Real estate is increasingly a tale of two markets — a luxury sector that is booming, and the rest of the market that continues to struggle with higher rates and low inventory.
Overall real estate sales fell 4% nationwide in the first quarter, according to Redfin. Yet, luxury real estate sales increased more than 2%, posting their best year-over-year gains in three years, according to Redfin.
Real estate experts and brokers chalk up the divergence to interest rates and supply. With mortgage rates now above 7% for a 30-year fixed loan, most homebuyers are finding prices out of reach. Affluent and wealthy buyers, however, are snapping up homes with cash, making them less vulnerable to high rates.
Nearly half of all luxury homes, defined by Redfin as homes in the top 5% of their metro area by value, were bought with all cash in the quarter, according to Redfin. That is the highest share in at least a decade. In Manhattan, all-cash deals hit a record 68% of all sales, according to Miller Samuel.
The flood of cash is also driving up prices at the top. Median luxury-home prices soared nearly 9% in the quarter, roughly twice the increase seen in the broader market, according to Redfin. The median price of luxury homes hit an all-time record of $1,225,000 during the period.
“People with the means to buy high-end homes are jumping in now because they feel confident prices will continue to rise,” said David Palmer, a Redfin agent in Seattle, where the median-priced luxury home sells for $2.7 million. “They’re ready to buy with more optimism and less apprehension.”
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The Trump International Hotel and Tower New York building is seen from the balcony of an apartment unit in the AvalonBay Communities Inc. Park Loggia condominium at 15 West 61 Street in New York on May 15, 2019.
Mark Abramson | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The luxury market is also benefiting from more supply of homes for sale. Since wealthy sellers are more likely to buy with cash, they are not as worried about trading out of a low-rate mortgage like most homeowners. That has freed up the upper end of listings, creating more inventory and driving more sales.
The number of luxury homes for sale jumped 13% in the first quarter, compared to a 3% decline for the rest of the housing market, according to Redfin. While overall luxury inventory remains “well below” pre-pandemic levels, the number of luxury listings that came online during the first quarter jumped 19%, the report said.
“Prices continue to increase for high-end homes, so homeowners feel it’s a good time to cash in on their equity,” Palmer said.
Still, not all luxury markets are booming, and the strongest price growth is in areas not typically known for luxury homes. According to Redfin, the market with the fastest luxury price growth was Providence, Rhode Island, with prices up 16%, followed by New Brunswick, New Jersey, where prices were up 15%. New York City saw the biggest price decline, down 10%.
When it comes to overall sales of luxury homes, Seattle posted the strongest growth of any metro area, with sales up 37%. Austin, Texas ranked second with sales up 26%, followed by San Francisco with a 24% increase.
Luxury homes sold the fastest in Seattle, with a median days on the market of nine days, followed by Oakland, California, and San Jose, California.
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Each year, the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books draws authors representing diverse genres, from established figures to emerging talents, and attendees who engage with panels and discussions, storytelling sessions, book signings and interactive exhibits. A wealth of experiences awaited readers of all ages at this year’s event over the weekend at USC.
Mary Lara adds to the “Tell us what you’re reading” board, alongside daughters Aria Cook, 4, and Selena Cook, 8.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
Julian Obobo and Ani Kelemdjian roam the festival.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
USC cheerleaders and band members perform during the festival.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
Readers wait for the next event.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
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1.Karlie, 11, reads “The Summer She Went Missing” by Chelsea Ichaso.(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)2.Susan Olson’s sticker made a big statement.(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)3.Tiffany Haddish sings after her panel.(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)4.Jeezy speaks with L.A. Times editor Jevon Phillips about his memoir “Adversity for Sale: Ya Gotta Believe.”(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
RuPaul, onstage with his sisters, discusses his memoir “The House of Hidden Meanings.”
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
From left, Sharon Levin, Kim Johnson, Paula Yoo, and Jennifer Baker speak at the “Do the Right Thing: Social Justice and Dystopias in Young Adult Fiction” panel on the Young Adult Stage.
The billionaire is looking for tech-focused solutions to counter climate change. KENA BETANCUR/Afp/AFP via Getty Images
Billionaire Jeff Bezos is looking for practitioners, researchers and innovators with ideas about combatting climate change with artificial intelligence. The Amazon (AMZN) founder’s Bezos Earth Fund will invest up to $100 million into solutions through the A.I. for Climate and Nature Grand Challenge, a new initiative urging applicants to propose ways to utilize emerging technologies for environmental good.
“Can modern A.I. help counter climate change and nature loss, and, if so, how? That’s the question we hope to answer,” said Bezos, currently the second wealthiest person in the world with an estimated net worth of $197.7 billion, in a statement. “By bringing together brilliant minds across fields, we may be able to invent new ways forward.”
Bezos first launched his environmentally-focused philanthropic fund in 2020 with a pledge to invest $10 billion toward fighting climate change over the next decade. It has given out some $2 billion through 230 grants thus far, focusing primarily on food system transformation, decarbonization efforts and nature conservation.
Now, the fund is asking those working at universities, NGOs, private companies and global organizations to apply for grants that could help A.I. climate solutions come to fruition. For the first round of the Grand Challenge, Bezos is seeking solutions in the focus areas of sustainable proteins, biodiversity conservation and power grid optimization, with an additional “Wild Card” category for solutions falling outside the priority areas. Projects could include using A.I. to find protein alternatives with small environmental footprints, applying the technology to integrate renewable energy into electricity grids around the globe or utilizing vision and sound recognition to find new animal species, according to the Bezos Earth Fund.
“The future is unlikely to be characterized by straight lines and gentle curves, but rather by unexpected changes and tipping points, good or bad,” said Andrew Steer, president and CEO of the Bezos Earth Fund, in a statement, adding that the arrival of A.I. “will potentially solve very difficult challenges.” The A.I. for Climate and Nature Grand Challenge will have two phases, with the first awarding up to 30 seed grants for promising A.I. solutions. Awardees will be announced in September at a Bezos Earth Fund-TED event during Climate Week NYC and will subsequently be allowed to apply for grants up to $2 million, with the opportunity to receive support from tech leaders and access to relevant infrastructures and databases.
Bezos has previously proclaimed his support of A.I., calling himself “optimistic” about its potential for innovation and discovery in a 2023 podcast with computer scientist Lex Fridman. “Even in the face of all this uncertainty, my own view is that these powerful tools are much more likely to help us and save us than they are to unbalance, hurt us and destroy us,” he said.
Applications for the inaugural edition of the Bezos’ Grand Challenge will open next month, and there are plans to address alternative climate priorities in subsequent rounds.
Changpeng Zhao continues to lead Forbes’ list of cryptocurrency billionaires. How did he build his fortune?
Changpeng Zhao has remained one of the wealthiest people for several years, even with legal issues and billions in fines in 2023. In early April, Forbes updated its billionaire list, featuring 17 people from the cryptocurrency industry. Once again, the founder and former CEO of Binance topped the list with an estimated fortune of $47.7 billion.
Profiting from Binance’s success
In 2017, Changpeng Zhao launched Binance Coin (BNB), distributing $200 million in BNB. Since its launch, Binance Coin’s value has surged, with its price currently around $540. With a market capitalization of about $80 billion, BNB ranks as the fourth largest cryptocurrency.
Source: CoinMarketCap
After five rounds of funding, Changpeng Zhao acquired a significant but undisclosed portion of Binance, where $3 billion has been invested. As a result, his net worth was estimated at $100 billion in 2022.
Additionally, the exchange was actively engaged in acquisition. Zhao discussed this strategy in an April 2021 interview with Bloomberg.
“We plan to do somewhere between 20 and 30 acquisitions a year. Most are smaller acquisitions—we don’t announce them. Some will be bigger ones like CMC, but we do plan to do about 30 acquisitions each year, which probably means about three deals every month now.”
