• A penthouse in Miami is selling for the equivalent of about $547,000. 
• The seller is only accepting bitcoin. 
• Bitcoin has surged more than 1,500% this year. 

For 33 bitcoins, this "spectacular" penthouse in Miami could be yours.

That was the equivalent of about $547,000 on Wednesday. 

The one bedroom, 1.5 bathroom apartment is listed on a number of real estate portals including Redfin, Remax, and Coldwell Banker.

"PRICE? ONLY ACEPTING (sic.) BITCOIN," the listing said. Since Redfin doesn't yet list properties in bitcoin, the $33 listing price fell below its minimum-price threshold, and the apartment was not available for a tour. 

According to public records on Redfin, it was last sold in January 2016 for $315,000 and gained 7.4% annually since then. Justino Ferret, the agent on the property, told Business Insider that this seller is only accepting bitcoin. 

The cryptocurrency has surged more than 1,500% this year against the US dollar as it gained popularity with Wall Street and retail investors. 

On Tuesday, Joseph Borg, a securities regulator, told CNBC that he had seen mortgages being taken out to buy bitcoin. Borg likely was specifically referring to a home-equity line of credit, which allows homeowners to loan from their property's value for other purposes. The idea of using a house as an ATM machine grew in popularity as the housing bubble peaked in the mid-2000's.

Converting home equity to bitcoins is not advisable, said Nela Richardson, the chief economist at Redfin.

"You're taking money out of an asset class that is highly regulated and putting it into something whose value is based on no regulations," she told Business Insider. 

"We think this home for sale is more of a rare event than the start of a larger trend," she added. 

SEE ALSO: Bitcoin bull Tom Lee has identified 12 stocks that are perfect if you don’t want to own it

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NOW WATCH: One market expert says the financial system could collapse at any moment

• New condo development has slowed in New York City. 
• Average prices for a Manhattan condo stayed flat this year, data show. 

New development condos were the weakest player in this year’s condo market, showing a 13 percent drop in sales volume relative to 2016 while the rest of the market remained mostly flat, according to a new report.

The average price for a Manhattan condo stood at $3.1 million in 2017, the same as the previous year, when it set a record, according to the report from CityRealty, which is based on projected numbers through the end of 2017. On the new development side, the average price came in at an average $4.7 million, down from the record $5 million in 2016.

Sales volume for the residential market, including co-ops and condos, was $25.9 billion in 2017, compared with $25.8 billion in 2016. CityRealty projections peg new development sales at roughly $8.1 billion through the end of 2017, down 13 percent from the $9.3 billion in new condo sales recorded last year.

The high end of he market overall contracted, resulting in fewer sales but at higher prices. In 2017, 240 units above $10 million were responsible for $4.7 billion in sales, at an average price of $20 million. In 2016, 297 units sold for a total of $5.3 billion, at an average price of $18 million.

On the opposite end, apartments under $1 million remained relatively flat, but comprised a slightly lower share of the market than in previous years. Sales volume decreased from $3.5 billion to $3.4 billion—for 5,232 and 5,040 units respectively—but remained at 13 percent of the market, compared with 13.5 percent in 2016.

Though the residential market hasn’t seen much drama this year, taking a step back to the previous decade provides some context. The average condo price has in Manhattan has increased 90 percent since 2007 while the average new development condo nearly quadrupled in price, rising 193 percent over the decade.

Per CityRealty, 47 percent of the condo sales volume was Downtown, with 24 percent in Midtown, 14 percent on the Upper East Side, 10 percent on the Upper West Side and 5 percent in FiDi. Condo prices rose 27 percent on the Lower East Side in 2017, the highest of any neighborhood.

The year’s big winner in terms of sales volume was 56 Leonard Street, where 65 units sold for a total of $636 million, at an average of $9.8 million per unit. The most expensive condo building last year was 15 Central Park West, with six sales averaging $7,350 a square foot. The runner up was 432 Park Avenue, where 15 units sold at an average of $5,626 a square foot. It had the highest average sales price of any condo building at $25.7 million.

The top closed sale as of Nov. 30, 2017 was a $65 million pad at 432 Park Avenue, according to the report.

One of the losers this year was the Trump empire, according to the report, where average prices at 11 Trump properties fell below Manhattan’s average for the first time. The biggest sufferer was Trump International, where prices fell 27 percent to $5.2 million per unit.

While the condo market was largely flat, the co-op market had a good year in 2017. The average sales price rose to $1.4 million from $1.3 million in 2016, and the median sales price increased to $838,304 from $818,250. About 6,400 co-ops are expected to close before the calendar flips to 2018, up from 6,212 in 2016.

CityRealty predicts that in 2018, the average price of a Manhattan apartment will dip slightly for the first time since the recession.

SEE ALSO: Real estate M&A has eclipsed the record level set on the eve of the financial crisis — and it's to do with the retail apocalypse

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NOW WATCH: Here’s why your jeans have that tiny front pocket

• Leonard Steinberg is a New York City-based real estate broker and a president at Compass.
• Working mostly with units inside luxury buildings, Steinberg has been responsible for over $3 billion in transactions throughout his career.
• We followed Steinberg for a day to find out just what his work entails.

Compass President Leonard Steinberg has been responsible for more than $3 billion in transactions in his career as a real estate broker.

Luxury buildings are his specialty. His largest sale to date was on a Tribeca penthouse that sold for $43 million, and in 2009, he worked on the $32 million deal for Dolce & Gabbana designer Domenico Dolce's 11th Avenue penthouse. 

