🎯 Today's Real Estate Pulse
Hamptons luxury market stays hot as developers pour $300K into wellness amenities
The Hamptons continues its real‑estate boom, with high‑end homes like a $30 million Georgica estate attracting buyers. Developers are allocating as much as $300,000 per property for wellness features such as infrared saunas and IV drip services. The trend underscores sustained demand for premium amenities in the region.
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Mexico’s Fibra MTY to Buy Fibra Macquarie in $1.7 Billion Deal
Mexican real estate investment trust Fibra MTY said it’s acquiring peer Fibra Macquarie after the latter’s shareholders backed the transaction.
Bloomberg — Business
Australia’s Banking System Locks Many Muslims Out of First Home Buyer Schemes. Here’s How to Fix It
Hill Street Studios/Getty Australia’s housing policy has come a long way over the past year, as the Albanese government tries to help more people buy their first home. Last October, the federal government expanded its Home Guarantee Scheme, removing income caps and opening the scheme to all first home buyers with a 5% deposit. Since then, it has also launched the Help To Buy shared equity scheme and announced major reforms to negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount. The government claims these schemes are for everyone. One, however – the 5% deposit scheme – has a significant blind spot. The scheme operates through a panel of more than 30 approved lenders. But it doesn’t include a single Islamic finance provider offering faith-compliant home loans. For the many Muslim Australians who observe the Islamic prohibition of riba (interest), the door remains shut unless they compromise on their faith. The exclusion from this scheme isn’t deliberate. It’s a side effect of the way our banking system has been designed. Here’s how Australia could follow the United Kingdom’s lead to update the system and give Muslim home buyers a fair go. How home loans without interest work First, it’s important to have a basic understanding of how Islamic finance (sometimes called Shariah-compliant finance) works. The Quran, Islam’s holy book, explicitly forbids the practice of charging interest on loans. But it does not prohibit earning a return altogether. Islamic financial institutions can still make a profit under strict rules, usually by buying, selling, or leasing a real asset rather than charging interest on a loan. In broad terms, many of these loans are instead structured around paying a lender an agreed amount of rent for an underlying asset (like a home) while the principal is paid off over time. Comic explainer: how does Islamic finance work? Expanded access that still excludes To access the government’s First Home Guarantee 5% deposit scheme, you’ll need to apply for a loan through one of its participating lenders. The federal independent housing delivery agency, Housing Australia, has authorised these lenders to access and offer the scheme. With the exception of Indigenous Business Australia, a Commonwealth statutory body, these lenders are all what are known as authorised deposit-taking institutions. This means they’ve been formally licensed to accept deposits from the public and conduct other banking business. Currently, no Australian Islamic finance providers have an authorised deposit-taking institution licence. That’s because their business model isn’t built around accepting deposits and using them to earn interest. Australia’s first Islamic bank, Islamic Bank Australia, was granted a restricted licence in 2022, but this was revoked at the bank’s own request in 2024 after it reportedly struggled to raise the necessary capital and had no customers or deposits. The institution has since changed its name to Islamic Money Australia. So despite being regulated by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission and holding Australian credit licences, no Australian Islamic finance providers are on the list of approved lenders. A disproportionate impact on women My own recent research shows how this limited regulatory recognition of Islamic financial principles extends beyond housing. Successive governments have acknowledged the absence of Islamic finance from Australia’s legal and regulatory architecture. But it has not been addressed. The cost is not evenly distributed and falls most heavily on Muslim women, who already face compounded financial disadvantage. This is shaped by factors such as the gender wealth gap, lower superannuation balances, lower workforce participation rates and the structural barriers that come with being part of a culturally and linguistically diverse community. These challenges faced by Muslim women need to be understood through the lens of intersectionality, a term coined by US scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw. This is the idea that overlapping social identities, race, gender and class, create compounding discrimination and privilege. For Muslim women specifically, this also includes structural disadvantages such as Islamophobia and racism. A Muslim woman who is professional, employed, financially capable and has saved a deposit will be unable to access the government’s flagship first home buyer scheme if she is looking for a faith-based lender. What the UK did The UK has faced similar challenges in accommodating Islamic finance. But more than two decades ago, it took steps to address them. From 2003 onwards, the UK amended its laws to bring Islamic finance into its mainstream regulatory framework. This included explicitly recognising Shariah-compliant products within its banking regulation and licensing Islamic banks to operate as regulated deposit-taking institutions. This process required extensive consultation with the Muslim community and collaboration between government, regulators and the Islamic finance industry. But as a result, the UK set up a number of Islamic banks. These include AlRayan Bank which serves hundreds of thousands of customers with regulated, compliant home finance. What Australia could do In principle, what needs to change is not complicated. However it needs genuine political commitment to examine how the housing scheme’s loan eligibility framework can cater for Muslim Australians. These questions have been raised before. The political will to work through answers is what’s missing. The UK shows what’s possible. Maria Bhatti does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The Conversation – Fashion (global)
Patrick Southern of Serhant: 5 Questions
In a world where Manhattan is largely considered the most glamorous market in which to broker luxury residential deals, Serhant’s Patrick Southern takes a different approach. Across the Hudson River from Manhattan lies Jersey City, N.J., a smaller but equally urban metropolis that has been in its glow-up era. Jersey City saw a rental boom […]
Commercial Observer
UK House Prices Drop in May Amid Uncertainty From Middle East Conflict
House prices -0.6% vs -0.2% m/m expected Prior +0.4% House prices +1.7% vs +2.2% y/y expected Prior +3.0% The average price of a dwelling in the UK eased slightly in May to £278,024, as Nationwide records a price drop of 0.6% on the month in May. Housing sentiment was more resilient in April but it seems that the uncertainty from the Middle East conflict is starting to bite now. That said, house prices are still keeping higher compared to the same month a year ago - even if the measure has declined modestly. Nationwide notes that: "Given the uncertainty caused by developments in the Middle East and the subsequent rise in energy prices and market interest rates, some loss of momentum was to be expected. Indeed, consumer confidence has weakened noticeably since the start of the conflict, with GfK’s headline index falling to its lowest level since late-2023 in April, with only a marginal increase in May. While market interest rates have risen in recent months, the impact on affordability has so far been modest. Indeed, swap rates, which underpin fixed‑rate mortgage pricing, remain well below the highs reached in 2023 and are broadly in line with levels prevailing in 2024, implying only a partial reversal of earlier gains. This provides some confidence that, if the latest shock passes relatively quickly, and energy prices normalise in the quarters ahead, any near-term softening in the housing market will also prove short lived." This article was written by Justin Low at investinglive.com.
ForexLive
Qualitas Makes the Structural Case for Australian Real Estate Private Credit
A convergence of demographic momentum, bank retreat and housing undersupply has created a rare and durable opportunity in Australian commercial real estate debt, says Andrew Schwartz, group managing director and co-founder at Qualitas. The post Qualitas makes the structural case for Australian real estate private credit appeared first on PERE Credit.
Real Estate Capital
💬 Top Real Estate Social Posts
Thread by @Budgetdog
If you don’t want to die renting, read this 👀 - Don’t pay more than 5x gross income for a home - Stay under 25% of take home on PITI - Put 20% down to skip PMI - Save 1% of home value/yr for maintenance - Don’t buy unless you’ll stay 5+ years Happy house hunting 😉
Tweet by @Moseskagan
If building more housing is the most important issue to you in the LA mayor's race: You should know that the leftward lurch of LA local politics (both in policy and in vibes) over the past ~6 yrs is doing more to constrain production than zoning is.