Changpeng Zhao, founder and former CEO of Binance
The statement refers to Changpeng Zhao’s early 2020 acquisition of a cryptocurrency data tracking site, though the purchase price was not revealed. Zhao stated that this move aimed to diversify Binance’s business.
According to Business of Apps, Binance has made substantial profits, reporting annual revenues of approximately $5.5 billion in 2020, $20 billion in 2021, and $12 billion in 2022.
However, the previously unregulated growth of both the broader crypto industry and Binance ended in 2023. Starting with a 55% market share, Binance experienced a decline in on-chain activities, which led to decreased reserves and trading volumes. Regulatory issues caused its market share to drop to 32%, though it recovered to 48% by January.
Due to legal issues, the company’s value decreased, reducing Zhao’s net worth to $40 billion. After resigning as CEO of Binance, CZ agreed to pay a $50 million fine, and the company offered to pay $4.3 billion in fines and compensation. However, Zhao’s control over the company remains unchanged unless he sells most of his stake.
Zhao’s other assets and investments
Most of Changpeng Zhao’s wealth comes from his ownership in Binance and his investments in BNB and BTC cryptocurrencies. Besides these, he also owns other assets.
Real estate
Changpeng Zhao owns at least two properties in Dubai, a city he admires for being “very pro-cryptocentric.” The crypto billionaire praised Dubai for its favorable business environment and bought property there as a sign of his commitment to the city. This is a change from his past stance, as he once mentioned that he avoided owning cars or real estate because he considered them too illiquid.
FTX and Twitter
Changpeng Zhao’s investments outside Bitcoin, BNB, and Binance have yet to be discovered. However, in 2019, he invested in rival cryptocurrency exchange FTX, founded by notorious fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried, who was once one of the wealthiest and most famous crypto entrepreneurs but is now in prison awaiting sentencing on fraud charges.
Changpeng Zhao left FTX in 2021, cashing out $2.1 billion, which proved wise as FTX collapsed in 2022, impacting the entire cryptocurrency industry.
He also invested $500 million in Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, not as a personal investment but as a corporate strategy.
In a November 2021 interview with Associated Press, Zhao said that most of his wealth is in cryptocurrencies, specifically Bitcoin and BNB. If he retained these assets through 2023, he likely profited towards the year’s end as the cryptocurrency market began recovering from a downturn, and Bitcoin’s value surged.
Financial struggles due to SEC
In June 2023, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Binance, accusing the company of bypassing regulations that prohibited U.S. users from accessing its services. The SEC also claimed that Binance lacked proper anti-money laundering measures, inflated its trading volumes, and mishandled client assets. Binance disagreed with the accusations and disputed them in court.
As a result, the Bloomberg Wealth Index slashed the value of Binance.US to zero in June 2023 after it announced it would no longer transact in dollars, sharply reducing trading volumes. Before this, Binance.US was valued at $4.7 billion in March 2022, and Changpeng Zhao’s (CZ) net worth had reached a high of $96 billion in January of the same year. His wealth then plummeted by 82% at one point.
By October 2023, Bloomberg reported that tightening regulations in the crypto industry and a market downturn had further reduced CZ’s fortune to $17.2 billion.
Restoring Zhao’s wealth
By the end of 2023, Zhao’s capital rose like a phoenix. Bloomberg journalists said at the end of last year that the estimated personal capital of the founder and former head of Binance increased to $37.2 billion amid the recovery of the cryptocurrency market.
This amount is still below his January 2022 peak of $96.6 billion and just above the $50 billion he had in June. However, CZ’s wealth increased by almost $25 billion since January. This growth is more than five times the $4.3 billion that Binance agreed to pay in a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice in November.
In determining CZ’s wealth, Bloomberg experts relied on his 90% stake in Binance and 86% of the shares of the American division of Binance.US. The entrepreneur also announced investments in Bitcoin and BNB. However, their amount is unknown and needs to be included in the overall figure. The confidence rating in the accuracy of his capital assessment is at the lowest level.
Unknown profit of a known exchange
While the exact profits and assets of Binance’s founder, Changpeng Zhao, are not publicly disclosed, he is widely regarded as the wealthiest person in the cryptocurrency industry. Despite Binance’s financial details being largely private, the exchange commands nearly 50% of the market share, suggesting its profits could far exceed those of its competitors. As the owner of the company’s largest share, Zhao would benefit significantly from Binance’s success.
Moreover, the cryptocurrency market’s recovery typically favors all industry players. Although Binance has not released recent profit figures amidst the market’s upswing, it’s reasonable to assume that Zhao’s wealth has not only been preserved but has also grown due to the increase in market share, Bitcoin, and the overall capitalization of digital assets.
Jordan Schnitzer in 2023. Jared Siskin/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images
Portland-based real estate developer, philanthropist and art collector Jordan Schnitzer hopes to boost the arts scene at Portland State University (PSU) with a $10 million gift. In addition to supporting the eponymous museum at the university, the funds will help PSU’s art and design school grow.
“An arts education is the best background to think creatively, to learn to be innovative, to help build our workforce and economy, and most importantly, to help solve society’s great challenges,” said Schnitzer in a statement, adding that his donation will not only help students but the entire Portland region. “In my opinion, this is a worthy philanthropic investment to help PSU continue to be an active part of a thriving downtown Portland.”
Half of Schnitzer’s funds will pay for the construction of a new building for PSU’s school of art and design, which will be renamed the Schnitzer School of Art + Art History + Design in recognition of the donation. The facility is scheduled to open by 2026 and will let PSU expand its key offerings, including a pioneering art and social practice program emphasizing the relationship between art, community engagement and social justice.
Another $4 million will support operations at a PSU museum launched in 2019 with another donation by Schnitzer. Known as the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at PSU, it houses 20th- and 21st-century artworks from the philanthropist’s vast collection. The remaining $1 million will reinvigorate PSU’s urban campus through outdoor art, additional signage and lighting.
Schnitzer’s gift is a direct response to a call to action from Oregon Governor Tina Kotek, who earlier this year asked for business, civic and educational leaders to invest in downtown Portland. “The success of Portland State University is integral to the vision we share for downtown,” she said in a statement.
Arts and philanthropy run in the Schnitzer family
Schnitzer’s patronage of PSU follows a long line of family philanthropy. His mother Arlene opened the Fountain Gallery in the 1960s (one of Portland’s first professional galleries) while his father Harold founded Schnitzer Properties, the real estate development company Schnitzer runs today. The duo were generous contributors toward PSU, having established the university’s visiting professorship in art, Judaic studies program and the Arlene Schnitzer visual arts prize.
Their actions largely inspired Schnitzer’s activities in the art world. His collection, which primarily consists of contemporary prints and multiples, contains works by more than 1,500 artists, including Andy Warhol, Jeffrey Gibson, David Hockney and Kara Walker. In addition to showcasing items from his collection at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art and art institutions at the University of Oregon and Washington State University, Schnitzer exhibits maintains his own Portland-based gallery and loans out pieces to museums across the globe.
“My parents often said ‘to whom much is given, much is expected,’ but this applies to all of us,” said Schnitzer. “With this significant contribution, one of the largest in PSU’s history, we are joining others who also are thankful for all the opportunities we have had living and working in downtown Portland.”
But many of its most famous qualities — from the cuisine to the country’s nationwide culture of civility — can initially be befuddling for outsiders too.
To help travelers bridge the cultural gap, CNBC Travel asked frequent visitors for their single best piece of advice when visiting Japan.
“Japanese culture is about respecting your environment and the people around you. Don’t talk on your phone on public transit and in confined areas around other people.
Also, savoring your food is an important show of respect, so don’t eat while walking. Instead, sit down and enjoy each bite.
And be prepared to hold onto your trash around the city while traveling and sightseeing — chances of finding a trash can are slim to none! Locals generally bring a small bag to carry the day’s trash until they get home. Japan is very clean, and you’ll find public bathrooms to be spotless compared to other countries. Basically, try to leave no trace.”
