%1

As rival tech giant Apple readies its huge new headquarters in Silicon Valley, Alphabet's Google is buying up real estate parcels like a land speculator, CNBC reported yesterday. Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., has purchased 52 properties in Sunnyvale, Calif., for $820 million from a real estate development partner, CBRE. A real estate brokerage has been quietly assembling the properties on behalf of the search giant. The purchases fill in gaps between multiple smaller campuses in Sunnyvale — the long-time home of Yahoo — that Google has purchased or leased in recent years. The move comes one month after the company won exclusive rights to negotiate with the city of San Jose for the purchase of 16 tracts of land near that city's convention center and pro hockey arena. Google, which reported on Monday that it now has more than 72,000 employees, needs room to expand as it looks to hire even more workers to sustain its growth. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

House Republicans want to privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as part of their 2018 budget proposal, TheStreet.com reported yesterday. GOP members of the House of Representatives on Tuesday unveiled their 2018 budget. Dubbed "Building a Better America" and authored by Budget Chairman Diane Black (R-Tenn.), the plan calls for more than $200 billion in cuts to mandatory spending programs and sets the path for tax reform. It also calls for the privatization of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and assumes provisions of the House bill that would repeal Dodd-Frank. "The Treasury has already provided $187 billion in bailouts to Fannie and Freddie, and taxpayers remain exposed to $5 trillion in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's outstanding commitments, as long as the entities remain in conservatorship," the plan reads. "Our budget recommends putting an end to corporate subsidies and taxpayer bailouts in housing finance."

A full-fledged housing crisis has gripped California, marked by a severe lack of affordable homes and apartments for middle-class families. The median cost of a home here is now a staggering $500,000, twice the national cost. Homelessness is surging across the state, the New York Times reported today. In Los Angeles, booming with construction and signs of prosperity, some people have given up on finding a place and have moved into vans with makeshift kitchens, hidden away in quiet neighborhoods. In Silicon Valley — an international symbol of wealth and technology — lines of parked recreational vehicles are a daily testimony to the challenges of finding an affordable place to call home. State lawmakers in Sacramento are considering extraordinary legislation to, in effect, crack down on communities that have, in their view, systematically delayed or derailed housing construction proposals, often at the behest of local neighborhood groups. The bill was passed by the Senate last month and is now part of a broad package of housing proposals under negotiation that Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic legislative leaders announced Monday was likely to be voted on in some form later this summer. “The explosive costs of housing have spread like wildfire around the state,” said Scott Wiener, a Democratic senator from San Francisco who sponsored the bill. “This is no longer a coastal, elite housing problem. This is a problem in big swaths of the state. It is damaging the economy. It is damaging the environment, as people get pushed into longer commutes.”

Distressed-mortgage investors are descending on troubled Puerto Rico, Bloomberg News reported on Friday. There are big names among them: Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Perella Weinberg Partners and TPG Capital. What’s luring them is the opportunity to scoop up home loans and foreclosed properties for pennies on the dollar. Many of the homes have spectacular views of the Caribbean that could be pitched to well-heeled Americans — but long-time Puerto Rico investors see trouble ahead. Chief among their concerns: bidding wars are breaking out for the loans at the same time that their quality is deteriorating. The firms are wagering they can strike a deal with borrowers to make the debt viable or go after property in court and resell it. Many have made out well investing in such properties on the mainland, where U.S. housing prices have rebounded about 40 percent from post-crisis lows. Yet investors risk inundating the market with foreclosed properties, driving down prices even further and impeding an economic recovery — a concern to working-class Puerto Ricans hoping to protect the last shred of equity in their homes.