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India's growing middle class and burgeoning retail and commercial sectors, coupled with the dearth of properties, make the country's real estate market a potentially lucrative place to invest.

However, there is one part of the real estate market that is set to implode — luxury and premium properties.

That's what Anuj Puri, Chairman & Country Head, of JLL India (formerly Jones Lang LaSalle) told Business Insider on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

"Mostly all sectors of India's real estate market are good for investors apart from one — luxury and premium properties. A lot of developers got it wrong and didn't realise that we don't have many millionaires and billionaires in India so the luxury and premium market is going to take a beating. There's too much supply and too little demand," said Puri.

"But what we do have is a growing middle class and at the moment, as latest data from March 2015, it shows there is a 18.3 million dwelling unit shortfall. Affordable housing is very lucrative. When I say 'affordable housing' I am talking about the $75,000 to $100,000 range. There is huge demand."

JLL and its country head for India, Puri, are pretty perfectly placed to make the call on where the Indian property market is going. After all, JLL is one of the world’s leading and largest real estate and investment management companies with $6.2 billion in market capitalisation. Puri also oversees a team of over 8000+ employees across 11 cities in India.

Puri says that affordable housing isn't the only potentially lucrative area for property investment — retail, warehouses and commercial real estate are all areas that are seeing demand growth.

"Retail properties are also a great opportunity for investors as people have better buying power," said Puri.

"There is also a lot of opportunity, which not a lot of people have identified yet, in warehouse and logistics. In India, most of these compaies are non-sophisticated and 'mom and pop' shops and it doesn't seem very sexy for an investor but it could be a great area for expansion if the 'Indirect Tax Bill' gets through parliament."

Indirect Tax is when the Indian government collects take from an intermediary such as a manufacturer or retailer. It's pretty complicated but the current government led by Narendra Modi is trying to get this changed and more streamlined by introducing a uniformed Goods and Services Tax (GST) bill.

And Puri thinks this could be the key to opening the market up more to foreign investment and "trust" for companies looking to bring business to India.

"Hopefully the bill (which unifies tax rates) will go through. At the moment, India has 29 states with 29 taxes," he said.

"As a company like Proctor and Gamble for instance, you aren't going to set up units or warehouses in different parts of India and worry about what taxes they have to pay in each different state. It makes it too difficult for people to do business."

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Bob Robbins bought his home in 1995 amid a bout of long-term unemployment.

Living with his wife and two kids in a rundown rental in Burlington, Vermont, he wanted to stabilize the family’s housing before his children started kindergarten.

Prospects seemed bleak.

The family’s savings had dwindled after his unemployment insurance gave out. But in 1993 Robbins saw a newspaper advertisement for something called the Burlington Community Land Trust.

He visited its offices and learned about its generous grants for low-income home ownership.

The innovative offer would significantly lower the price by allowing the couple to purchase only the house, while the trust paid for the land it sat on.

Within two years, his family owned a home in a small town just to the east of the city. The Robbins family bought its home through a conventional realtor and a commercial bank while also entering a covenant with the land trust to lease the land upon their home sits upon. This reduced the costs of their mortgage and down payment substantially.    

They’re far from alone. Across the land trust’s portfolio today, there are about 565 other homes that enjoy similar terms, not to mention 2,100 rental and cooperative units. Half of these holdings are located within the city of Burlington itself, which had a total of 16,897 housing units as of 2010, meaning that about 7.6 percent of the stock sits on the nonprofit’s land.

“We don’t understand why housing isn’t done this way everywhere,” says Robbins, who says the cheaper mortgage allowed his family to save money for college and retirement that otherwise would have gone toward housing. “It’s just such a logical thing to have land owned by a community and the house be your private property to do with as you wish. We’ve just had a terrific life here so far because of it.”

The man largely responsible for this good fortune? Bernie Sanders.

