What we’re reading (6/23)
“Investment Firms Aren’t Buying All the Houses. But They Are Buying the Most Important Ones.” (Slate). “It’s not exactly accurate that investors are ‘buying every single-family house they can find,’ as some have suggested…[t]hey’re really buying up the stock of relatively inexpensive single-family homes built since the 1970s in growing metro areas. They mostly ignore bigger and more expensive houses, especially ones that are move-in ready: Wealthy boomers and the nation’s finance and tech bros nab those properties. And they’re also ignoring cities with stable or shrinking populations, like Providence and Pittsburgh.”
“U.S. Existing-Home Prices Hit Record High in May” (Wall Street Journal). “U.S. home prices in May experienced their biggest annual increase in more than two decades, as a shortage of properties and low borrowing rates fueled demand. The median existing-home sales price in May topped $350,000 for the first time, the National Association of Realtors said Tuesday. The figure was nearly 24% higher than a year ago, the biggest year-over-year price increase NAR has recorded in data going back to 1999.”
“WeWork's Top Tech Exec Is Leaving After Two Years Amid A Reorganization, A Leaked Memo Reveals” (Business Insider). “WeWork's top tech executive is leaving and the tech team is reorganizing, just before the coworking company starts trading publicly, Insider has learned. Ken Watson, who joined WeWork two years ago as vice president of engineering before he was promoted to chief technology officer, is leaving for ‘other opportunities,’ per a Monday internal email reviewed by Insider.”
“Scoop: The Hill Ramps Up Sale Talks” (Axios). “The Hill, a Beltway-based print publication that receives significant national traffic to its digital website, is being more aggressively shopped by its owner Jimmy Finkelstein, sources tell Axios. It’s held recent talks with broadcasting giant Nexstar Media Group, a source tells Axios.”
“How Tiger Global is changing Silicon Valley” (The Economist). “SoftBank is being upstaged by another brash outsider. Between January and May Tiger Global Management, a New York hedge fund that also invests in private tech firms, ploughed money into 118 startups, ten times more than it backed in the same period in 2020, according to Crunchbase, a data provider. Its portfolio now counts more than 400 firms, including several behind some of the past year’s most eye-catching IPOs, for example Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange, and Roblox, a video-game maker.”