Steinberg's move over to Compass — a real estate company that launched in 2013 and prioritizes data and technology — came as a surprise to many in the the industry. When he left Douglas Elliman, where he was the top agent for Downtown Manhattan, he told The Real Deal, "I like to feel like a bit of a maverick." 

Earlier this month, we followed him around to see what a typical day in his life is like. Between countless meetings, apartment showings, phone calls, and marketing consultations, Steinberg keeps plenty busy.    

SEE ALSO: Facebook was just named the best workplace of 2018 — step inside its New York office, where employees enjoy an in-house pastry chef and tons of celebrity cameos

When I arrived at Steinberg's West Village apartment at 8:30 a.m., it was already an exciting morning. Compass had just announced that it had received the largest real estate tech investment in US history with a $450 million infusion from SoftBank. The investment valued Compass at $2.2 billion. Steinberg rushed over to the TV, where the company's cofounder and CEO, Robert Reffkin, was being interviewed on CNBC.

Source: Business Insider

Before heading into the office, Steinberg sent out his daily company-wide email, one that he's been writing since his first day with Compass. He uses it to deliver company news as well as unique insight into whatever's on his mind. Today's topic? Aging.

Steinberg is originally from South Africa but has lived in Dallas and New York City during his 33 years in the US. Before his days in real estate, Steinberg worked in the fashion industry, and he still designs his own suits. On this day, he wore his very own all-white suite in honor of Compass' office holiday party, which was to be held later in the evening.

George Blankenship knows a thing or two about innovative companies.

Now an independent consultant, Blankenship was previously a vice president at Tesla Motors from 2010 to 2013, and a vice president of real estate at Apple, working closely alongside Steve Jobs to launch the first 165 Apple Stores worldwide before that.

Blankenship recently sat down with Business Insider deputy executive editor Matt Turner to discuss the visionary leadership of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, and how they set their companies up for success from the beginning.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Matt Turner: I want to start by asking what innovative companies, particularly Tesla and Apple, which today carry so much weight, have in common?

George Blankenship: They had a focus on the future that didn't matter what other people saw. They saw a future of — how can you make communications simple, easy, and handheld? It becomes an iPhone.

At Apple, we looked around at what was going on in the world at the time, and the technologies that were available that weren't in phones of the time. If you went back 10 years ago and you looked at a Motorola flip phone — one of the hottest phones — or the Palm, Nokia, et cetera, they worked, but there was so much more potential. Steve just saw so much more opportunity for what this device could be.

Steve just saw so much more opportunity for what this device could be.

They had a phone, which then enabled the real disruptive part of that technology, which was the app store. Think about it, for two, three, four years, Apple never advertised the phone; it was "there's an app for that." If you step back, what would Uber be today without a smartphone? What would Facebook be? What Steve saw were opportunities with existing things that other people just didn't see.

With Elon, it's very, very interesting talking to him because everything really does have a bigger picture to it. You think about Tesla. Well, when I first met with him six or seven years ago, he had this vision, and the vision was to move the planet away from fossil fuels and into renewable resources. Tesla is a part of that, but it's not the whole picture. It's moving people to electric vehicles, but what else could you do? Well, if you're building an electric car you have to have a lot of batteries, so you go to a battery factory. Well, if you've got these batteries what else could you do with them? You could do a battery wall, a battery pack that hangs on the wall — you charge it up and run your house and car off of it. And then what's missing is solar, so a year ago they merged with Solar City.

Now you can take this energy from this great big fusion reactor in the sky, put it in batteries and run your car and your house. It's a bigger picture than what other people are doing. You might ask, well, why don't other car dealers do this? Or why don't other manufacturers do this? It's because they just don't see things the way a Steve Jobs and an Elon Musk do — and they have the conviction to make it happen.

Turner: How alike are those two people, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk? They're almost iconic now. What similarities do they share, and what was it like to work with them?

Blankenship: They share a lot of the same qualities. They have a conviction and a belief that the direction they're going is right. Regardless of what anybody else says, the direction is right.

When you have that conviction and you share it with an entire team of people, then you take that conviction you've embedded in a whole group of people and enable and expect them to do more than what they thought they were capable of.

When you have that conviction and you share it with an entire team of people, then you take that conviction you've embedded in a whole group of people and enable and expect them to do more than what they thought they were capable of.

Then you've got this whole group of people who are doing things that individually they wouldn't have done. Individually, even if challenged, they might have done them, but when you take it and you put it into another level where you've got a whole group of individuals doing something they never thought they could do, together, pretty incredible things happen. It's an experience that's hard to describe because when it's happening around you, you get caught up in it.

At Tesla, I was there up until Q1 of 2013 when we became profitable, and the bets were against us. I sort of came to work every day knowing that there was probably an 80% chance the company was going to fail. But you came to work with a group of people every day who would never say never. They would do extraordinary things that ended up turning into what it is today.

Turner: How much of those companies are tied up in the individual? Clearly, Apple exists after Steve Jobs, but how much of the culture that's there was really the Steve Jobs culture? How does it survive on after he's no longer there? What would you make of Apple today?

Blankenship: When you put together the group of people I just described, those people have a can-do mind-set, that nothing's impossible: "We're doing something bigger than making an electronic device; there's a bigger purpose here." Look at what the results have been of Apple. Yes, Steve passed away in 2011, but look at the way the company has continued to evolve as a service company: How many millions of iPhone X's do you think they're going to take on order for over the next couple of weeks? It's going to be massive. The company today isn't going through the product innovations on an every three-year basis that it was in the 10 years between 2000 and 2010, but I think it's finding ways that the device has become more personal and more embedded in what you do and how you do it, which aligns you to the platform in an incredible way. Tim [Cook] has done a really good job of doing that.

