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    Judge Approves $418 Million Settlement That Will Change Real Estate Commissions

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    Home sellers will no longer be required to offer commission to a buyer’s agent when they sell their property, under an agreement with the National Association of Realtors.A settlement that will rewrite the way many real estate agents are paid in the United States has received preliminary approval from a federal judge.On Tuesday morning, Judge Stephen R. Bough, a United States district judge, signed off on an agreement between the National Association of Realtors and home sellers who sued the real estate trade group over its longstanding rules on commissions to agents that they say forced them to pay excessive fees. The agreement is still subject to a hearing for final court approval, which is expected to be held on Nov. 22. But that hearing is largely a formality, and Judge Bough’s action in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri now paves the way for N.A.R. to begin implementing the sweeping rule changes required by the deal. The changes will likely go into full effect among brokerages across the country by Sept. 16. N.A.R., in a statement from spokesman Mantill Williams, welcomed the settlement’s preliminary approval.“It has always been N.A.R.’s goal to resolve this litigation in a way that preserves consumer choice and protects our members to the greatest extent possible,” he said in an email. “There are strong grounds for the court to approve this settlement because it is in the best interests of all parties and class members.”N.A.R. reached the agreement in March to settle the lawsuit, and a series of similar claims, by making the changes and paying $418 million in damages. Months earlier, in October, a jury had reached a verdict that would have required the organization to pay at least $1.8 billion in damages, agreeing with homeowners who argued that N.A.R.’s rules on agent commissions forced them to pay excessive fees when they sold their property. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In Late-Stage Budget Talks, Hochul Wins Concessions From N.Y. Lawmakers

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul used the $237 billion budget to wedge in contentious issues like extending Mayor Eric Adams’s control over New York City schools.In the days approaching April 1, the corridors and backrooms of the New York State Capitol tend to be filled with tension and chaos, as the governor, lawmakers and staff scramble to meet the deadline to pass a state budget that is as much a policy blueprint as it is a spending plan.This year was different.Budget talks dragged out almost three weeks past the April 1 deadline, leading some to wonder whether Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat in her first full term, had lost control of the process.But by the time the budget was officially passed by the Legislature on Saturday, it was clear that Ms. Hochul had achieved her goal: a final $237 billion budget that included a checklist of her priorities. They included new resources to fight retail crime, a statewide artificial intelligence consortium, and a landmark housing deal aimed at bolstering residential construction — all without raising taxes on the wealthy.The governor’s long-game approach seemed to reflect lessons she has learned in reaching the three budget agreements since she took office in 2021: that a governor can lead while honoring the spirit of collaboration and that a good deal is better than a fast one.After Ms. Hochul announced on Monday that leaders had reached agreement on a budget framework, she continued to negotiate over the next few days, most notably persuading state lawmakers to use the budget to extend mayoral control of New York City schools for two more years.The final budget contains $2.4 billion to support migrant services in New York City, an increase of half a billion dollars over last year’s funding that should cover case management, medical expenses and legal resources. It also includes a substantial new tax break for developers, expanded tenant protections and new enforcement powers for localities to crack down on unlicensed cannabis shops.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why It’s So Expensive to Live in Phoenix

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      In the five years since they began their life together in the desert sprawl of greater Phoenix, Devon Lawrence and Eren Mendoza have bounced from one itinerant home to another.They have camped alongside a freeway off-ramp, using a gas station sink as their bath and a plastic tarp as their refuge from the relentless sun. They have slept on an air mattress in a friend’s living room. For the last two years, they have crammed into rooms at motels, paying as much as $650 a week.Ms. Mendoza and Mr. Lawrence are both 32, and both have jobs. She works at a supermarket deli counter. He stocks shelves at a convenience store. Together, they earn about $3,500 a month. Yet they have been stymied in their reach for a modest dream: They cannot find an affordable home in a safe neighborhood in Phoenix, where rents have roughly doubled over the last decade.“These prices are just wild,” Ms. Mendoza said. “It’s pretty much all anybody talks about. The fact that a dual income can’t support us is insanity.”The impossible arithmetic of housing is a potent source of economic anxiety in Phoenix, and in many major American cities — a reality that could influence control of the White House.Devon Lawrence and Eren Mendoza earn about $3,500 a month together, but they have been unable to find affordable housing in Phoenix.Cassidy Araiza for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      America’s Affordable Housing Crisis

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      The housing crisis is likely to be solved in cities and states, not Washington. President Biden worries about high housing costs. So do Republicans in Congress. The consensus reflects a major problem: Tens of millions of families, across red and blue states, struggle with rent and home prices. The reason is a longstanding housing shortage.But action in Washington won’t make a huge difference. America’s affordable housing crisis is likely to be solved in cities and states. In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain how many are already doing so in bipartisan fashion.Local laboratoriesHome prices are up about 60 percent over the past decade, adjusted for inflation. About a quarter of renters — some 12 million households — spend more than half their income on housing, far in excess of the one-third level that is considered healthy. Homeless camps have expanded, and “super commuters” — who drive for 90 minutes or longer to work — have migrated well beyond the expensive coasts to smaller cities like Spokane, Wash., and fast-growing metropolitan areas like Dallas and Phoenix.Generally, Republican-led states have been more affordable than Democratic-led ones. They tend to have fewer construction and environmental rules, which allows the housing supply to expand faster. But as rent and home prices climb beyond middle-income budgets in more places, states are racing to add housing.The legislation in each state varies. But in general it removes permitting and design barriers so new construction can be approved faster. States are also trying to alter zoning rules to allow a greater diversity of units in more neighborhoods.In San Diego. Sandy Huffaker for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Shani Mott, Black Studies Scholar Who Examined Power All Around Her, Dies at 47