While mayor of Burlington in the 1980s, the democratic-socialist senator and current contender for the Democratic presidential nomination was an early champion of community land trusts. Today, the organization whose creation he made possible—now called the Champlain Housing Trust—is the largest and most influential of its type in the nation.

Community land trusts are nonprofit organizations, with a board composed of representatives of the public, the local government, and the tenants, that obtain land and either develop it themselves or lease it to developers. The trust then removes its holdings from the private market, usually through 99-year ground leases and pre-emptive purchase requirements that limit how much the house can be sold for.

Community land trust boosters argue that this not only ensures permanent affordability, but allows the organization to intercede in the case of, say, a foreclosure. An oft-cited study by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy showed that, as of 2010, homeowners within a land trust were 10 times less likely to default on their homes than their private-market counterparts.

The Champlain Housing Trust (which changed its name after a 2006 merger with an affordable rental development nonprofit) is inarguably the most successful land trust in America. Although many others worked to create the organization and expand it in subsequent decades, Sanders provided the seed money from Burlington’s municipal budget, political support, and sustained funding for a nonprofit model largely untested in the 1980s—and one that remains a niche model today.

By the latest tally, the National Community Land Trust Network’s membership only covers 25,000 rental units, smaller than the number of traditional public housing apartments the Chicago Housing Authority controlled at its peak. There are also 13,000 home-ownership units protected by the trusts. The model is growing, helping tens of thousands of families across the country live in affordable units, but it’s still dwarfed by traditional public housing.

Among  community land trusts, no other organization has grown to the size of the Champlain Housing Trust. The second largest is Dudley Neighbors Inc., which only focuses on a segment of Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood, and controls 225 units of housing. Without the distinctly revolutionary attitude Sanders brought to local housing policy in Burlington, Robbins’ life would probably be very different today.  

When the idea was first presented to his administration and its allies in 1983, Sanders voiced serious reservations. Founding land trust board member Tim McKenzie says that the mayor feared the restrictions on reselling properties would create a form of second-class home ownership.

If middle- and upper-class people could build wealth off their houses, why should the working class be limited to shared equity? Sanders’ preferred methods of ensuring housing affordability were rent control—which Burlington voters shot down in a referendum in 1982—and providing direct subsidies to low-income residents who wanted to buy homes. 

“Bernie eventually saw the sense in our rebuttal that even though equity growth by community land trust homeowners is limited due to resale restrictions, it’s a better deal than renting,” says McKenzie. “Households would only be able to stop paying rent and begin building equity and wealth through homeownership if they could afford to buy a home in the first place.”

Not only did Sanders come around, but later in his term he passed a law requiring that all housing funds that the city controlled, both from local, state, and federal sources, be spent on permanently affordable housing. This idea proved popular not only with the mayor’s progressive allies in the city government but among fiscal conservatives who felt that giving subsidies to low-income homeowners solely aided the initial recipients, leaving the city to expend more resources in the future to buy more houses that would each only help one family.

A consultant to the city during the establishment of the Burlington Land Trust, John Davis, recalls Republican Councilman Al Gear explaining his support of the concept: “I don’t like the idea of paying for the same thing twice.”

In 1984 the Sanders administration got the land trust started with a $200,000 seed grant and provided staff support from the municipal bureaucracy to shepherd the organization into existence.

The city later made a significant loan from its pension fund, which was matched by the Burlington Savings Bank and bolstered with funds from U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development programs to make initial home purchases affordable. To provide a more sustainable source of revenue, the Burlington Housing Trust Fund was created in 1988, bankrolled by a small increase in property taxes.

But some incumbent homeowners and realtors in the North End, a working-class neighborhood at the center of the trust’s activity, pushed back. A group backed by real estate interests called Homeowners Against the Land Trust began picketing City Hall. They red-baited Sanders and other democratic-socialist officials, claiming they were seizing land and betraying sacrosanct property rights.

