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The Treasury Department yesterday announced plans to start reallocating the billions of dollars in federal rental assistance in a bid to get more money into the hands of tenants facing eviction, the Associated Press reported. The move, which was required by Congress when it allocated the monies, follows the slow distribution of rental assistance in many parts of the country. A little more than 16.5% of the tens of billions of dollars in federal assistance reached tenants in August, compared with 11% a month earlier. Lawmakers have approved $46.5 billion in spending on rental assistance and Treasury is targeting the first tranche of money known as ERA1 which amounts to $25 billion. States and cities are mostly allocating ERA1 money, which must be spent by Sept. 30, 2022. Allocation of the second installment of $21.5 billion, can go through through Sept. 30, 2025. The goal, Treasury officials said, is to reallocate money from those programs either don’t need it or don’t have the desire to set up a program.

Billionaire investor and philanthropist Nicolas Berggruen is buying a Beverly Hills, Calif., estate once owned by William Randolph Hearst that has been tied up in bankruptcy for nearly two years, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Berggruen won a bankruptcy auction for the former Hearst estate, known as Beverly House, with a winning bid of $63.1 million, according to Hilton & Hyland and Rodeo Realty, which co-listed the property. The pending sale of Beverly House caps years of legal wrangling over the future of the property, which was featured in the horse-head scene in “The Godfather” and Beyoncé’s visual album “Black Is King.” The winning offer is up from the $47 million stalking-horse bid by Mr. Berggruen’s investment vehicle, Berggruen Holdings Ltd., that set the floor price for the property at auction, according to court papers. The final sale is still a discount over previous asking prices for the estate, the highest being $195 million in 2016. Leonard Ross, who had lived on the property since the 1970s, put a holding company he controls that owns the property into chapter 11 in November 2019 to avoid a foreclosure auction. An affiliate of Fortress Investment Group LLC extended a $40 million loan against the property in 2015, debt that it said had been in default for years. Earlier this year, a neutral bankruptcy trustee was put in charge of the estate, court papers say.

The regulator overseeing housing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac proposed on Wednesday changes to recently imposed capital and leverage requirements on the pair, Reuters reported. The proposed rule from the Federal Housing Finance Agency would encourage the pair to shift more risk from taxpayers to private investors, while allowing them to support the housing market, the agency said. “The proposed requirements provide the Enterprises with the necessary incentives to support sustainable lending initiatives by transferring a significant amount of credit risk away from the taxpayers to private investors that are better positioned to take this risk,” said FHFA acting director Sandra L. Thompson in a statement. The proposal makes several changes to a capital rule first imposed on Fannie and Freddie in November. That rule envisioned Fannie and Freddie would have to raise billions of dollars in capital and leverage cushions, as part of the regulator's bid to prepare them to exit from government conservatorship. Among the changes, the rule would change the leverage buffer from a fixed ratio to one that would shift alongside the amount of capital the enterprises are required to hold. It also would reduce the amount of capital the pair must hold after transferring credit risk on loans to a private party.