— Tyler Monahan, New Jersey-based assistant golf caddie manager married to a Japanese citizen. He has made three trips to Japan totaling 155 days.
“Trains are exceedingly punctual, so two minutes is a big deal — if it’s not arriving at the exact time, it’s a different train! If you miss a train in a big city like Osaka or Tokyo, another will be there in minutes, so don’t sweat it. In the countryside though, it could be hours, or tomorrow!
Unlike trains in many cities that pull up and allow plenty of time for boarding, trains in Japan arrive and depart quickly. “Two minutes is a big deal,” said architect Henry Rose.
Source: Oliver Horovitz
Also, know the concept of “last train.” The wholetrain scene, both public and private, shuts down roughly between midnight and 5 a.m., which can seem a little early in big cities, so be warned. In rural areas, it can be much earlier. Be prepared to take a cab, or if you’re into it, explore this nocturnal world — perhaps at a jazz club that stays open until the first train starts — which in big cities is an entire economy unto itself.”
— Henry Rose, Seattle-based architect, who has made more than 10 trips to Japan.
“Exchanging ‘meishi’is a glorious, and serious, tradition in Japan. Cards are presented with both hands and a deep bow. It is also one of the most unexpected and fun icebreakers you can use to meet new people.
The author, Oliver Horovitz (right), standing next to a man inspecting Horovitz’s meishi, or business card.
Source: Oliver Horovitz
Get cards printed entirely in Japanese — you can use Google Translate for the translation. The staff at Kinkos — located in all major cities in Japan — will walk you through the whole process. After this, locals will be shocked, and absolutely delighted, that you have meishi for them. During my last trip to Japan, I had 100 cards printed in Kyoto. I handed them out during the rest of the trip, always to smiles.”
— Oliver Horovitz, New York City-based travel writer who has visited Japan three times.
“Bare feet in Japan is a big no-no. Travelers should expect to remove their shoes often in Japan and should always have socks on when they do so. The removal of shoes might even happen in places that are unexpected, like a restaurant.
Travelers can consider tabi socks, a split-toe Japanese sock dating to the 1400s, that are worn with thonged shoes.
Tina Horne | Istock | Getty Images
Also, it is common to have slippers at the entrance to public bathrooms, with the expectation that restroom visitors use these slippers and return them promptly. Be sure to only pack and wear your best (clean and hole-free) socks while in Japan. If you have a collection of fun or interesting socks, wear them in Japan where they can actually be seen and admired!”
— Jolaine Pfeifer, Aspen, Colorado-based school administrator. She has made nine trips to Japan, on top of spending her middle and high school years in Yokosuka.
“Rest assured, the only resemblance these little oases have to their U.S. counterparts is in the name! Stores like 7-Eleven and Lawson are immaculately clean and have just about anything you might need, including a few go-to items that I seek out each time:
A great selection of onigiri, which are sandwich-sized rice triangles wrapped in seaweed and filled with things like salmon, tuna, eggs and pickled plum.
Participants taste onigiri at a product meeting for 7-Eleven Japan in Tokyo on Jan. 23, 2024. Staff and suppliers gathered to discuss flavors, textures and fillings for the Japanese riceballs, one of 7-Eleven’s most important products, with more than 2 billion sold each year.
Noriko Hayashi | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The coffee — especially at 7-Eleven. The automated state-of-the-art machines grind the beans and brew some of the best coffee I’ve had, with lots of preference options like temperature, brew strength, milk, sweeteners and flavors.
These little bottles of flavored vitamin C shots called You-C1000, which I greatly appreciated in the winter on Hokkaido backcountry ski adventures. They come in tasty flavors like apple, orange or lemon and are a handy way to get vitamin C daily.”
— Jeffrey Cole, Colorado-based leadership coach, who has made four trips to Japan, spanning the northern island of Hokkaido to the southern island of Miyakojima.
“The language and culture barrier is real, and a local will show you things in places you’d never get to see on your own.
I did this at Tsukiji Fish Market. I’d been there maybe five times before, but finally took a guide with my grandfather, and it was a whole new world. I’ve also done this at Akihabara Electric Town and for lots of culinary tours.”
— Miles Ashton, a Chicago-basedentrepreneur who has made more than 10 trips to Japan, including a nine-month stint living in Tokyo.
“Not only is the layout a blast, with a different department on every level — but the merchandise is extensive and unique. There are 60 stores around the country, and they focus on hobby, home improvement and lifestyle products.
It’s a great place to find affordable, non-touristy gifts. They have the best pens, papers, and organizers, as well as camping supplies — if it’s small, efficient, and practical, they have it!
Tokyu Hands, which has been rebranded to Hands, is famous for selling themed household and beauty novelty items.
Source: Oliver Horovitz
Two of the coolest things I’ve purchased are a collapsible Shoji lamp, and a circular cooler carry case that holds a flower-shaped ice pack for under your hat plus a freezable U-shaped neck ring.”
— Kris Beyer, New York-based owner of Destroyer Park Golf Course. She has made over 20 trips to Japan andlived there as a child and teenager. Kris’ father, Dick “The Destroyer” Beyer, was a famous wrestler in Japan.
Editor’s note: Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
What are the top 20 happiest countries in the world? How do mental health and well-being trends look in the United States and Canada? The 2024 World Happiness Report is in!
The World Happiness Report is a research initiative to compare happiness levels between different countries.
The project first launched in 2012, surveying more than 350,000 people in 95 countries asking them to rate their happiness on a 10-point scale.
Each year they release a new report and the 2024 full report was just published a few weeks ago. There are some interesting findings in it that are worth highlighting.
First let’s look at the happiness rankings by country.
Top 20 Happiest Countries
Here are the top 20 happiest countries in 2024 according to the report.
The scores are on a scale of 1-10. Each participant was asked to think of a ladder, with the best possible life for them being a “10” and the worst possible life being a “0.” They were then asked to rate their current lives. The final rankings are the average score for each country.
(By the way, this simple test for measuring subjective well-being is known as the “Cantril Ladder,” it’s a common tool used in public polling especially the Gallup World Poll.)
The results:
1. Finland (7.741) 2. Denmark (7.538) 3. Iceland (7.525) 4. Sweden (7.344) 5. Israel (7.341) 6. Netherlands (7.319) 7. Norway (7.302) 8. Luxembourg (7.122) 9. Switzerland (7.060) 10. Australia (7.057) 11. New Zealand (7.029) 12. Costa Rica (6.955) 13. Kuwait (6.951) 14. Austria (6.905) 15. Canada (6.900) 16. Belgium (6.894) 17. Ireland (6.838) 18. Czechia (6.822) 19. Lithuania (6.818) 20. United Kingdom (6.749)
The top 10 countries have remained stable over the years. As of March 2024, Finland has been ranked the happiest country in the world seven times in a row.
There was more movement in the top 20 rankings. Most notably, this is the first year that the United States dropped out of the top 20 (from rank 15 to 23 – an 8 place drop).
More alarming are the age gaps in happiness reports. In both the U.S. and Canada, those above the age of 60 report significantly higher rates of happiness than those below 30.
Above age 60, the U.S. ranks 10 overall on the world happiness rankings. Below age 30, the U.S. falls to rank 62, just beating out Peru, Malaysia, and Vietnam.
Could this be a sign of a continuing downward trend in places like the U.S. and Canada?
Potential Factors Behind Life Evaluation
How to measure happiness is always a controversial topic.
To this day, psychologists and social scientists don’t really have a reliable way to determine happiness besides simply asking someone, “How happy are you?”
However, the World Happiness Report attempts to take the above findings and break them down into six main factors that contribute to overall life evaluation on a societal level.
These factors don’t influence the final rankings, they are just a way to make sense of the results:
GDP per capita – A general measure of a country’s overall wealth.