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      Her work looked at how race and power are experienced in America. In 2022, she filed a lawsuit saying that the appraisal of her home was undervalued because of bias.Shani Mott, a scholar of Black studies at Johns Hopkins University whose examinations of race and power in America extended beyond the classroom to her employer, her city and even her own home, has died in Baltimore. She was 47.She died of adrenal cancer on March 12, said her husband, Nathan Connolly, a professor of history at Johns Hopkins.Though Dr. Mott spent her career in some of academia’s elite spaces, she was firmly committed to the idea that scholarship should be grounded and tangible, not succumbing to ivory tower abstraction. She encouraged students to turn a critical eye to their own backgrounds and to the realities of the world around them. In a city like Baltimore, with its complicated and often cruel racial history, there was plenty to scrutinize.“How do we think about what we’re doing and how it relates to a city like Baltimore?” is how Minkah Makalani, the director of the university’s Center for Africana Studies, described some of the questions that drove Dr. Mott’s work. “There was this kind of demanding intellectual curiosity that she had that she brought to everything that really pushed the conversation and required that people think about what we’re doing in more tangible ways.”Her research focused on American books both popular and literary, and how they revealed the kind of conversation about race that was allowed by the publishing industry and other cultural gatekeepers. This work connected to a larger theme of her scholarship: how big institutions determine how race is discussed and experienced in America.As an active member of the Johns Hopkins faculty, she pointedly explored the ways the university engaged, or did not engage, with its own workers and the majority Black city in which it sits. In 2018 and 2019, Dr. Mott was a principal investigator for the Housing Our Story project, which interviewed Black staff workers at Johns Hopkins whose voices had not been included in the campus archives. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Chicago Voters Reject Real Estate Tax Change to Fund Homeless Programs

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      The referendum, backed by progressives but criticized by the real estate industry, called for raising transfer taxes on properties that sell for more than $1 million.Chicago voters rejected an increase to the city’s transfer tax on high-value properties in a Tuesday referendum, The Associated Press said, leaving unfulfilled a longtime goal of Mayor Brandon Johnson and progressive Democrats who wanted to use new revenue to address homelessness in the country’s third-largest city.The result came after days of counting ballots, including mail-in votes, that were not able to be reported on Election Day.Real estate groups had warned that the new rates would have been a potentially catastrophic blow to the downtown office market, which was already losing value and struggling with vacancies.The vote came at an uncertain political moment in Chicago, a Democrat-dominated city where homelessness has become more visible since the pandemic and an influx of migrants has strained resources. And the result raised questions about the strength of the city’s progressive movement, led by Mr. Johnson, which has become the dominant force in City Hall over the last decade and which mobilized its army of volunteers to knock on doors in support of the tax change.“Yes, it is a loss for Mayor Johnson and is a loss for the progressive movement,” said Dick W. Simpson, a former Chicago City Council member and an emeritus professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago who campaigned for the tax change.The referendum called for raising transfer taxes on properties that sell for more than $1 million while lowering that rate on properties that sell for less. Supporters described it as a chance to level the playing field and help the city’s most vulnerable residents. Some referred to it as a “mansion tax,” versions of which have been approved by voters in Los Angeles and Santa Fe, N.M.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Family Settles in Battle for Ancestral Land in South Carolina

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      Josephine Wright, who died this year at 94, had been fighting to save family property. The developer, Bailey Point Investments, agreed to end the dispute, the family’s lawyer said.The family of a woman who fought a developer to keep their ancestral land in Hilton Head, S.C., has reached a settlement in the legal battle that recognized her ownership, a family lawyer said this week.Josephine Wright, who died in January at 94, had been leading the fight to retain rights to the land that had been in her husband’s family since the Civil War. Her quest had drawn support from celebrities, including Snoop Dogg and Kyrie Irving.The company that owns the development neighboring her property, Bailey Point Investment, had sued Ms. Wright in February 2023, claiming encroachment. The company said that her satellite dish, shed and screened porch trespassed on its land, which had “significantly delayed and hindered” development.The two parties had agreed on the terms of a settlement before Ms. Wright died in January, but the documents were not signed, so they had to wait until it was determined who would be authorized to sign on behalf of her estate, Roberts Vaux, the family’s lawyer said in an email.Mr. Vaux declined to provide details of the settlement, but said that the land that Ms. Wright claimed is “confirmed as hers.”A lawyer representing Bailey Point Investment did not immediately respond to requests for comment.A family spokeswoman, Altimese Nichole, told South Carolina Public Radio that the settlement requires that Bailey Point Investment stop contacting the family about acquiring the land and that it fix a roof on the property, put up a privacy fence and provide landscaping.Ms. Wright had previously told The New York Times that her husband inherited the 1.8-acre property from his parents, and that it was put in her name after he died in 1998.The property has been a gathering spot for Ms. Wright’s seven children, 40 grandchildren, 50 great-grandchildren and 16 great-great-grandchildren, she had said.Ms. Wright’s predicament, however, wasn’t all that unique among residents of Hilton Head, S.C., an island 100 miles from Charleston, S.C.Land in the area was owned by many Black families who had settled there long before developers arrived in the 1950s and made it a tourist destination, Mel Campbell, 75, a community elder previously told the Times. Many of the Black families were descendants of West and Central Africans who were enslaved and worked on rice, indigo and cotton plantations.Many families were offered large checks from developers for their land, Ms Wright said. She said that she had refused when she was offered $39,000 for the land years ago.Ms. Wright told The Times in August that the land’s value was not only monetary. “It’s a family thing,” she said then, “and we want to keep it that way forever.” More