Turner: Turning to Elon Musk, obviously Tesla is a pretty young company, relatively speaking, still in the early stages, what do you make of where it is now and where do you think it's headed?

Blankenship: Elon's just getting started. Tesla's still in many ways in its infancy. It's the first successful US car company since the 1950s. Ford went public in 1956, so Tesla's the first US car company to be successful in 50 years. He's just getting started.

The Roadster was kind of proof-of-concept, then Model S, then Model X — basically a $100,000 car. But now you've got the Model 3. If you start to step back and say, OK, impact-wise, what does this do? Well, Model 3 is the one Elon always wanted to get to. It was always the goal. We opened stores so we could start developing people to want model 3 back in 2011.

Elon announced the car a year ago, on March 31, and 115,000 people reserve a car before he even launched it; 325,000 people reserved the car in the first week. They delivered 30 of them on July 31. He tweeted out they were taking 1,800 reservations a day, for a car most people have never seen. Combine that with the battery factory in Reno, Nevada — 10 million square feet of battery production — and the Tesla power wall, with Solar City and Tesla becomes a get-you-off-the-grid company. It becomes a car company that's got different cars (and they'll have more coming), the battery company, battery technology being very important. And Solar — now they've got the solar roof.

There's going to come a point in time where the solar roof, to the battery, to the car, becomes affordable so that when you're replacing the roof on your house, your accountant will be the one telling you, instead of paying $60,000 to replace your roof, pay $60 to $70 and don't have an electric bill anymore — and go get an electric car while you're at it. The company is just in its infancy at this point on where it's actually capable of going.

Turner: If you had to bet, how far away do you think that moment is?

Blankenship: It's a combination of multiple things. I would never bet against anything that Elon has going on in the background. Right now, the last thing I read said they have the most efficient solar panels. You don't necessarily need the same battery technology in the power wall as you need in the cars. It could be second, third generation, like a chip in a computer. You take those cost savings, and a little bit more efficiency, and who knows? Could it be five years, and suddenly you're in a place where people are starting to say, this is starting to make a whole lot of sense, and when the time comes to make the big leap you're going to do a roof anyway, might as well?

In the meantime, you can still do the solar panels and, depending on where you are on electricity cost, it makes sense to do now. There's going to be that watershed moment when the efficiency of the panels and the battery technology and the cost of batteries gets to a point where it just makes all the sense in the world. I just don't know how much he has going on right now to know when that's going to be.

Turner: There's still the Tesla bus being talked about, and autonomous driving, and everything else. What do you see as being the future of Tesla with regard to those things? A Tesla bus could revolutionize logistics and transportation, and Tesla is amassing data for autonomous cars all the time with the number of cars it already has on the road. Do we get to a point where every car and truck is Tesla and they're all powered by Tesla solar panels? How big does it become?

Blankenship: It doesn't need to be Tesla. Just so you know, that was never Elon's goal was for everything to be Tesla. What he wants to do is advance the adoption of electric vehicles. So the Nissan Leaf is good! The BMW i3, that's good! Is it a competitor? Not really. You could say it is, but not really. The more electric cars the better.

When you start talking about other technology, there are a lot of people racing out there for autonomous cars, and I think they have a different motivation. They're doing it because others are saying they need to do it. They're saying, "I can't be behind the curve; we've got to do this because we have to." With Elon, it's a different reason: It's about safety. When you have a different mind-set like that: It is safer to be in an autonomous car. In fact, if you want to see an interesting video, there's one on YouTube of a driver in the Netherlands in a Tesla Model X and he's on the highway and the car is auto driving. Up ahead there's a car that goes to pull out around another car, and the Tesla actually warns that there's an accident about to happen one second before the accident even connects. That's safety. Yes, it's cool; it's a neat technology with lots of applications; but it's safer. When you have that type of motivation you do things in a different way. That's the way Elon thinks about things. It's safer, and that's what he would focus on.

 Turner: What you've described at both Apple and Tesla with Steve Jobs and Elon Musk is a mission at the heart of the company and its strategy. Are there any other companies or people you see out there that when you look at them you say, that's the same thing?

Blankenship: I think there are different types of missions. Yes, Elon and Steve had their missions. If you look at Amazon, Amazon's mission, without a doubt, is the customer: What can we do for the customer? What can we do to make the experience better for the customer? How do we have the best customer experience on the planet? That's a mission.

If you go to their recruiting page on their website, they say, here are the 10 guiding principles of the company. No. 1 is the customer. When you join Amazon, you better know that the customer is what you're there for.

When you join Amazon, you better know that the customer is what you're there for.

I think they do an incredible job with that mission, whether it's Amazon delivery, and if that's not fast enough, there's Prime in two days. Prime Now, in one hour will deliver to your home. "Alexa, order me a pizza," and a pizza shows up at your house in 30 minutes. "How do we embrace a customer and make it special for them?" I think there are different kinds of missions. It doesn't have to save the planet or communication or simplicity. Amazon does a really good job of it.

Turner: We hear a lot about the retail apocalypse and Amazon's part in that. You obviously were very involved with the Apple retail strategy. What hope is there for traditional brick-and-mortar stores? What do they have to do to survive and prosper in this environment?

Blankenship: I think this whole apocalypse thing is ridiculous. What's happened in the United States is there's more retail space than there needs to be. Depending on who you talk to, there are about 1,200 regional, mall-type shopping centers out there. I think there's about 800. About 400 of them are going to survive, and I think about 300 of them are going to thrive. They're going to redefine that shopping because it's going to get down to where the right amount of square footage is out there.

