DeSantis to sign revised Florida condo safety bill
As Florida nears the fourth anniversary of the deadly collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominium building in Surfside, Gov. Ron DeSantis has said he will sign a bill that revises condo laws in the state.
The legislation, approved in the House and Senate, would amend condo safety laws passed following the 2021 tragedy that killed 98 people in the Miami suburb. Residents and owners said the initial laws — which mandated inspections and financial reserves for structural maintenance — were too expensive, local news outlets reported.
The new bill would extend the July 1 deadline for structural inspections until the end of the year, affording building owners a pause in amassing the maintenance reserves the initial law mandated.
Trump posts about privatizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
Housing finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been under government conservatorship since the 2008 housing crisis, but President Trump is wondering publicly whether it’s time to cut the mortgage guarantors loose.
“I am giving very serious consideration to bringing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac public,” Trump said on Truth Social Wednesday, noting that “the time would seem to be right.”
Trump had tried to make them public in 2019. He has said that privatizing both organizations would create more competition among mortgage lenders and benefit buyers.
Both housing agencies buy mortgages from banks, package them together, and sell the bundles to investors as securities. Banks use these funds they receive to make more mortgages. Amid the housing market crash in 2008, experts and politicians feared for the organizations’ financial stability.
Report: This is how cities draw and keep residents
What gives a city its appeal? Global architecture firm Gensler asks that question each year for its annual City Pulse report, trying to pinpoint the characteristics that make people move to, and stay in, urban areas.
In its latest report, the firm found that cities drew many of their residents with the promise of employment and other opportunities but kept them because of the emotional connections they made in these high-density locales.
“City Pulse makes clear that emotional connection isn’t a soft metric — it’s the foundation of urban resilience,” Sofia Song, global cities research leader at Gensler, said in a press release from the firm. “If cities want to thrive, they need to design for belonging as much as they design for growth.”
Smaller cities are also rising in popularity, the report suggested, as prospective residents aim to balance urban living with affordability. But new residents need to feel integrated fast if cities want to keep them, as people who have lived in a city for fewer than five years are more at risk of leaving.
Community Associations Institute gets new CEO
The Community Associations Institute has a new CEO. Following a search task force chaired by one of CAI’s past presidents, Dawn Bauman will head the global organization that advocates for community association-based housing models, such as condo associations, homeowner associations and home co-ops. Bauman succeeds Tom Skiba, who retired in 2024 and ended his 23-year tenure at CAI after growing its membership to more than 50,000 individuals worldwide, according to a press release from the organization. Bauman starts July 1.
With two decades at the association on her resume, Bauman said in the same press release that she is “excited to build on CAI’s strong foundation as we elevate our profession and strengthen the communities we serve.”
Appraisal Institute VP voted out amid suits
Following allegations of unwanted touching and harassment, the vice president of the Appraisal Institute, Craig Steinley, was removed from his leadership position within the roughly 16,000-member professional organization of real estate appraisers and property analysts.
The vote was taken Wednesday after The New York Times reported on allegations from women who said Steinley harassed them, triggering a two-week outcry from members of the AI. The Chicago-headquartered organization is also facing lawsuits. Cindy Chance, the group's former chief executive, has filed a civil suit.
Steinley has denied the allegations.
“The Board made this decision acting in the best interest of the Appraisal Institute," the Appraisal Institute said in an emailed statement. "The allegations in the Chance complaint will be addressed in a court of law, where critical facts will be able to be addressed.”
Some leadership took to LinkedIn at the time, with AI president Paula Konikoff writing that Steinley “said he makes this choice out of consideration for and in the interest of not being a distraction to the important and ongoing work of the organization and will cooperate with any investigatory effort.”
In a statement through his lawyer, Craig Capilla, Steinley called his removal "disappointing" and " a deliberate act of retaliation driven by internal politics, not principle."
The decision "reflects a leadership culture more interested in cowering to a mob mentality and silencing independent voices than addressing the real challenges facing our profession," he said. "I did not seek the role as an officer to go along with past practices. I was elected by my peers to push for long-overdue reform — to bring transparency, accountability, and integrity back to the Institute’s highest levels. That mission clearly threatened those invested in the status quo, and this removal is the result."
He disputed the allegations Chance made in the lawsuit, saying that an independent investigation is underway and an investigation of past litigation has already been conducted.