Life expectancy – A general measure of a country’s overall health.
Generosity – The level of a country’s trust and kindness through charity and volunteering.
Social support – The level of a country’s social cohesion and community.
Freedom – The level of a country’s freedom to live life as a person sees fit.
Corruption – A general measure of government competence and political accountability.
Each factor helps explain the differences in overall happiness between countries, with some countries performing better in certain areas over others.
One benefit of this model is that it looks beyond GDP (or “Gross Domestic Product”) which has long been the overall benchmark for comparing countries in the social sciences. The U.S. has the highest GDP in the world and frequently ranks in the top 10 per capita, but the happiness rankings show there is more to the picture.
Conclusion
The World Happiness Report is a good guideline for comparing happiness and well-being between different countries. How does your country rank? It will be interesting to see how these rankings change over the next few years, do you have any predictions?
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Komal Shah in front of a painting by Elizabeth Murray. Photo by Carlos Avila Gonzalez/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
This February saw the death of Lord Jacob Rothschild, a philanthropist who did much for the arts in his lifetime and had recently spoken out about how disappointed he was to find that today’s wealthiest philanthropists are “not as interested in art as they once were.” His frustration is one shared by many organizations and artists alike who cannot understand why it is such an uphill struggle to convince, say, the Silicon Valley tech community, of the value the arts can have in a society.
One answer is to acknowledge, and perhaps even embrace, the fact that being involved with the arts can be a lot of fun, highly social and often, very glamorous. Lord Rothschild, for all the work he did for the arts, did not project fun and glamour. Hence the appeal of a new generation of philanthropic role models who are young, glamorous and even a little bit sexy. We’ve entered the era of philanthropists like Komal Shah, who are redefining what it means to support the arts.
For the past year, Komal Shah has been the collector du jour in art world circles. In 2023, the foundation she and her husband run launched a catalogue of their personal art collection titled “Making Their Mark: Art by Women in the Shah Garg Collection.” This was followed in November by an eponymous exhibition in New York, which is set to close at the end of March.
Shah has seemingly struck a chord in the art world. Not only do influential thinkers surround her—the catalogue was edited by curators Mark Godfrey (formerly of Tate Modern) and Katy Siegel (of SFMOMA), and Cecilia Alemani, Artistic Director of the 2022 Venice Biennale, curated the exhibition—but every media outlet from the New York Times to Harper’s Bazaar to the Financial Times has interviewed her and continues to court her to give keynote speeches. We are often asked by prospective clients who want to establish themselves as patrons of the arts, whether they, too, can be like Komal Shah. “What do I have to do? How much do I have to give? Who do I need to collaborate with?”
While it might seem superficial to some traditionalists that others would want to mirror Shah’s limelight, we believe there are two important lessons to be learned. First, whatever Shah is doing is encouraging others to take an interest in arts philanthropy, and that’s a good thing. Second, Shah’s rise did not just happen overnight.
It was over twelve years ago that Shah first became a trustee of the Asia Art Museum in San Francisco. Since then, she has gradually developed her giving and collecting, largely out of the public eye. In 2014, she joined the Director’s Circle at SFMoMA and helped fund acquisitions. After a few years, she became a trustee of SFMOMA and also the Tate Americas Foundation. She has provided exhibition support at the Hirshhorn Museum, backed Cecilia Alemani’s main exhibition at the 2022 Venice Biennale, and perhaps most interestingly, created the “Artists on the Future” annual conversation series at Stanford University featuring leading women in the arts like Lorna Simpson, Thelma Golden and Lynda Benglis. The point is that Shah had dedicating herself to the arts long before much of the world took notice—before magazines started asking for interviews, before the ‘Shah Garg Collection’ started to be mentioned on artist’s CVs and before she was included in ArtNews’ list of Top 200 Collectors.
Shah may have flown under the radar for so long because Silicon Valley, where she is based, has long been a blind spot for the art world. But beyond that, what the story shows is that it took over a decade of consistent engagement and dedication for others to see what she was doing and to want to emulate it.
There is a real need today for more positive role models for future philanthropists in the arts. Arguably, any nation that wants to give a real boost to its cultural landscape could do a lot worse than to assemble a council of experienced and dedicated philanthropists and development specialists to implement PR strategies to make arts philanthropy ‘cool’ again. Shah’s journey would be an ideal case study.
But although Lord Rothschild and Komal Shah seem about as far apart as two philanthropic icons can be, they both share important traits: passion, patience and persistence. You don’t simply wake up as Komal Shah; you grow, through years of commitment, into a role that shapes the future of the arts.
The couple has donated more than $1.2 billion through their family foundation since 2001. Courtesy Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation
Billionaires Steve Cohen and Alexandra Cohen are giving a staggering $116.2 million to LaGuardia Community College, a public institution in Long Island City, Queens. The donation stands as the largest in the history of the City University of New York (CUNY) system and the most significant gift ever given to a community college in the U.S.
The funds will establish a workforce training center to be known as the Cohen Career Collective. Construction of the facility, which will measure 160,000 square feet, is expected to be completed by January of 2029. “I wanted to create a place where students have access to high-quality programs and facilities and can learn the skills they need to succeed in a rapidly changing world,” said Alexandra, who leads the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation, in a statement.
Steve Cohen is the founder of hedge fund Point 72 Asset Management and has an estimated net worth of $19.8 billion. His family foundation focuses on underserved communities and the arts and has given out some $1.2 billion since its inception in 2001. In addition to supporting psychedelic-assisted therapy, local hospitals and cultural institutions like the Museum of Modern Art, the couple earlier this week gifted $10 million to expand an adolescent mental health program at Hackensack Meridian Health, a New Jersey healthcare network.
The Cohen Career Collective will offer a range of specialized training programs
The funds will establish a workforce training center at the community college. Courtesy Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation
Their newest philanthropic endeavor will support education and training programs that prepare students to enter high-demand sectors across New York City. Specifically, the Cohen Career Collective will offer credentials related to healthcare, construction, technology, culinary and hospitality, green jobs and entertainment. “This historic $116.2 million investment multiplies CUNY’s role as an engine of upward mobility and doubles down on our commitment to helping our students not only get a degree but a well-paying job after graduation,” said Félix Matos Rodríguez, CUNY Chancellor, in a statement.
The facility will have specialized shops, labs and classrooms where students can take English as a Second Language (ESL) and high-school equivalency classes geared toward GED seekers. Students with disabilities, veterans and the formerly incarcerated will also be welcomed, according to LaGuardia Community College.
The Cohens have close ties to Queens and have given more than $185 million in charitable contributions to organizations in the area. Cohen is the owner of the New York Mets, whose home ballpark Citi Field is located in Queens. The hedge fund manager is also pursuing one of three available casino licenses for the New York City area in hopes of establishing an $8 billion casino and entertainment complex in the borough.
Rudy Giuliani, the former personal lawyer for former U.S. President Donald Trump, arrives at the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. District Courthouse in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 15, 2023.
Anna Moneymaker | Getty Images
Creditors want to force Rudy Giuliani to sell his $3.5 million Florida condo to help pay his significant debts, according to a court document filed on Friday.
The former New York City mayor filed for bankruptcy protection in December, citing myriad unpaid debts including a $148 million payment to two Georgia election poll workers who he falsely claimed had tampered with the 2020 election ballots while he was serving as a lawyer for former President Donald Trump.
In response to Friday’s filing, Giuliani’s counsel said the request to sell the Florida condo is “extremely premature.”
“The case is still in its infancy,” said Heath Berger, partner at Berger, Fischoff, Shumer, Wexler & Goodman, LLP, who is representing Giuliani in his bankruptcy litigation.
Giuliani has argued that he does not have the funds to pay his debts, the Friday court filing said: “According to the Debtor’s counsel, ‘there’s no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.’”
Giuliani’s primary income comes from Social Security payments and money from his Individual Retirement Account, Berger told CNBC.