Then what's going to happen, is you've got this experience generation coming up: Millennials, Gen-X'ers, they want to experience things. You can buy it on the web and pick it up in the store. How many people bought an iPhone 8 and picked it up in an Apple store the other day? I don't know, but I'm sure it was a bunch. Where did they go to do that? To the Apple store in the shopping center that everybody says is going to be dead. They're putting in grocery stores into it, they've got the theatre. As developers start to step back and put more technology in the centers and have the best, fastest WiFi, easy shopping, and then delivery, the shopping center has a bright future, just in a different way. I know some of the developers out there and they're doing a good job looking ahead and identifying what can be done. They're moving toward that direction to make the shopping mall an experience place where you want to go. When you get there, what you wanted to do, is there to do.

Turner: One last question for you. What's the next big thing? I know it's a big question, but you've seen firsthand iconic people, been involved in auto, retail, tech, and have a pretty broad view of what's going on in innovation. What do you think is the next big thing?

Blankenship: That's a really good question. I think that some of the outgrowths of virtual reality is going to be a really big thing. Not necessarily for gaming and that kind of stuff, but I think what you can do with 3D renderings — what impact could that have on the medical community?

I think that some of the outgrowths of virtual reality is going to be a really big thing. Not necessarily for gaming and that kind of stuff, but I think what you can do with 3D renderings — what impact could that have on the medical community?

On healthcare? What advantages could you identify ahead of time? What if you combine it with a little bit of AI? Suddenly you've got something that's totally unemotional; it just has a prime directive, and it's going to go out there and it's going to figure out the best way to do something. What if you can do something with some visualization and 3D modeling and put it together to do something extraordinary that scientists today maybe just can't get to?

I think there's an AI component maybe with some virtual reality and 3D rendering that sort of ends up leading to a place that advances things that we would have still gotten to, but maybe we get there quicker. When it comes to healthcare and things like that, that's a big impact on humanity, so I'm looking forward to those things happening.

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• Both the House and the Senate voted to pass the final GOP tax bill on Wednesday.
• The tax bill is set to disproportionately affect homeowners in affluent parts of the US.
• Several housing markets in the Northeast will see home prices fall behind typical growth as a result of tax reform.

SEE ALSO: The 11 worst cities for homeowners if the GOP tax plan passes

DON'T MISS: In one of America's 'most miserable' cities, home prices have surged 92% in the last 5 years

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NOW WATCH: Here's what Trump's tax plan means for people at every income level from $20,000 to $269,000 a year

Cities like New York and Washington, DC, have always attracted young people looking to get their start.

But factors such as rising real-estate prices and stiff job competition have sent millennials searching for other places in the US to call home.

We rounded up the cities and towns that millennials have moved to in droves over the past few years, using data from personal-finance company SmartAsset, real-estate-analytics firm RCLCO, and mortgage-software company Ellie Mae.

Here are the places you'll find booming millennial populations:

SEE ALSO: I spent 3 months living in Alaska — here are the 7 things people always get wrong about America's biggest state

Charlotte, North Carolina

The millennial population of Charlotte, the biggest city in North Carolina, grew by nearly 11,000 in 2015, the latest year for which there is data.

Seattle, Washington

Seattle gained more millennials than any other city on the West Coast, adding about 10,000 to its population in 2015.

Oakland, California

About 7,500 more millennials moved to Oakland in 2015 than left the city, according to SmartAsset.

Wolf Richter with Jim Goddard on “This Week in Money“:

The “aspirational” asking prices in the super high-end housing market used to fly in the glory days of 2015, but they aren’t flying anymore. Craziness is slowly leaching out of that end of the market. What does this say about the overall housing market? And are the home-price numbers we get from the real estate industry inflated to promote ever higher home prices?

Under the new tax law, home buyers are losing some of the incentives to binge on debt-funded home purchases, but the magnitude of this change has not been fully appreciated just yet. Read… What Will the Tax Bill Do to the Housing Market?

SEE ALSO: The GOP's big tax break for landlords could make America’s housing crisis worse

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NOW WATCH: The easiest way to get rid of bad breath — according to a dentist

Forget about the Upper East Side of New York or Atherton, California, as bastions for the ultrarich.

The tiny waterfront city of Medina, Washington, is where several of the world's wealthiest people live.

Located just outside Seattle, Medina is home to the world's two richest people: Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.

But they are far from the only moneyed residents. The town's inhabitants include numerous other Microsoft bigwigs, tech entrepreneurs, and telecom magnates.

We visited to see why the sleepy town has become a haven for the 1%.

SEE ALSO: The world's richest people are flocking to these 17 cities

DON'T MISS: Meet the kids of the world's richest tech billionaires

Medina is located on a peninsula just across Lake Washington from Seattle, and it has long been a haven for tech bigwigs in the area.

Visitors enter the town from the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge. Measuring 7,708 feet in length, it is the longest floating bridge in the world.

Source: The Seattle Times

Medina is a city of about 3,000 people. The Medina Beach Park doubles as the city hall and police station.

• San Francisco's median rent is $4,450, nearly three times that in Houston.
• Instead of hiring expensive talent in the Bay Area, one Houston-based law firm flies its lawyers in on a private jet once a month to meet with clients.
• The firm uses the jet — which costs $2,500 an hour to operate — as a tool for recruiting top talent.

Rent and home prices in the Bay Area are so high that one Houston-based law firm is using an alternative to hiring expensive local talent: a private jet.

Patterson and Sheridan, an intellectual-property law firm headquartered in Houston, bought a nine-seat plane to shuttle its patent lawyers to clients in the Bay Area once a month.

