SBR-Authors Podcast: Finding True Happiness Through Acts of Kindness: A Conversation with Karen Olson
Creative Housing Solutions Pop Up Across Oregon
Affordable Housing on the Front Range: Inclusionary Housing Ordinances and the New Middle Income Housing Authority
Office-to-Apartment Conversions – A Good Idea, but Tricky to Pull Off (Audio)
Episode 15 | Hot! Hot! Hot! Don't get Burned by the Perils of Buying and Selling Residential Real Estate
California CRE to Expand in 2022
2025 saw a number of Growth Management Act (GMA) and housing related bills in Washington, which are particularly relevant as planning counties and cities are in the middle of preparing their comprehensive plan updates and as...more
BOSTON—City Deploys Sensors to Combat Rat Infestations - Boston officials announced the implementation of a new rodent-tracking sensor system throughout the city to provide data on hotspots and measure the effectiveness of...more
Pritzker acts upon 269 bills, vetoes 2, signs 'lawsuit inferno' measure - “In a Friday announcement of the status of 269 bills, Gov. J.B. Pritzker has signed legislation which led opponents to call Illinois a “Lawsuit...more
What Happened? At both federal and state levels, there has been notable increased governmental scrutiny of institutional investment in the single-family rental market and concern about its impact on rising housing costs in...more
We start our August Alert with some potentially very good news. The RENTAL Act, a bill to reform TOPA, passed its first vote by the DC Council on July 28, 2025. The RENTAL Act includes, among other things, a blanket exemption...more
With the current housing shortage in California, coupled with recent regulatory changes, multifamily development is robust throughout the state. Perhaps the most consequential recent change is the reform of the California...more
On May 12, 2025, Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed into law House Bill 25-1272, creating the Multifamily Construction Incentive Program (MCIP), a voluntary, opt-in framework aimed at encouraging the construction of...more
Across the United States, empty office buildings have become a common sight. According to Moody’s Analytics, office vacancies are at their highest since the 1990s. The COVID hangover has left us with an abundance of vacant or...more
As discussed in our earlier post, California's CEQA landscape has rapidly, and potentially seismically, evolved with the passage of AB 130 and SB 131. This post focuses on the immediate creation of a new statutory exemption,...more
Workforce housing (also referred to as middle-income or essential housing) is becoming a central focus for communities across the country. Whether you’re a city, town, village, housing authority, developer, or part of the...more
A major affordable housing development underway in Fairfax County, Virginia, is setting a new precedent for large-scale, multi-phase transactions in high-cost suburban markets. Located adjacent to the County’s Government...more
As part of Colorado’s broader efforts to close the middle-income housing gap, Fulcrum Communities, a Colorado nonprofit, launched a pilot project using an innovative financing model to deliver workforce housing more quickly...more
This is the eighth update in our series covering AB 130 and SB 131, two bills that work substantive changes to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and California housing law....more
It is hard to overstate the current wave of office building conversions. With post-COVID office attendance plateauing well below prior levels and housing shortages in most major cities, the conversion of office buildings is...more
HM Treasury has announced the launch of a permanent mortgage guarantee scheme, aimed at supporting first-time buyers and home movers across the UK. The scheme enables access to 91–95% loan-to-value mortgages, allowing buyers...more
This is the seventh update in our series covering AB 130 and SB 131, two bills that work substantive changes to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and California housing law....more
1. UNFIT FOR HABITATION UNDER THE DPA? HOW DOES THE COURT WORK OUT THE DAMAGES? The Defective Premises Act may be 53 years old but it has received particular attention in recent years, notably following its makeover by...more
Assembly Bill (AB) 130 and Senate Bill (SB) 131, which became effective on June 30, 2025, are designed to bring sweeping change to California housing and infrastructure development across the state. Key provisions in the...more
The June 2025 Market Action Report for the Portland metropolitan area, published by RMLS, describes a residential real estate market that is steady, if subdued, with slight pricing increases and modest shifts in transactional...more
BOSTON—City’s First Office-to-Residential Conversion Project Begins -Construction has officially begun on Boston’s first office-to-residential apartment conversions. This effort is a part of a City pilot program aimed at...more
Welcome to the SBR-Authors Podcast! In this podcast series, host Tom Fox visits with authors in the compliance arena and beyond. In this episode, Tom Fox interviews Karen Olson, the founder and CEO Emeritus of Family Promise...more
Note: This is the second update in our series covering AB 130 and SB 131, two bills that work substantive changes to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and California housing law....more
The Wall Street Journal has reported that recent bankruptcies nationwide in the Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRC) segment of the long-term care marketplace have resulted in residents losing their buy-in deposit....more
President Trump’s budget permanently extends numerous provisions of the Internal Revenue Code from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017 scheduled to expire at the end of 2025 and includes several changes that will have...more