A bright spot is hotel demand. September’s exceeded the same month in September 2019.

Rite Aid announced late Sunday that the company has filed for U.S. Bankruptcy Court protection. Here’s what we know about its reorganization plan, including how it will move forward with store closings.

A Lake Geneva mansion has hit the market with a price tag that puts it in the exclusive eight-figures club, adding momentum to what’s been a hot streak for the vacation enclave.

The 11,800-square-foot estate at 906 South Lakeshore Drive in Fontana, Wisconsin has been listed for just under $14 million, Crain’s reported. David Curry of Geneva Lakefront Realty is representing the property.

If the mansion sells for close to the asking price, it would be one of the most expensive single-family transactions in Lake Geneva this year. Last month, a 10,000-square-foot lakefront home traded for $16.5 million in an off-market deal, topping all Chicago-area home sales so far in 2023.

While technically not part of the Chicago metropolitan area, Lake Geneva’s luxury market is thriving as a second-home destination for many affluent Chicagoans.

The scarcity of homes on popular inland waters such as Lake Geneva extends to the shores of Lake Michigan, as well. Prices were being pushed higher this year due to low inventory in markets from the suburban North Shore of Chicago southward through Indiana and into southwest Michigan. As supply dwindles, buyers aren’t afraid to cough up big bucks to snag a spot in one of the resort towns when one comes available.

The second-largest Lake Geneva sale this year closed in July, when buyers paid $14 million for a 8,700-square-foot house on Loramoor Drive. 

The newly listed Fontana estate, built in 2011 in a Cape Cod style, sits on a little less than 2 acres and offers lake views. Trusts in the names of Terrence and Katherine Ryan bought the lot for $3.35 million in May 2008, according to Walworth County public records.

The home they built has six bedrooms, six full bathrooms and a fieldstone fireplace. The property also features a guest house, an outdoor sports court, a boathouse-style entertainment pavilion near the shoreline and a dock.

— Quinn Donoghue

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San Jose is challenging San Francisco’s claim as the “AI Capital of the World.”

Four months after Mayor London Breed of San Francisco planted her stake to be the global hub for artificial intelligence, Mayor Matt Mahan of Silicon Valley’s largest city says not so fast, the San Jose Mercury News reported.

In a bid to lure the next generation of startups, Mahan fired off a memo to city agencies urging them to make it easier for AI companies to set up shop, while rapidly adding AI into the workings of City Hall.

“I think there’s going to be plenty of growth in AI for everybody,” Mahan told the Mercury News. “I really see us as living in a regional economy. I think San Francisco’s success can be San Jose’s success.”

In June, Breed declared San Francisco the “AI Capital” after AI firms leased dozens of offices in  the Financial District, South Beach, South of Market and on the edge of the Mission District, a bright spot in the city’s swath of vacant offices, many abandoned by tech firms.

OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, is poised to sublease two buildings containing 455,000 square feet in Mission Bay, in the city’s largest leasing deal in five years.

The move comes after large office leases by such AI firms as cloud-based Hive, Tome, Chef Robotics, Github, Cruise, a self-driving car company and Niantic Labs, creator of the augmented reality game Pokemon Go. Anthropic, maker of the Claude chatbot, last month agreed to sublease Slack’s 230,000-square-foot headquarters in South of Market.

Venture capital funding in San Francisco rose 49 percent in the first half of the year to $82 billion, of which 30 percent went to AI firms based in the city, according to Raise Commercial Real Estate.

San Jose, however, doesn’t aim to watch the city by the Golden Gate seize the AI treasure — and aims to back its welcome mat with city support. The South Bay city has deep expertise in tech hardware and chipmaking, which support AI.

San Jose and the Peninsula are home to software and hardware giants from Intel and Cisco to Google and Meta Platforms. The South Bay also hosts research and development in chip design, AI and robotics at Stanford, SRI International and other tech brain hubs.

The mayor’s memo, co-authored by Councilman David Cohen, seeks to give discounted utility rates and speedier permit processing, along with potential tax and fee rebates, to AI firms.

Mahan said the city is looking into how AI tech could potentially cut traffic deaths, and how San Jose might use AI to find and fill the city’s potholes.

San Jose has “an immense pool of diverse talent,” Mahan said. “We want to ensure Silicon Valley stays on the edge of technological innovation.”

Gary Dillabough, co-founder of San Jose-based Urban Community, last month said he found a partner to build an incubator for dozens of artificial intelligence startups in Downtown.

— Dana Bartholomew

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Housing affordability in Texas has contributed to a massive influx of new residents in recent years, and that affordability is slipping away. 

Homes in Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio and Houston have become increasingly unaffordable in relation to residents’ incomes over the past decade, rivaling the costliness of metros like New York and Chicago, the Dallas Morning News reported, citing National Association of Realtors and U.S. Census Bureau data.