Though the jet cost $3 million, the Houston Chronicle's L.M. Sixel reports, it's cheaper than hiring local lawyers, and even less expensive than relocating the Texas lawyers with business in Silicon Valley to the area.

"The young people that we want to hire out there have high expectations that are hard to meet," Bruce Patterson, a partner at the firm, told The New York Times. "Rent is so high they can't even afford a car."

According to Zillow, the median rent in San Francisco is $4,450, while the median home price is just under $1.2 million. Rent in San Jose, a nearby city popular among Silicon Valley workers, while lower, is still more than double the median rent in Houston.

Each flight for the firm costs about $1,900 a passenger — adding up to $2,500 an hour in operating costs — but since the lawyers are working in-flight, the three-to-four-hour ride is billable, the Chronicle described Todd Patterson, a managing partner, as saying. Plus, private flights protect any confidential work and save the firm's lawyers about 36 collective hours they would spend arriving early, waiting in security, and checking bags on a commercial flight.

The firm says it's "still able to offer companies and inventors lower costs because most of the patent work is done in Houston, where commercial real estate is 43% cheaper, salaries 52% lower, and competition for technical talent far less fierce," according to Sixel, who rode on the jet last summer while reporting the story.

"We fly it full," Patterson said. "It's not a luxury item."

It's also "a selling point to recruit young lawyers" who want to work with top tech companies but can't afford Silicon Valley's cost of living, Sixel reported. The firm's frequent visits to California have also brought in new clients including Intuit, Western Digital, and Cavendish Kinetics.

Perhaps some companies looking for talent in Los Angeles, Silicon Valley's neighbor to the south, could benefit from this strategy.

A report from the University of Southern California and the Los Angeles Business Council published earlier this year found that exorbitant housing costs in Los Angeles were inhibiting employers from attracting "high performers" or top talent to their companies.

About 60% of the employers surveyed said Los Angeles' high cost of living affects employee retention, with 75% naming housing costs as a specific concern. And nearly all said they viewed high housing costs as a barrier to hiring new mid- and upper-level employees.

SEE ALSO: America's future depends on the death of the single-family home

DON'T MISS: In one of America's 'most miserable' cities, home prices have surged 92% in the last 5 years

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NOW WATCH: LinkedIn's gorgeous San Francisco offices are unlike anything we've ever seen

Tech giants like Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn are known for their digital products. But in the past several years, these companies and others like them have started to focus on an industry beyond their core business: real estate development.

From the lure of tax credits to efforts to provide residences for employees, there are several reasons why Silicon Valley companies are looking to build housing and even entire cities.

Take a look at some examples below.

SEE ALSO: Facebook and Amazon are so big they’re creating their own company towns — here’s the 200-year history

In 2017, the Mountain View City Council approved a Google-backed plan to construct nearly 10,000 homes.

Google recently won city approval to construct a giant campus— which will include housing, offices, shops, businesses, and a public park — in the North Bayshore area of Mountain View, California. 

Advocates of the 3.6 million-square foot development say that it will help alleviate the area's affordable housing crisis. Around 20% of the homes will be priced at below-market rate.

Though Google threatened to block the construction of the homes unless city officials gave the company permission to build another 800,000 square feet of office space beyond its original proposal, Mountain View City Council green-lit the plan for the homes in December, The Mercury News reported. 

It calls for three new residential neighborhoods — Joaquin, Shorebird, and Pear — that will span 154 acres and include homes ranging from studios to three-bedroom units.

In late 2017, a division of Google parent company Alphabet announced plans to develop a swath of Toronto's waterfront into a "smart city."

Sidewalk Labs — the urban innovation unit of Google parent company Alphabet — will design a high-tech neighborhood on Toronto's waterfront in a project dubbed "Sidewalk Toronto."

Called Quayside, the neighborhood's plan will prioritize "environmental sustainability, affordability, mobility, and economic opportunity," according to Sidewalk Labs.

From the renderings, it looks like Sidewalk Labs wants Quayside to be a mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly neighborhood. The preliminary illustrations include bikeshares, apartment housing, bus lines, and parks. Though details of the plan are still unclear, Sidewalk Labs CEO Dan Doctoroff, a former New York City deputy mayor, has spoken about how self-driving cars, embedded sensors that track energy usage, machine learning, and high-speed internet could improve urban environments.

Sidewalk Labs has committed $50 million to the project's first phase, and the 12-acre development is expected to cost at least $1 billion. 

In the years following the 2008 recession, Google provided hundreds of millions of dollars in equity for several low-income housing projects in California and the Midwest.

In the years following the 2008 recession, Google, along with other large corporations, took advantage of Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTCs) to build affordable residential units. Since the program's creation in 1986, LIHTCs have helped finance more than 2.4 million affordable rental units across the US.

The tech giant has bought hundreds of millions of dollars worth of LIHTCs to fund developments in Iowa, Wisconsin, and California, according to CNBC.

• Luxury real estate broker Leonard Steinberg has sold over $3 billion worth of New York real estate.
• But Uber and Lyft, Steinberg says, are changing where wealthy people buy homes in the city.
• He said it's because luxury buyers can use ride-sharing to get from place to place without losing out on productivity.

Since 2001, Leonard Steinberg, real estate broker and a president at Compass, has been selling homes to New York City's richest residents.

Steinberg has over $3 billion in transactions under his belt. His largest sale to date was on a Tribeca townhouse that sold for $43 million. In 2009, he worked on the $32 million deal for Dolce & Gabbana designer Domenico Dolce's 11th Avenue penthouse.

We recently spent a day with Steinberg, and when we asked what New York City neighborhood was currently the most popular among buyers, he had a surprising answer.

