%1

The Securities and Exchange Commission is examining whether Better.com violated federal securities laws, the online mortgage lender disclosed yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported. Federal securities regulators have requested documents from Better.com and its blank check company Aurora Acquisition Corp. about their business activities, the companies said in filings with the SEC. They also are seeking information about the business activities of Better.com Chief Executive Vishal Garg and allegations made by former executive Sarah Pierce. Pierce alleged in a lawsuit last month that the company misled investors in financial filings and other representations it made as it attempted to go public. Ms. Pierce was Better.com’s former executive vice president for sales and operations. Better.com said at the time that Ms. Pierce’s claims were without merit and it would vigorously defend the lawsuit. In its filing Thursday, the company said it was cooperating with the SEC. Better.com said in a statement that it voluntarily provided all materials requested and that it was “happy to set a high bar for transparency and responsiveness.” Better.com was a winner amid the boom in housing prices and mortgage refinancing that accompanied the pandemic and low interest rates. The company grew revenue nearly 10-fold to $876 million in 2020 from the year prior, posted a profit of $172 million and hired thousands as it rushed to keep up with the market, company filings said. It raised $500 million from SoftBank Group Corp. last year and weeks later said it planned to go public at a valuation of $7 billion. Better.com since has been rocked by the rise in interest rates and resulting sharp pullback in refinancings, as well as a controversy when Mr. Garg laid off 900 workers via a Zoom call in December. He took a brief leave after the call sparked an uproar. The company shed about 7,500 jobs, or 72% of its total workforce, between the end of last year and May, according to the company’s filing Thursday. At its peak, it had 10,400 employees at the end of 2021. In May of this year it had about 2,900 employees.

Rents have been rising swiftly across America for much of the pandemic era, and housing experts are warning that they could now receive a boost from an unlikely source: the Federal Reserve, the New York Times reported. As the central bank raises interest rates to cool down the economy and contain rapid inflation, it is also pushing up mortgage costs, putting home purchases out of reach for many first-time buyers. If people who would have otherwise bought a home remain waylaid in apartments and rented houses, it could compound already-booming demand — keeping pressure on rental prices. While it is tough to predict how big or how lasting that Fed-induced bump in rental demand might prove, it could ironically make it more difficult for the central bank to wrestle inflation lower in the near term. Rent-related costs make up nearly a third of the closely tracked Consumer Price Index inflation measure, so anything that helps to keep them climbing at an unusually brisk pace is likely to perpetuate rapid inflation. Rents on new leases climbed by 14.1 percent in the year through June, according to Apartment List, an apartment listing service. While that is slightly less than the 17.5 percent increase over the course of 2021, it is still an unusually rapid pace of growth. Before the pandemic, a 2 to 3 percent pace of annual increase was normal. The recent quick market rent increases have been slowly spilling over to official inflation data, which track both new and existing leases.

More than two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, exasperation is growing among business, city and community leaders across the U.S. who have seen offices left behind while life returns to normal at restaurants, airlines, sporting events and other places where people gather, the Wall Street Journal reported. Even after many employers have adopted hybrid schedules, less than half the number of prepandemic office workers are returning to business districts consistently. The problem is most pronounced in America’s biggest cities. Nationally, office use hit a pandemic-era high of 44% in early June, while cities like Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco and New York have lagged behind, according to Kastle Systems, which collects data on how many workers swipe into office buildings each day. The divide has created a sense of urgency among politicians and business leaders in these cities, where the stakes are especially high because office workers are the engine of local economies and fuel small businesses. From April 2020 to March 2021, 26,300 New York City small businesses closed permanently, according to a report the mayor released in the spring. Available office space in New York has grown to about 125 million square feet, up from 90 million in the first quarter of 2020, according to data firm CoStar Group Inc. Retail rents in Manhattan have declined for 18 consecutive quarters, starting well before the pandemic, according to commercial real estate services firm CBRE Group Inc. One issue for workers in big cities is time spent in transit. New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Chicago have some of the nation’s longest commute times — as well as some of the lowest return-to-office rates, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of the country’s 24 largest metropolitan areas in May.

A federal appeals court ruled that lenders can’t foreclose on homes when people named in the foreclosure proceedings file for personal bankruptcy, even when they don’t directly own the property at issue, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals said Wednesday that lender Bayview Loan Servicing LLC improperly foreclosed on the primary residence of Eileen Fogarty shortly after she filed for bankruptcy protection in 2018. Ms. Fogarty’s bankruptcy filing triggered an automatic stay on collection efforts by her creditors. Bayview violated the stay when it sold her home at a foreclosure auction days later, the three-judge panel ruled Wednesday, while remanding her case to bankruptcy court to determine sanctions against the lender. Ms. Fogarty had lived in the house in Shirley, N.Y., owned by 72 Grandview LLC, a limited liability company in which she held a 99% interest. The company in 2010 stopped making payments on a mortgage loan backed by the property, and the lender moved to foreclose the following year, naming both the company and Ms. Fogarty as defendants in the foreclosure lawsuit. After Ms. Fogarty filed for bankruptcy, Bayview took the position that it could proceed because the property’s owner was the LLC, which wasn’t in bankruptcy. The U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Central Islip, N.Y., sided with the lender and rejected Ms. Fogarty’s request for sanctions as punishment for selling the home despite her personal filing. A federal district judge reversed, ruling in her favor. Bayview then appealed to the Second Circuit. “[W]e conclude that Bayview willfully violated the automatic stay when it completed the sale while knowing that Fogarty, a named party in the foreclosure action, had filed a bankruptcy petition,” the appeals court said, noting an “error of law” at the bankruptcy-court level.

PWM Property Management LLC, the bankrupt owner of 245 Park Ave. in Manhattan, is trying to finalize an agreement in which former business partner SL Green Realty Corp. would serve as lead bidder in the skyscraper's chapter 11 sale process, MarketWatch.com reported. Terms weren't disclosed during the update provided Thursday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del. But earlier this year Chinese conglomerate HNA Group Co., which is a backer of PWM Property Management, was told in an arbitration proceeding that it must pay SL Green roughly $185 million in a dispute over the real estate. Besides managing the building, SL Green also invested $148 million in the property.