To determine housing affordability ratios, median home prices in the second quarter were divided by the previous year’s median household income. The result: Houston and San Antonio matched DFW’s affordability ratio, while Austin was deemed slightly less affordable. 

While Texas still offers numerous advantages, this shift in affordability could deter newcomers to the Lone Star State. 

Homes in DFW are still considerably more affordable than cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles, but the region’s median home prices have more than doubled in the past decade, even as incomes increased by 45 percent. Interest rate hikes in the latter half of 2022 pushed home prices down slightly, but not enough to offset significant gains that occurred in the initial years of the pandemic.

As a result, some prospective homebuyers are exploring more affordable options in Midwestern cities, where median household incomes are comparable to those in Dallas-Fort Worth but home prices are lower. The median sale price of existing homes in DFW was about $390,000 in spring 2023, roughly $27,000 more than the median price in Chicago, the outlet reported.

The post-pandemic housing boom further exacerbated the shortage of affordable homes in North Texas, making it increasingly difficult for younger buyers to find starter homes. The number of homes selling for less than $200,000 has plummeted since 2019, forcing many to reconsider their home search or look for options in other regions.

Real estate agents in the area have reported clients exploring out-of-state alternatives, such as Colorado and other Texas cities, in search of more cost-friendly housing options. These market changes are challenging the long-held perception that Texas is significantly more affordable than the rest of the country.

—Quinn Donoghue 

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The post Housing affordability declining in Texas appeared first on The Real Deal.

Gold bullion, exotic cards, weapons, a $2 million robbery: these aren’t plot points for a forthcoming James Bond movie, but events and allegations around New Jersey developer Fred Daibes.

Daibes, a successful builder known for luxury residential real estate, is a key figure in the bribery charges facing New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez. The developer — one of five facing federal charges in the case — has pleaded not guilty. 

A federal indictment in 2018 accused Daibes of scheming to defraud a bank that he had founded. Prosecutors accused Daibes of giving Menendez and his wife bribes for help in the fraud case by installing a lax U.S. attorney. 

Those bribes include cash-stuffed envelopes with Daibes’ fingerprints and nine bars of gold bullion tracked to Daibes which were seized during a search of Menendez’s home, prosecutors said.

As Menendez’s case faces trial, the developer credited as the “chief architect of Edgewater’s rebirth” has been pulled into the spotlight, adding to a turbulent track record dotted with controversy and detailed in a profile by the New York Times. 

Daibes lived in a Palestinian refugee camp for the first 10 years of his life before relocating to New Jersey. After dropping out of college to support his younger siblings in the wake of his father’s death, he built his career as a luxury developer and a reputation as a local fixture: a 2018 spread in a local magazine featured his exotic car collection, including a red 1957 Jaguar XK140 and a silver 2005 Bentley Continental GT with a turbocharged W-12 engine.

The wealth that brought regional fame also brought bad actors. In 2013, four people broke into his penthouse, tied a bag over his head and beat him, breaking his ribs and dislocating his shoulder before making off with $2 million in cash, gold and jewelry. The group was eventually arrested and sentenced to serve 12 to 18 years in prison; one proved to be a confidant and neighbor of Daibes.

Menendez didn’t successfully intervene in Daibes’ 2018 case, according to prosecutors. Daibes ultimately pleaded guilty to one count of making false entries in connection with a $1.8 million loan and wasn’t set to face prison time. Last week, a judge tossed Daibes’ plea agreement in that case.

As for the latest indictment, Daibes is accused of providing financial backing to an Egyptian-American businessman who later won a lucrative contract for the sole rights to certify products imported to Egypt complied with Islamic law; the business operates out of a building in Edgewater owned by Daibes.

Menendez proceeded to use his role in the Senate to direct aid and weapons to Egypt, according to prosecutors.

Daibes Enterprises rose to prominence in Edgewater after building thousands of housing units, office spaces and retail complexes. That activity hasn’t been without its share of controversy, such as when Daibes was accused alongside officials of trying to block a development at 615 River Road on the Gold Coast.

State investigators also found Daibes provided free or discounted rent to local officials and awarded a contract to a councilperson’s company in exchange for favorable treatment in business dealings.

— Holden Walter-Warner

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After Greg Jein, an Oscar-nominated visual effects artist, died last year, his friends discovered the prop stashed in a cardboard box in his garage.

Mr. Ford, the executive chairman of Ford Motor, said nonunion automakers would make gains against Michigan automakers because of strikes by the United Automobile Workers union.

Key deposits creep up in September after falling for over a year.

A conservation group acquired more than 1,500 acres just north of Yellowstone National Park to stop a gold mine that they say would have upset the habitat of bears and other wildlife.