"Buyers have become more and more neighborhood agnostic than at any other time in history," he said. "[A buyer] will look at an apartment in SoHo, Hudson Yards, Upper East Side, and Tribeca."

The reason? Steinberg accredits ride-hailing apps such as Uber, Lyft, and Juno for this shift in mindset.

"Today, in our Uber-tech world — I [can be] in the back of a car with my iPhone, and I'm not losing out on anything. That has changed [commutes] dramatically. Your commute time is not lost productivity," he said.

"Time is the last luxury. If you can not lose time, you can live in many places," he said. 

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• Mickey Drexler is the former CEO of J.Crew.
• He stepped down from the role in July 2017.
• Drexler has spent over $25 million on real estate in Miami in the past year.

J.Crew's former CEO is splurging on Miami real estate. 

Former CEO Mickey Drexler, who stepped down in July 2017 after 14 years in the role, has reportedly spent more than $25 million on beachfront real estate in Miami in the past 12 months. 

In February 2017, he bought Calvin Klein's five-bedroom, five-bathroom Miami Beach home for $12.8 million, The Real Deal reported. This month, he purchased a 22,719-square-foot plot of land next door for $13.7 million, according to The Real Deal. The property had been on the market since 2015, when it was listed for $25 million.

The properties are located side by side on North Bay Road, which overlooks Biscayne Bay. It wasn't immediately clear whether Drexler intended to combine the two.

The road is known as "Millionaire's Row," as Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, and Jennifer Lopez have all owned homes there, according to Curbed. Pablo Escobar also owned a property there, though it was bulldozed in 2016. 

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The US housing market has regained its momentum.

About half of all homes in the country are worth as much or more than they were in April 2007, during America's most recent housing boom, according to data from Zillow.

But some real estate markets are really on fire, with quickly rising home values and rental prices, increasing populations, low unemployment rates, steady income growth, and strong job opportunities, according to Zillow's latest housing report.

Below, check out the top 10 hottest real estate markets in America for 2018, along with median home values and rent prices, median household income, and projected year-over-year growth.

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10. Dallas, Texas

Median household income: $63,812

Median home value: $218,300

Median rent: $1,621

Real estate market growth forecast: 4.7%

9. Portland, Oregon

Median household income: $68,676

Median home value: $370,700

Median rent: $1,902

Real estate market growth forecast: 3.7%

8. Nashville, Tennessee

Median household income: $60,030

Median home value: $228,900

Median rent: $1,498

Real estate market growth forecast: 3.8%

• Cadre, an online commercial real-estate investing platform that has raised more than $130 million in funding, has secured a partnership with Goldman Sachs.
• The deal provides Goldman Sachs' private wealth clients with access to Cadre's platform.
• Goldman clients have committed $250 million in capital so far, with a few-hundred million more in the pipeline.

Commercial real-estate investing startup Cadre has inked a partnership with Goldman Sachs that will provide the bank's private wealth clients easy access to the fast-growing online platform. 

Cadre, which offers users digital access to vetted commercial real estate opportunities, has closed $250 million in commitments from Goldman Sachs' clients, with a few-hundred million more in the pipeline, according to founder and CEO Ryan Williams. 

As part of the partnership, Goldman's private wealth clients are furnished with a log-in for Cadre, which will provide another option to the many funds and investment opportunities available to Goldman clients.

Goldman Sachs, in addition to the just announced strategic partnership, is an investor in the company. 

What sets Cadre apart is ease of access as well as a promise of transparency and lower fees compared with real estate private equity funds and real estate investment trusts. 

The way the platform works is that approved real estate "operators" can post carefully vetted commercial properties —from stores to apartment buildings to offices — and Cadre's clients, many of them high-net worth individuals who previously didn't have access to such deals, can invest large chunks of cash on individual properties, according to a profile in 2016 by Alyson Shontell:

On Cadre, the platform looks like an e-commerce store — just with price tags ranging between $50 million and $250 million.

When you click on one of the buildings, you're taken to a beautiful landing page full of stats and information that's presented like a baseball card, with a transaction overview, executive summary, the purchase price, how much equity is available, a dynamic FAQ section and more.

For sellers, Cadre is an opportunity to get a deal done relatively quickly and cheaply — if your property is accepted (only about 1% of everything Cadre's team vets gets listed on the platform).

The minimum investment Cadre typically accepts per transaction today, according to the company website, is $100,000. 

Thus far, Cadre's clients have come in roughly equal proportion from institutional investors (endowments, pensions, and foundations), family offices, and wealthy individuals, according to Williams, though the institutional client group has been growing more quickly in the past year. 

Partnerships like the one with Goldman will give the young company flexibility to expand the platform without focusing so narrowly on high-net worth clients.

"It's exciting because in many ways I see our vision being realized even faster than I had anticipated," said Williams, a Harvard graduate who worked at Goldman Sachs and Blackstone Group before founding Cadre three years ago.

The firm has closed about $1 billion in deals since inception, raising more than $130 million from high-profile investors like Goldman Sachs, Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, Ford Foundation, Jared and Josh Kushner's Thrive Capital, and General Catalyst.

"Our goal is to ensure we provide our clients with innovative and diverse investment opportunities to help them drive returns and protect capital,” Eric Lane, global co-head of Goldman Sachs' Investment Management Division, said in a statement. “Our ongoing partnership with Cadre underscores this commitment.”

Cadre is firmly focused on developing the partnership with Goldman Sachs, according to Williams, but he said that additional partnerships were likely to come down the line as well. 