But the court document cited various expenses Giuliani pays now to maintain his lifestyle.
For example, Giuliani spends tens of thousands of dollars a month to maintain his Florida condo. In January, according to the document, he also racked up more than $26,200 in credit card payments on 60 Amazon transactions, with charges for Netflix, Prime Video, Kindle, Audible, Paramount+, Uber rides and more.
“Unfortunately, like everybody else, that’s like a debit card for him,” Berger said. “We don’t believe that there’s anything out of the ordinary, outside of normal living expenses.”
Creditors see his real estate assets as fair game to recoup what is owed. They said his “pre-war co-op” apartment on New York City’s Upper East Side is exempt since it is his primary residence.
However, the document said, Giuliani spends “approximately 20-30% of his time in Florida” and therefore creditors claimed the $3.5 million condo must be sold.
“It is merely a matter of when, not if, the Debtor will have to sell the Florida Condo in order to distribute the proceeds thereof to creditors,” the filing said.
But Giuliani is in the process of selling the Manhattan apartment and is looking to relocate to his Florida residence full-time, Berger said.
“The Manhattan property is more expensive to maintain. It’s worth more so there’ll be a greater distribution to creditors from the sale of that property,” Berger told CNBC.
Berger added that payments related to his divorce “will be coming to a conclusion … within the next year or so.”
Creditors also demanded that Giuliani secure homeowners insurance for his Florida and New York City residences since they are his two most valuable assets and “if anything were to happen to either of them, such loss would be a significant impediment to creditor recoveries.”
Giuliani has claimed he cannot afford the insurance, the court document said.
The former Trump adviser has faced a slew of legal woes for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election results, all of which have helped land him in bankruptcy court. His bankruptcy filing from December estimated that he has between $1 million and $10 million worth of assets and nearly $152 million to pay off, including what is owed to the IRS and law firms.
President Joe Biden has floated plans to address the country’s affordable housing issues, including new tax breaks for first-time homebuyers and “starter home” sellers. However, experts have mixed opinions on the proposals.
“I know the cost of housing is so important to you,” Biden said during his State of the Union speech Thursday night.
“If inflation keeps coming down, mortgage rates will come down as well. But I’m not waiting,” he said.
Biden has proposed a “mortgage relief credit” of $5,000 per year for two years for middle-class, first-time homebuyers, which would be equivalent to lowering the mortgage interest rate for a median-price home by 1.5 percentage points for two years, according to an outline released by the White House on Thursday.
The administration is also calling for a one-year credit of up to $10,000 for middle-class families who sell their “starter homes” to another owner-occupant. They define starter homes as properties below the median price for the seller’s county.
U.S. President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on March 7, 2024.
Pool | Getty Images News | Getty Images
“Many homeowners have lower rates on their mortgages than current rates,” the White House said. “This ‘lock-in’ effect makes homeowners more reluctant to sell and give up that low rate, even in circumstances where their current homes no longer fit their household needs.”
However, it’s difficult to predict whether Biden’s proposal will progress during a presidential election year, especially with a split Congress, experts say.
In 2023, those making the median U.S. income of $78,642 would have spent 41.4% of earnings by purchasing a median-price home at $408,806, up from 38.7% in 2022, the report found.
While rates have fallen from 2023 peaks, the average interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages was still hovering around 7%, as of March 7.
“We’re close to multidecade highs for mortgage rates,”said Keith Gumbinger, vice president of mortgage website HSH.
“Unless [Biden’s proposed credit] counts as qualifiable income, it’s not going to actually make it easier for homebuyers to qualify for mortgages,” he said.
Of course, higher mortgage interest rates are only one piece of the country’s affordable housing puzzle.
“The housing supply crisis has been building, really, since the Great Recession,” said Janneke Ratcliffe, vice president for housing finance policy and leader of the Housing Finance Policy Center at the Urban Institute.
The housing supply crisis has been building, really, since the Great Recession.
Janneke Ratcliffe
Vice president for housing finance policy at the Urban Institute
Since the economic crisis, there has been a “perfect storm” of issues for the country’s housing supply, including declines in new home construction, she said.
“What we don’t need today in the market is more demand,” said Gumbinger. “We have plenty of demand, but we don’t have adequate supply.”
Still, Ratcliffe said she was pleased to see housing affordability highlighted during the State of the Union speech. “I think this is a great starting point,” she said.
Recently released government data hammered home what we have known for at least a year: A national housing shortage, not broad-based price increases, is driving inflation.
Inflation over the past year was 3.1% — far less than in 2021 but still high enough for the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates elevated. However, unlike the inflation we saw soon after the onset of the pandemic, the more recent bout was overwhelmingly driven by the rising cost of what the Consumer Price Index classifies as “shelter” — including rent actually paid and the estimated rent that could be charged for owner-occupied homes.
Since the start of last year, most prices have risen very slowly or not at all. The price of goods — the tangible things we buy — remained essentially the same, rising just 0.1%. Food inflation, a source of post-pandemic pain for many households, was less than 3%. And other categories of prices actually fell: Household energy prices are down 2.4%, and the price of cars has fallen just over 1%. All told, for everything other than housing, inflation was just 1.5% — low enough that if housing prices had grown at historical rates, the Fed could have declared victory.
But housing costs have not grown at historical rates: The two-year price increase came in hotter than at any point in the past four decades. This lopsided picture tells us a lot about who is most affected by inflation and how it should be addressed.
The outsize role of shelter inflation means that homeowners and renters whose leases haven’t changed are experiencing inflation very differently from those who were more exposed to rising housing costs. Indeed, rising housing costs are a double-edged sword, increasing the wealth of homeowners even as they punish many renters. Since the beginning of 2022, housing wealth has added over $2 trillion to homeowners’ balance sheets.
This trend has important implications across generations. People under 35, with a homeownership rate roughly half that of those of retirement age, are much more likely to suffer from rising housing costs while also missing out on the resulting wealth boom. Retirees, with rising housing wealth and protection from inflation through Social Security and Medicare, are more likely to fare better.
The remedy for housing-fueled inflation is also different from standard responses to broad-based price growth. One might have expected the Fed’s interest rate hikes — which caused mortgage rates to rise with unprecedented speed — to slow down housing prices. But while prospective homebuyers did pull back from the market, residential listings were in free fall during the pandemic and have yet to recover. That means would-be buyers face tight inventories and higher prices.
The only effective long-term answer is of course to build and rehabilitate more housing — a lot more. America’s housing crisis is a big problem that requires an equally big solution, with various estimates putting the nationwide shortfall between 1.5 million and 5.5 million units.
Legislation passed by the House in 2022 would have made meaningful progress by allocating around $40 billion to supply-boosting programs such as the Housing Trust Fund, the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit and HOME Investment Partnerships Program block grants. Unfortunately, the bill fell short in the Senate and is effectively dead until at least the next Congress.
In the absence of major legislation in Washington, state and federal policymakers have been increasingly focused on incremental responses to the shortfall. The Biden administration recently announced a series of reforms — including grants for low-income seniors and funds to help rehabilitate manufactured homes — that will add tens of thousands of new homes to the market. An array of bills passed in Sacramento in recent years will help expedite new housing in California, where the shortfall of about 1 million units is nearly three times the next-largest state housing deficit. But the data show we still need to do much more to ease and encourage building to tame shelter costs.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell and the Federal Open Market Committee have made it clear that they will do whatever it takes to fight inflation. That’s an admirable and responsible position. But Congress has yet to help by addressing our national housing shortfall. If it had, pandemic-era inflation might already be behind us.
Ben Harris is the vice president and director of the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution and was a longtime economic advisor to President Biden.
Republican presidential candidate, former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a Fox News town hall at the Greenville Convention Center on February 20, 2024 in Greenville, South Carolina.
