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Top Headlines: Delivered by Leonard Steinberg

August 26, 2024

01  Blackstone purchased 66 rental properties with 5,800 units in the San Diego area for over $1 billion in 2021. Since then, Blackstone has increased rents at most of these properties by 38% from an average of $1,696/month to $2,339 a month. One building’s rent prices increased by an average of 79%, while another experienced a 71% jump.

(Moneywise)

02  "The tech scene in America is like the jazz scene in the 1950s. I’m constantly telling people 86% of the top 50 tech companies in the world just by market cap are American."

– Alex Karp, Palantir

03  What is an EREV? It stands for EXTENDED RANGE EV whereby a gasoline-fueled motor charges the battery generating electricity and extends the range to over 600 miles. The battery is lighter and smaller. The overall car is lighter too. Maybe the best of all worlds as it can sharply reduce pollution?

(Bloomberg)

04  The median home price in Silicon Valley topped $2 million in the second quarter, the first time a US metropolitan area has exceeded that threshold and a symptom of the nation’s persistent affordability challenge. Prices for existing single-family houses in the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara area rose 11.6% in the second quarter from a year earlier to $2.08 million. No metropolitan area in the country had exceeded $2 million in NAR data back to 1979.  Across the US, annual home-price growth for existing one-family houses rose 4.9% to $422,100 in the second quarter, compared with a 5% year-over-year advance in the prior period.

(Bloomberg)

05  If you cannot work from home anymore, maybe the best solution is to make the office feel more like a home? Yup, some of the most successful commercial office spaces are being inspired by boutique hotels to create work environments reminiscent of a comfy home.

(NY Times)