Ginsburg stated that treating builder business as a core pillar rather than a side channel reflects a broader industry shift. He believes a healthy balance of builders should be around 15% to 20% of the overall retail book of business.
Good urbanism should transcend politics. Socialists and capitalists can walk the same neighborhood and agree it's a pleasant place to live. They can each appreciate the tree canopy, the corner café with people spilling onto the sidewalk, the mix of ages on bikes and on foot, the architectural details of older buildings, and so on.
Through Community Facilities Districts (CFD), Municipal Utility Districts (MUD), Public Improvement Districts (PID), Community Development Districts (CDD) and reimbursement districts (RD), builders can potentially shift infrastructure costs off their balance sheets and onto special districts that homebuyers ultimately absorb through property taxes without potentially adding debt to the builder's books.
Rajinder Singh Pander, of Windsor, Berkshire, had been served an enforcement notice by Hounslow Council requiring him to demolish the unsafe building - but he ignored the order and continued to rent out the property on Worthing Road, Heston, west London. A young family, including a child, lived there for two years in "cramped and substandard living conditions, giving rise to serious concerns about their health and wellbeing", according to Hounslow Council.
The cost rose a lot following the pandemic. And some of that was supply chain issues that really increased the costs, and then they didn't quite come back down. And now tariffs are also impacting some products. These costs are part of the reason the amount of new rental housing stock is shrinking.
Rising utility costs continue to be a pain for the average U.S. renter. Energy-efficient rental features that help lower these costs like LED lighting, good insulation, and smart thermostats are becoming a baseline for renters.
The global average building utilization rate dramatically jumped in 2025 to 53%, the highest since before the pandemic, validating the effectiveness of hybrid strategies in driving more in-office activity, according to CBRE. Utilization rates were 38% in 2024 and 35% in 2023, compared to the 65% that most respondents to CBRE's global workplace occupancy benchmarking program identified as their target.
My friends and I are early 30s professionals living in one of America's most expensive cities and making middle-class incomes. None of us can afford to buy or save for a home here. We all rent, but we're not broke. We save for kids and retirement and illness, but a home isn't in the cards. But recently, we think we might have found an unconventional loophole.