When a developer offered to build 40 new homes on a vacant parcel in the North End and donate them to the trust, HALT showed up in force at Planning Commission hearings. The group retooled the lyrics to “Home on the Range” (“Give us a home/ on land that we own…”) and marched into public hearings singing loudly. The group’s heated protests eventually forced the developer to only give seven of the homes to the trust, even though all 40 were built.

Nonetheless Sanders continued to champion innovative affordable housing concepts at the city level while also backing a state-level affordable housing trust fund that required its funds be spent on units with permanent affordability provisions. In Burlington this ensured that both state and municipal housing dollars would usually bolster the land trust’s stock. Today, Brenda Torpy, the land trust’s chief executive officer, estimates that about 15 percent of the city’s rental housing (including traditional public housing stock and other nonprofit holdings) has been removed from the market. The trust itself has expanded to include land in three counties.

Some of Sanders’ housing policy ideas are still considered radical, at least in small cities (like the series of tenant protections he enacted), but others have gained mainstream currency. A favorite proposal, inclusionary zoning—which requires developments of a certain size to include a set percentage of affordable housing—was adopted by his democratic-socialist successor and is now a widely utilized tool in cities across the nation. The same can’t be said of community land trusts.

 “Creating the first municipally funded community land trust in the nation is one of my proudest accomplishments as Mayor of Burlington,” Sanders said in 2012, after being honored by the National Community Land Trust Network for his work prompting the concept. (He championed language in 1992’s Housing and Community Development Act to ensure land trusts would be eligible for federal funds.) “The land trust model works, and must be part of the solution to the national housing crisis.”

But if the number of land trusts is growing—from 242 in 2011 to 280 today—it is hard to argue that they are yet a substantial part of the solution. No other organization has come anywhere close to the success enjoyed by the Champlain Housing Trust. In hot markets like Boston and Seattle, it is very difficult for fledgling nonprofits that lack municipal support or established funding mechanisms to obtain expensive land.

The dozens of newly created community land trusts are more likely to emulate Boston’s Dudley Neighbors Inc., which focuses its activity in one neighborhood, or Seattle’s Homestead, which after 22 years has 191 units of housing scattered across the city. And those may be the best-case scenarios.

“Folks are always trying to get rid of affordable housing,” says Torpy, who says that the Champlain Housing Trust’s operating budget is $10 million but that every year it generates almost $100 million in development capital that goes into managing properties, making loans, and developing new housing and commercial uses. “We have to go out there and defend it every year. The federal funds get cut every year. Because of the size of our portfolio we are much more self-sufficient. We have developed some of our own capital to take risk in the market to get properties. A lot of organizations can’t compete like that.”

There are also critics of community land trusts on the left who fear that in some contexts they may actually cut against housing affordability. When a land trust is focused on one geographically contained area, the community members on the board may well advocate for single-family homes with yards and open spaces, as they did in Dudley, and not for the quantity of new housing needed to satisfy demand.

“One of the issues with the Dudley development is that it is an impediment to densification of that area,” says Matt Bruenig, a researcher of poverty, inequality, and welfare systems and a former Boston resident. “Lots of people would like to live in Boston and you have these big swaths of land in a prime part that just have single-family homes.

That doesn’t solve the housing affordability problems in aggregate, it just moves it elsewhere in the city. There is a myopia in community land trust advocacy where they talk about how successful it is for the people it helps, but don’t consider if that is at the expense of others.”

Burlington doesn’t have the superheated housing market of Boston, of course. But according to John Davis, who now helms a consulting firm focused on community land trust development, the Champlain Housing Trust actually catches flak from NIMBYs for building too densely.

All of the projects currently underway are multiunit apartment or condo dwellings, which include a 40-unit co-op in the North End, a 20-unit apartment building in a growing suburban municipality, and 80 apartments on the Champlain lakefront. The land trust also recently purchased a couple motels the state was using to temporarily house homeless people, converting them into single-room occupancy apartments with wraparound services for the chronically homeless.