The former president’s lawyers claim that he would face “irreparable” harm if required to fully secure his judgments in order to keep them from coming due, and might even have to quickly sell off properties that can’t be re-bought.
They also say Trump can’t simply post a cash deposit — at least not in his New York civil business fraud case, where he is facing $454 million in fines and interest alone.
“No one, including Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Donald Trump, has five hundred million laying around,” Trump’s attorney Chris Kise told an appeals court judge last week.
But legal experts say there’s another option that Trump’s lawyers haven’t mentioned in the court filings: Trump could offer up some of his properties as collateral to borrow what he needs — potentially from private equity sources.
There are “lots of private lenders out there in the debt markets and private equity markets that could lend” to Trump, said Columbia University law professor Eric Talley.
“In all cases, the loans would probably have to be secured with Trump properties, but if there is enough equity in some of them, he should be able to obtain secured credit, even on a compressed timeline,” Talley said.
In this courtroom sketch, former U.S. President Donald Trump looks on as his attorney Alina Habba delivers closing arguments during E. Jean Carroll’s second civil trial in which Carroll accused Trump of raping her decades ago, at Manhattan Federal Court in New York City on Jan. 26, 2024.
Jane Rosenberg | Reuters
The professor underscored the irony of Trump using his real estate to fight a lawsuit in which he was found liable for fraudulently inflating his property values for financial gain.
Any loans “would themselves involve making declarations of the value of the property — and that of course is what got him into this mess to begin with,” said Talley.
But accurately appraising the value of Trump’s assets is not a serious obstacle. As Trump’s lawyers noted during the fraud trial, the institutions that have lent him money already have conducted their own analyses of Trump’s finances, and did not rely solely on the claims at issue in his financial statements.
A more important factor could be whether Trump’s real estate assets are already mortgaged, said law professor John Coffee.
“He would have to come up with clean real estate property that is not already securing something that some other bank has a lien on,” Coffee said.
As of late January, the Trump Organization comprised 415 entities, according to a retired federal judge tasked with monitoring the company’s finances.
Of those, Jones identified 70 operating entities that generate revenue. That includes long term leases of buildings like 40 Wall Street, commercial office space on 13 floors of the 58 story Trump Tower, and the Trump National Doral Miami resort.
View leading into Trump National Doral in Miami, Florida on April 3, 2018.
Michele Eve Sandberg | AFP | Getty Images
In New York City, the value of Trump’s real estate holdings totals $690 million, according to a September 2023 estimate by Forbes. And some of the most prominent buildings that bear Trump’s name in the city are largely owned by other entities.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who brought the fraud case, said she would seize Trump’s real estate assets if he cannot pay his civil penalty.
“There’s absolutely no reason for the New York attorney general to be kind and gentle to him if he doesn’t post the bond,” Coffee said.
Trump said in a deposition last year that he had “substantially in excess of $400 million in cash.” But his lawyers claimed last week that, if Trump is forced to secure the full $454 million penalty, “properties would likely need to be sold to raise capital under exigent circumstances.”
They instead offered to post a $100 million bond, but New York appeals court Judge Anil Singh rejected the proposal.
Unless a full appeals court reverses Singh’s decision, Trump has until March 25 to post an “undertaking” — cash or bonds — covering the entire penalty in order to stop it from taking effect during his appeal.
Trump has also asked a federal judge to delay another fast-approaching deadline to pay an $83.3 million penalty in E. Jean Carroll’s civil defamation case.
Carroll’s attorneys argued that Trump’s request “boils down to nothing more than ‘trust me.’”
If Trump does attempt to sell assets to meet his undertaking, he won’t have much time to get it done.
He would have to hire a broker to market his properties, and any deal would have to close in order to free up the cash to use toward a bond, said Neil Pedersen, owner of New York-based bond agency Pedersen & Sons.
“There could be opportunistic buyers approaching him as well,” Pedersen noted.
So far, Trump has given no indication that he is moving in that direction.
“There are no sales planned or contemplated,” Kise told CNBC in an email before Singh’s ruling. “So no appraisers hired, no steps taken, etc.”
Trump Tower on 5th Avenue is pictured in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., April 18, 2019.
Caitlin Ochs | Reuters
After Singh ordered Trump to pay the full penalty, Kise and Trump’s other attorneys did not reply to questions about whether they were now preparing to sell off properties.
Coffee said that Trump “can very likely” get a loan to help him meet his undertaking. That’s in part because Singh temporarily halted another penalty that would bar Trump from applying for loans from New York registered lenders.
Moreover, said Coffee, Trump is well known within New York financial circles, so he “not going into a market with strangers.”
“The real problem is, can he gives the banks enough collateral that they’re satisfied?”
Talley agreed. “There is a lot of ‘dry powder’ out there, not just with banks but also in non-banks,” he said.
Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said Tuesday that a closed-door deal for Taylor Swift to perform in the city-state ensured she would not perform in other Southeast Asian countries during her Eras tour.
“(Our) agencies negotiated an arrangement with her to come to Singapore and perform and to make Singapore her only stop in Southeast Asia,” he said at a press conference at a regional summit in Melbourne, according to Reuters.
The statement is the first confirmation from the city-state that the agreement for Swift to perform in Singapore contained exclusivity terms preventing her from performing in other countries.
On Monday, Edwin Tong, Singapore’s minister for culture, community and youth, declined to answer this question twice during a parliamentary session.
He also did not reveal the size of the grant to Swift, but stated the amount is “not anywhere as high as speculated.”
“Due to business confidentiality reasons, we cannot reveal the specific size of the grant or the conditions of the grant,” he said.
The issue gained prominence on Feb. 16 when Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin alleged Singapore gave Swift’s team between $2 million and $3 million per show, in exchange for not performing in other regional cities, according to The Bangkok Post.
The payment of a grant to Swift’s promoters has become a diplomatic thorn for Singapore, prompting criticism from neighboring countries for brokering a deal that shut them out from the highest-grossing tour of all time.
Member of the Philippine House of Representatives Joey Salceda said this “isn’t what good neighbors do” and added that such agreements are contrary to ASEAN principles, according to local media.
Lee on Tuesday disputed this characterization, saying, “It has turned out to be a very successful arrangement. I don’t see that as being unfriendly.”
Taylor Swift performs at Singapore’s National Stadium on March 2, 2024. Singapore and Tokyo are the only stops Swift is making in Asia during her global Eras tour.
Ashok Kumar/tas24 | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images
During her first three concerts in Singapore, Swift asked her audience to applaud — first the locals, then those who had traveled from overseas to come to the show. In every instance, the applause of travelers was far louder.
Average daily rates at hotels in Singapore rose from $256 to $400 this week, with bookings up 92% from travelers coming from Malaysia, 111% from Thailand and 189% from Indonesia, according to the travel software company RateGain.
Swift’s tour prior to Eras, her Reputation Stadium Tour in 2018, included only one stop in Asia — Tokyo.
But her previous tours — Speak Now, Red and 1989 tours — included stops in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Philippines and Malaysia.
Singapore’s agreement has sparked a debate on whether this is just smart dealmaking or greed.
“It certainly was a bold, shrewd strategic move for Singapore,” said Selena Oh, a Singapore-based communications director.
But others say a winner-takes-all mentality harms regional tourism industries, which are still recovering from the pandemic, as well as fans who can’t afford the steep travel prices to see Swift in person.
“Slightly selfish with ONLY Singapore in mind and not the wider region. Clearly [Singapore authorities] aren’t very caring for anyone other [than] themselves,” said Christian de Boer, a Cambodia-based hotel managing director.
You have to make your calculations and work out what’s in Singapore and Singaporeans’ best interest.”
Edwin Tong
Singapore Minister for Culture, Community and Youth
Some liken the deal to how cities vie to host major sports events, such as the Olympics, the Super Bowl and the World Cup.
“Did anyone protest when F1 decided to come to Singapore? Is anyone pretending that there were no monetary or other material considerations?” said Irene Hoe, a Singapore-based editorial consultant.