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• Landlords in New York City offered concessions like a month of free rent to lease a record share of apartments last month, according to the real-estate appraiser Miller Samuel. 
• Apartment hunters are getting these perks amid a deluge of new rental properties on the market, especially at the high end. 

• "That will continue in 2018 and exacerbate the softness at the top," said Jonathan Miller, the CEO of Miller Samuel.

Apartment hunters in New York City can continue to expect offers of free rent and other freebies this year, according to the real-estate appraiser Miller Samuel.

In December, landlords offered concessions, used to speed up lease signings, on a record 36.2% of apartments on the market, according to a report Thursday co-prepared with Douglas Elliman Real Estate. The market share of concessions hit new highs in Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn — the three boroughs under coverage.

"2017 was a challenging year for landlords," said Jonathan Miller, the CEO of Miller Samuel.

Miller attributed this to a barrage of new, higher-priced units that landlords want to fill soon after they're ready.

"There's nothing apparent that is going to change the narrative that a lot of new product is entering the market," Miller told Business Insider. "That will continue in 2018 and exacerbate the softness at the top."

The freebies appear to be effective, but with mixed results that partly depend on the number of new apartments, Miller said. The number of new leases signed in Manhattan jumped 48% last month compared to the same period in 2016. At the same time, the median net effective rent, which factors in concessions like a month of free rent, fell by 2.5% year-on-year to $3,291. 

This was due to an influx of units, especially in the higher end of the market, Miller said. But in Queens, where new supply wasn't as strong, the number of first-time leases fell year-on-year by 29%. 

Investors looking for higher returns in a low-interest-rate world helped drive New York's apartment boom after the recession, Miller added.

But that's not solving an affordability problem in the cheaper end of the market, which is less profitable to invest in. And for many people, a month of free rent isn't a good deal beyond a certain price point.

"Because modest-priced apartments are in short supply, you're going to continue to see tenants scramble for greater affordability by moving further away from wherever they work, or moving to the suburbs," Miller said. 

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• Flatiron Health will be leaving the Flatiron neighborhood in New York in spring 2018.
• The $1.2 billion company is moving into a 108,000 square-foot space at One SoHo Square, a space that's almost twice the size of its current office at 200 Fifth Ave. 
• Along with the move, Flatiron will get $6 million in performance-based tax credits. 

Flatiron Health, a New York-based healthcare technology startup, is moving. 

The $1.2 billion company is relocating its headquarters in spring 2018 from the Flatiron neighborhood to One SoHo Square, a building that's also home to Warby Parker and Glossier. The 108,000 square-foot space is almost twice the size of Flatiron's current office. 

As part of the move, Flatiron will get $6 million in performance-based tax credits and has plans to create more than 300 jobs over the next five years. 

"Companies like Flatiron Health create quality jobs and spur rapid advancement  in New York's growing healthcare and technology industries," Empire State Development CEO Howard Zemsky said in a statement. "Flatiron's expansion will broaden our understanding of cancer research and patient care and support the state’s cutting edge life sciences sector."

Flatiron was represented by real estate brokers at Savills Studley in the deal, while the building's owners were represented by Newmark Knight Frank represented the building's owners Steller Management and Imperium Capital.

Zev Holzman, senior managing director at Savills Studley, represented Flatiron on the deal and on past deals as the company’s grown from a 3,000 square-foot space to now 108,000. Holzman told Business Insider that throughout the yearlong process of searching for a new building, Flatiron looked all around Manhattan, but it ultimately moved back to SoHo, the neighborhood where the company got its start.

“It made sense for this iteration,” Holzman said, as the company started laying down more permanent roots.

Flatiron uses technology to collect clinical data from cancer patients.With that information, such as details on what medications patients have taken and how they have responded to them over the course of treatment, the hope is that healthcare professionals can have a better idea of how cancer drugs work in the "real world" in hospitals and cancer centers as opposed to during clinical trials. The company has raised more than $300 million from investors including GV and the pharmaceutical giant Roche.

"The move to the new office — almost double our current size — gives us the much needed flexibility to grow our team working to accelerate cancer research in the months and years to come," Flatiron CEO Nat Turner said in a news release. 

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• Amazon has narrowed the list of cities vying to become the future site of Amazon HQ2 from 238 down to 20.
• Donald Bren, the richest real estate developer in the US, wrote a letter in October to Jeff Bezos, offering to finance the entire $5 billion project.
• Bren hoped to convince Bezos to make Irvine, California the home of HQ2, but it was notably absent from the list of 20 cities still in the running. 

The fight for Amazon's HQ2 has turned a corner.

On Thursday, Amazon announced the 20 cities still in the running to become for HQ2— narrowed down from 238 cities that submitted proposals last year.

Atlanta, Miami, Nashville, and Toronto are among the places that made the cut. Los Angeles is the only city in California on the short list. 

Notably absent from the list is Irvine, California, home of the richest real estate developer in the US: Donald Bren. Back in October, the Southern California city took desperate measures to draw Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' attention.

Donald Bren, the multi-billionaire owner of the Irvine Company, wrote a letter to Bezos on behalf of his company and in companion with the city of Irvine.

In it, he offered to finance the entirety of HQ2 — which Amazon projects will cost about $5 billion — if the e-commerce giant picked Irvine. The offer is billed by Bren as "a one-click shopping opportunity" for Amazon.

Bren writes:

"With the Irvine Company proposal, Amazon will not be required to invest capital for land acquisition, buildings, or entitlements to build your new business campus. Our company has the long-term real estate assets, capital resources, and flexibility to deliver all your required workspace with lease durations of Amazon's choosing.

