeting dated December 24, 2019, were approved by the requisite majority of votes.

Across seven major cities in the country, the total unsold stock of apartments priced more than Rs 1.5 crore by the end if last year was 89,000 units against 81,290 units in 2018.

“Snapped up like hot cakes by investors in previous years, luxury housing sales are still in the doldrums and hinging largely on end-user sales. Even after three years of demonetisation, despite having the lowest share of overall unsold stock in the top seven cities, it remains the worst-performing of all budget categories,” said Anuj Puri, Chairman, Anarock Property Consultants.

As per the report, Hyderabad and Pune saw unsold luxury stock increase by a whopping 58 per cent and 56 per cent, respectively during the period under review.

“Hyderabad’s pent-up luxury stock rose from 3,000 units in 2018 to nearly 4,740 units in 2019. In Pune, it increased from 2,750 units in 2018 to 4,290 units in 2019,” the report said.

The National Capital Region (NCR) saw its unsold luxury stock increase by 17 per cent in the period. The unsold luxury stock in NCR was the second-highest after MMR, with around 18,400 units by 2019-end.

In the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), inventory in the high-end realty increased by 2 per cent to 48,970 units by 2019-end. The region added 11,250 luxury units last year.

In Chennai, unsold luxury stock increased by 33 per cent to nearly 3,300 units and that in Bengaluru rose by 6 per cent to 7,470 units by the end of 2019.

Kolkata, however, bucked the subdued trend and the luxury stock in the city declined by 10 per cent to 2,050 units.

The total unsold stock across segments is nearly 6,48,400 units in the top seven cities.

Affordable housing (priced below Rs 40 lakh) comprised the maximum share at about 36 per cent in the overall stock, followed by 31 per cent in the mid-segment (Rs 40-80 lakh).

Premium housing (Rs 80 lakh-1.5 cr) comprised 19 per cent of the unsold stock while the rest 14 per cent was luxury housing.

Mid-segment homes priced between reduced the maximum unsold stock in 2019 by 15 per cent, from nearly 2.27 lakh units in 2018 to around 2.02 lakh units in 2019-end.