Concerts — which see artists traveling from city to city to reach their fans — haven’t always been this competitive.
But that may be changing as experience-led tourism pushes concerts into money-making juggernauts, with fans willing to travel across continents to see their favorite artists.
During Monday’s Parliamentary session, Singaporean politician Gerald Giam asked Tong whether the Singapore government negotiated to make the island Taylor Swift’s only “blank space” in Southeast Asia, referencing her smash hit of the same name.
“And did it realize that this may be perceived by some of our neighbors as being mean?” he asked.
Tong replied, “You have to make your calculations and work out what’s in Singapore and Singaporeans‘ best interest.”
I’m pretty good at math, but I no longer prepare my own taxes. The form alone scares me.
I feel I have to hire an accountant, because Congress, endlessly sucking up to various interest groups, keeps adding to a tax code. Now even accountants and tax nerds barely understand it.
I can get a deduction for feeding feral cats but not for having a watchdog.
I can deduct clarinet lessons if I get an orthodontist to say it’ll cure my overbite, but not piano lessons if a psychotherapist prescribes them for relaxation.
Exotic dancers can depreciate breast implants.
Even though whaling is mostly banned, owning a whaling boat can get you $10,000 in deductions.
And so on.
Stop! I have a life! I don’t want to spend my time learning about such things.
No wonder most Americans pay for some form of assistance. We pay big—about $104 billion a year. We waste 2 billion hours filling out stupid forms.
That may not even be the worst part of the tax code.
We adjust our lives to satisfy the whims of politicians. They manipulate us with tax rules. Million-dollar mortgage deductions invite us to buy bigger homes. Solar tax credits got me to put panels on my roof.
“These incentives are a good thing,” say politicians. “Even high taxes alone encourage gifts to charity.
But “Americans don’t need to be bribed to give,” says Steve Forbes in one of my videos. “In the 1980s, when the top rate got cut from 70 percent down to 28 percent…charitable giving went up. When people have more, they give more.”
Right. When government lets us live our own lives, good things happen.
But politicians want more control.
American colonists started a revolution partly over taxes. They raided British ships and dumped their tea into the Boston Harbor to protest a tax of “three pennies per pound.” But once those “don’t tax me!” colonists became politicians, they, too, raised taxes. First, they taxed things they deemed bad, like snuff and whiskey.
Alexander Hamilton’s whiskey tax led to violent protests.
Now Americans meekly (mostly) accept new and much higher taxes.
All of us suffer because politicians have turned income tax into a manipulative maze.
We waste money and time and do things we wouldn’t normally do.
Since I criticize government, I assume some IRS agent would like to come after me.
So, cowering in fear, I hire an accountant and tell her, “Megan, don’t be aggressive. Just skip any challengeable deduction, even if it means I pay more.”
I like having an accountant, but I don’t like having to have one. I resent having to pay Megan.
I once calculated what I could buy with the money I pay her. I could get a brand-new motorcycle. I could take a cruise ship to Italy and back every year.
Better still, I could give my money to charity and maybe do some good in the world. For the same amount I spend on Megan, I could pay four kids’ tuition at a private school funded by SSPNYC.org.
Or I could invest. I might help grow a company that creates a fun product, cures cancer, or creates wealth in a hundred ways.
The Port of Fontvieille Harbor in the Principality of Monaco.
Education Images | Universal Images Group | Getty Images
The ultrawealthy are looking for a better lifestyle and strong investment when it comes to buying their next home, according to a new study.
One-quarter of American ultra-high-net individuals, or those worth $30 million or more, plan to buy a residential property this year, according to the Douglas Elliman and Knight FrankWealth Report. The average ultra-high-net-worth individual already owns four homes, according to the report. One-quarter of their residential portfolio is outside their home country.
When it comes to priorities for their next big purchase, the ultrawealthy ranked “lifestyle” and “investment” at the top of the list, followed by taxes and safety.
While luxury real estate has been buffeted by many of the same pressures as the rest of the market — low supply, slow sales, rising prices — the ultra-high-end has fared slightly better. Last year in the U.S., there were 34 sales over $50 million, down from 45 in 2022 but still way up from the pre-pandemic years.
With interest rates stabilizing and possibly falling this year, real estate experts say there are early signs that luxury supply may be growing, which could lead to more sales.
“If we do see a pivot to lower rates, or at least more confidence that inflation is going in the right direction, I think you will begin to see inventory building up again,” said Liam Bailey, partner and global head of research at Knight Frank.
The report forecasts that the best-performing U.S. luxury market this year for price growth will be Miami, with an expected increase of 4%, according to the report. New York ranked second in the U.S., with expected price growth of 2%, followed by Los Angeles with 1% growth.
Globally, the top market for luxury real estate is expected to be Auckland, New Zealand, with projected price growth of 10% in 2024. Mumbai ranks second, at 5.5%; followed by Dubai (5%); Madrid (5%); Sydney (5%); and Stockholm (4.5%).
Elegant adobe-style homes beneath the towering gaze of the nearby Burj Khalifa in Dubai.
Tyson Paul | Loop Images | Universal Images Group | Getty Images
Last year, the world’s top 100 luxury real estate markets posted a solid 3% gain on average price. The best-performing luxury real estate market in the world was Manila, Philippines, with 26% growth, fueled in part by investors fleeing Hong Kong and China. Dubai came in second place, at 16% price growth, followed by the Bahamas at 15% and the Algarve region in Portugal at 12%.
Among the worst performers last year were New York, with prices down 2%, and San Francisco, basically flat at 0.5%. The biggest decline in the world among prime markets was Oxford, in the U.K., down 8%.
Bailey said ultrawealthy American buyers are increasingly venturing overseas. He said U.S. buyers are now the leading foreign purchasers of ultraprime London properties — those priced above $10 million. They are also increasingly active in Europe.
“They’ve become quite a big presence, so much more noticeable now in Italy, France and Portugal particularly than they were,” Bailey said. “I think the American buyers have become much happier to explore and kind of think about alternatives.”
Still, $1 million doesn’t buy what it used to in the U.S. and abroad. In Monaco, the world’s most expensive real estate market, $1 million gets you 172 square feet of prime real estate, according to the Wealth Report. In Aspen, you get 215 square feet, while in Hong Kong, you get 237 square feet, which makes New York look like a bargain with 367 square feet.
Despite a slump in U.S. home sales, many homeowners made a profit selling property in 2023. Those gains could trigger a tax bill this season, depending on the size of the windfall, experts say.
In 2023, home sellers made a $121,000 profit on the typical median-priced single-family home, according to ATTOM, a nationwide property database. That’s down from $122,600 in 2022. Â
But sometimes profits exceed the IRS limits for tax-free gains and “it’s a shock” for sellers, said certified public accountant Miklos Ringbauer, founder of MiklosCPA in Los Angeles.Â
More from Smart Tax Planning:
Here’s a look at more tax-planning news.
Still, “the tax laws were written to encourage homeownership,” and many sellers qualify for a tax break, Ringbauer said. Â
Single homeowners can shield up to $250,000 of home sales profit from capital gains taxes and married couples filing jointly can exclude up to $500,000, provided they meet IRS eligibility.
If you’ve owned the property for more than one year, profits above $250,000 and $500,000 are subject to long-term capital gains taxes, levied at 0%, 15% or 20%, depending on your 2023 taxable income. (You calculate “taxable income” by subtracting the greater of the standard or itemized deductions from your adjusted gross income.)
There are strict rules to qualify for the $250,000 or $500,000 capital gains exclusions, Ringbauer warned.Â
The “ownership test” says you must own the home for at least two of the past five years before your home sale â but that’s only required for one spouse if you’re married and filing jointly.
There’s also a “residence test,” which requires the home to be your primary residence for any 24 months of the five years before sale, with some exceptions. (The 24 months of residence can fall anywhere within the five year period, and it doesn’t have to be a single block of time.)