"In essence, you would have a one-click shopping opportunity and be able to capitalize on our inplace property development rights, thus avoiding potential delays, because Irvine Company has invested more than 60 years master planning 93,000 acres of land, and designing and overseeing the creation of the largest new city in America…Irvine, California."

Over 250,000 people live in Irvine and it's often regarded as the epicenter of Orange County, an affluent coastal community sandwiched between San Diego to the South and Los Angeles to the North.

Amazon says its new HQ2 will eventually house 50,000 mostly white-collar workers making an average of over $100,000 a year. That's currently about the average income for workers in Irvine.

Bren — who's worth a cool $17 billion— is the chairman of the Irvine Co., which owns about one-fifth of the land in Orange County spread across office, retail, and apartment space, as well as golf courses and hotel resorts.

In the letter, Bren positions Irvine as the ideal candidate for Amazon because "Irvine is ranked by various sources as America's fastest growing, most desirable, best educated, safest, and healthiest large city," he writes.

More than 900 tech companies, such as Google, Broadcom, Blizzard Entertainment, UBS, and Verizon have offices in Irvine, and Amazon already has a 1,200-person outpost in the city.

Southern California is home to the biggest pool of STEM workers in the US, according to the Irvine Company proposal. The University of California, Irvine, a top-ranked public university located in Orange County, awards 42% of its undergraduate students with STEM degrees annually.

At the end of the letter, Bren makes one final plea to his fellow billionaire: "It's 74 degrees on this beautiful October day, the sun is out and the surf's up at our spectacular beaches. Please come join us! The water, like the place, is the perfect temperature."

Weather — and financial support — were seemingly not enough to draw Bezos' interest. Perhaps not surprising, given the richest man in the world calls Seattle home.    

Read Donald Bren's letter to Jeff Bezos in full below:

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• Thomas Tull, the billionaire producer of blockbuster films "Godzilla" and "Jurassic World," just listed his Los Angeles mansion for $85 million.
• The 33-acre compound has a lake and an organic farm.
• Indoor amenities include a wine cellar, movie theater, photo studio, and Himalayan salt therapy room.

Legendary.

That's the name of the entertainment company Thomas Tull founded in 2000 and the only word to describe the Los Angeles mansion he's selling.

The billionaire film producer is relocating to his hometown in western Pennsylvania, where he already owns several properties, according to The Pittsburgh Gazette. But first, he'll need to find a buyer willing to shell out $85 million for his California compound.

The 33-acre estate comprises seven separate structures, plus a lake, working organic farm, and glass greenhouse. Tull — whose net worth is estimated by Forbes to be about $1.1 billion — started building the estate seven years ago and eventually privatized the cul-de-sac where it sits, reports the LA Times.

The listing is held by Jordan Cohen of RE/MAX.

Below, check out some of the coolest amenities of the $85 million estate:

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The mansion is located in Thousand Oaks, California, a Ventura County community northwest of Los Angeles.

The property was modeled after the Giverny gardens of impressionist painter Claude Monet, the architect told the LA Times.

There's 32,000 square feet of living space in the main house — and another 11,000 square feet in the guest house.

There's nothing like America's over-the-top real estate to remind you that nearly one-third of the world's billionaires call the US home.

But luxury comes in many forms — and at varying price points — across the country. Our friends at Trulia helped us compile a list of the most expensive homes currently for sale in every state, plus Washington, DC.

From a $3 million private island in Alaska to a $180 million European-style estate in California, below are the most expensive homes on the market in every state.

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ALABAMA: $11.9 million

City: Jemison

Size: 7,500 sq. ft.

Bedrooms/bathrooms: 5 beds/5.5 baths

ALASKA: $3 million

City: Sitka

Size: 5,200 sq. ft.

Bedrooms/bathrooms: 4 beds/5.5 baths

ARIZONA: $19.95 million

City: Paradise Valley

Size: N/A sq. ft.

Bedrooms/bathrooms: 8 beds/17 baths

• Large investors are increasingly using so-called broker price opinions to value and purchase thousands of homes on the brink of foreclosure.
• This method is used in place of traditional appraisals, which are done by licensed professionals and usually cost more.
• The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether companies are using BPOs to wrongly inflate property values.

A method of valuing homes that was outlawed for most people after the financial crisis is still popular among large Wall Street investors.

According to The Wall Street Journal, investors including Blackstone Group are increasingly turning to so-called broker price opinions, or BPOs, to value tens of billions of dollars' worth of homes.

Sometimes, the report says, the price evaluations are done remotely: outsourced to India and conducted by real-estate agents using online listings and Google Earth searches. That's different from traditional appraisals, which involve visiting homes and estimating their value while noting details like moldy walls that may affect that value.

After the housing bubble popped a decade ago, Congress outlawed BPOs as the primary way to value a home for the purpose of getting a loan. But large Wall Street firms that want to buy up several thousands of houses that are typically in foreclosure are still allowed to use this cheaper method.

"There's a reason why they are $50," Jonathan Miller, the CEO of the real-estate appraiser Miller Samuel, told Business Insider. "It's just a way to put papers in a file to comply with regulations."

The Journal noted that for large investors, having an appraiser visit every home that needs to be valued is not always the most efficient route. Still, Miller contends that the extra cost of using a traditional appraiser is a rounding error in valuing the homes in question.

"There are nuances between properties that you don't get from a BPO or outsourcing to India," Miller said.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is also scrutinizing whether companies are wrongly inflating BPOs. Besides determining the value of a home, BPOs are used to value securities that are then sold to investors.

In May, the mortgage insurer Radian Group said in a regulatory filing that one of its units was among those that the SEC asked about its practices.

Head over to The Wall Street Journal for the full story »

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