Both spouses must meet the residence requirement for the full exclusion.
A partial exclusion may also be possible if you sold your home because of a workplace location change, for health reasons or for “unforeseeable events,” according to the IRS.
Generally, you can’t get the tax break if you received the exclusion for the sale of another home within two years of your closing date.
If your capital gain exceeds the IRS exclusions, it’s possible to reduce your profits by increasing your home’s original purchase price or “basis,” according to certified financial planner Assunta McLane, managing director of Summit Place Financial Advisors in Summit, New Jersey.
You can increase your home’s basis by adding certain improvements you’ve made to the property to “prolong its useful life,” according to the IRS.
For example, you could tack on the cost of home additions, updated systems, landscaping or new appliances. But the cost of repairs and maintenance generally don’t count.
Of course, you’ll need detailed records to show proof of capital improvements, because “estimates don’t work when it comes to an audit,” Ringbauer said.
After a home sale, the IRS receives a copy of Form 1099-S, which shows your closing date and gross proceeds. But you need paperwork to prove any changes to your home’s basis.
Failing to keep home improvement records throughout ownership is a “common mistake,” McLane said.
Black women are outpacing Black men when it comes homebuying.
Single female homebuyers are most common among Black women, representing 27% of Black homebuyers, according to the 2023 Snapshot of Race and Home Buying in America report by the National Association of Realtors. To compare, single women represent 24% of Asian homebuyers, 17% of white buyers and 7% of Hispanic buyers.
Female buyers represented 32.4% of all Black homebuyers between October 2017 and September 2018, according to a 2022 data analysis by Realtor.com. The share jumped to 35.4% from October 2020 to September 2021.
The share of Black female homebuyers grew at an average annual rate of 7.3% from October 2018 to January 2020. Black male buyers only grew at an annual rate of 3.4% during the same period, Realtor.com found.
But single Black women buyers still face plenty of challenges.
“There are instances where Black people are buying homes, Black women are buying homes. That doesn’t mean that it’s easy for them and that doesn’t mean that it’s not being made unnecessarily difficult by certain societal hurdles that stand in the way, that should not exist,” said Jacob Channel, a senior economist at LendingTree.
“I think it’s demonstrably true if you’re a Black woman in America, you’re probably going to have a harsh time buying a house in many circumstances,” he said.
1. Education debt: While Black women are becoming more educated, it also means they are more likely to have student loans. Compared to other female undergraduate borrowers, Black women carry the most undergraduate student loan debt, averaging $41,466.05 a year after graduation, according to Bankrate.Â
Higher student loan debt can make it harder to save for a down payment and qualify for mortgages. Lenders consider student loan payments when figuring out how much you can afford.
2. Mortgage access: Lending standards in the early 2000s were more relaxed than they are today, said Channel. Single Black women were less likely to be homeowners in 2021 compared to 2007, according to a report by the National Women’s Law Center.
That said, those who got mortgages before the Great Recession often didn’t fare well: Banks were more likely to offer Black women high-cost mortgages and when the housing market crashed, women of color were overrepresented in foreclosures, the report found.
During the Great Recession, Black women were 256% more likely to have a subprime mortgage compared to white male borrowers of similar economic circumstances, said Sarah Hassmer, director of housing justice at the National Women’s Law Center.Â
3. Low-wage jobs: Black women, as well as Latinas, are also disproportionately represented in low-wage jobs such as child care and hospitality work.
“These jobs are vastly undervalued but critical to our economy,” Hassmer said.
The median hourly wage of a child care worker in 2022 was $13.71 per hour, or $28,520 annually, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.Â
“That makes it very hard to afford a down payment, which is one of the biggest obstacles to afford a home,” Hassmer said.
After nearly four years, the Eastern & Oriental Express is back on the rails. Â Â Â
The train, which is operated by the luxury travel company Belmond, this week welcomed its first set of passengers since it stopped running as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Â Â
The luxury train has been operating in Southeast Asia since 1993, when it first began shuttling travelers between Singapore and Bangkok. Â
Several key elements about the train have changed, however, including its route.
Now Thailand is out, replaced with two new journeys, which start and end in Singapore and explore different sides of Malaysia.
Arnaud Champenois, Belmond’s senior vice president of marketing and brand, told CNBC this is because travelers have changed in the past four years, with more preferring to explore destinations on a deeper level.
“The idea was to focus on one country here and to offer two different routes. So on the West Coast, we go through Singapore to Penang, and then Langkawi. And then on the other one, we go on the national park of Malaysia to really kind of get the jungle and the natural feel.”
The new routes are seasonal, with the “Essence of Malaysia” running from November to February, and “Wild Malaysia” from March to October.
The E&O’s new routes
“Essence of Malaysia” â passes through Kuala Lumpur, before reaching the islands of Langkawi and Penang
As a result of the new route, the train has received a Malay-inspired revamp, from the cabin interiors to the food. Dinner and afternoon tea service were created by Andre Chiang, the celebrated Taiwanese chef behind Singapore’s two-Michelin-starred Restaurant Andre, which closed in 2018.
Rates for four-day, three-night journeys start from$3,410 per person, which includes meals, beverages and scheduled activities.
This is less expensive than other trains that use versions of the “Orient Express” name, including the Belmond’s Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, which has run routes through Europe since 1982. Prices start from £3,530 ($4,430) per person for a one-night trip in a historic cabin, according to its website. Â
Accor’s “Orient Express La Dolce Vita” trains, which are set to start operating in 2024, are priced at â¬2,500 euros ($2,686) per person per night for a deluxe cabin, according to a press release. Travelers can pre-register for trips that mostly operate in Italy, according to its website.
Rates for Accor’s La Dolce Vita trains have increased since pre-booking first opened in December 2022, with stated rates then priced at 2,000 euros ($2,153) per person per night.
Jeff Bezos arrives at the Dolce&Gabbana Party during the Milan Menswear Fall/Winter 2024-2025 on January 13, 2024 in Milan, Italy. Jacopo Raule/Getty Images
Jeff Bezos could be making a play for the title of the world’s richest person after losing it to Elon Musk in 2021. Amazon (AMZN) disclosed earlier this month (Feb. 2) that the e-commerce billionaire will sell up to 50 million company shares over the next year, which could potentially boost his net worth to over $200 billion.
Bezos already sold 12 million Amazon shares worth about $2 billion on Feb. 7 and Feb. 8, according to a company filing to the SEC on Feb.9. All 50 million shares would be worth over $8 billion, depending on Amazon shares’ market price.
It’s unclear why Bezos is selling such a large chunk of Amazon equity. He owned 988 million Amazon shares worth about $170 billion (just shy of 10 percent of the company) at the end of 2023, according to Amazon 2023 proxy statement.
On Bloomberg’s real-time billionaires rankings, Bezos currently sits behind Musk by a thin margin of $9 billion. The Amazon founder is worth $200 billion, while the Tesla (TSLA) and SpaceX CEO is worth $209 billion. Bezos was the world’s richest person from 2017 (overtaking Bill Gates) to 2021 before being dethroned by Musk. French luxury mogul Bernard Arnault, who owns the fashion and beauty conglomerate LVMH (LVMHF), also often traded places with Musk and Bezos in the top ranks.
The majority of Bezos’s and Musk’s wealth is tied to stock of their respective companies. The recent slump of Tesla’s share price and the sharp rise of Amazon is giving Bezos an opportunity to surpass Musk.
Since the beginning of 2024, Tesla stock is down more than 24 percent, costing Musk about $20 billion in paper wealth. Over the same period, Amazon stock is up 15 percent, adding $23 billion under Bezos’s belt.
Bezos stepped down as Amazon CEO in 2021 while remaining as the company’s board chairman. He has been moving about $1 billion a year to fund his space company, Blue Origin, and expanding his philanthropic efforts since then.