Without Sanders’ support and advocacy, it’s unlikely there would be permanently affordable apartments being built on Lake Champlain. It is absolutely certain that the subsidies for affordable home ownership doled out in the 1980s, when HUD was far more generous than it is today, would have only helped the families that initially purchased the houses. Because of Sanders the house where Robbins lives will still be affordable to the next family in need.

 “I’ve talked with people across the country and they would die to have the kind of political support we’ve had over the years,” says Robbins, who went on to serve on the land trust’s board from 1997 to 2006. “We are where we are because we have that political commitment, we aren’t just a lonely nonprofit but a real partnership with government. We’re delighted to have Bernie still out there. I hope he goes all the way.”

SEE ALSO: Presidential race is such a mess that Michael Bloomberg considers independent run

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A lot of factors can impact the value of a home.

Schools, parks, and even public transportation can all impact a neighborhood's average house price.

And according to analysis by Zillow, an online real estate marketplace, one of the increasingly important factors is the presence of a high-end grocery store.

"Zillow found that homes grow more rapidly in value if they are closer to a Trader Joe's or Whole Foods," the company said in a release.

"Between 1997 and 2014, homes near the two grocery chains were consistently worth more than the median U.S. home. By the end of 2014, homes within a mile of either store were worth more than twice as much as the median home in the rest of the country."

The analysis is included in the new edition of Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff and Zillow Group Chief Economist Stan Humphries' book Zillow Talk. In the release, Humphries offered an explanation for the phenomenon.

"Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, the stores may actually drive home prices," Humphries said. "Even if they open in neighborhoods where home prices have lagged those in the wider city, they start to outperform the city overall once the stores arrive."

For example, the analysis found that 2 years after a new Trader Joe's opened home values within one mile went up by 10 percentage points more than homes in the rest of the city.

"It says something about the way people want to live – in the type of neighborhood favored by the generations buying homes now," Rascoff said.

"Today's homebuyers seek things in neighborhoods that weren't even in real estate agents' vocabularies a generation ago: walkability, community, new urbanism – and maybe we should add words like sustainable seafood and organic pears."

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There are plenty of legendary addresses in New York City, but 15 Central Park West stands out. The ultra-luxury condominium on the corner of West 61st St. and Central Park West has been home to a long list of bankers, celebrities, and assorted bold-faced names, including Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and Sting.

Author Michael Gross, who published a history of the condo called "House of Outrageous Fortune" in 2014, calls it the world's most powerful address. Unlike many of New York's history-filled apartment buildings — especially its main rival across the park, 740 Park Avenue — 15 Central Park West is a relative newcomer.

Completed in 2008 by developers Arthur and William Lie Zeckendorf, it offers a ridiculous array of amenities to New York's moneyed elite, including an in-house chef, a lap pool, and a private screening room.

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15 Central Park West took three years and about $1 billion to construct, including the cost of the land. It was an immediate success, ringing up $2 billion in sales. Even today, the building continues to break real-estate sales records.

Source: "House of Outrageous Fortune" by Michael Gross 

15 CPW architect Robert A.M. Stern was inspired by the great New York apartments of the 1920s, not today's glassy towers. The building has two sections with 201 units in total, as well as a formal driveway.

Source: "House of Outrageous Fortune" by Michael Gross

Other amenities include a library, private restaurant, three-lane lap pool, and health club with private massage rooms and yoga area.

Source: "House of Outrageous Fortune" by Michael Gross

I added “homebuyer” to my personal resume at the age of 26 — a full seven years before the average first timer these days.

At the time, it seemed like a savvy move because I didn’t have any other debt, had some savings left over from a work bonus, and my hometown of Atlanta boasted very reasonable home prices. I was also in love with — and engaged to — someone I thought I’d spend the rest of my life with, and we wanted to put down roots.

At first, we disagreed about what we wanted — I, a manageable condo, and him, a single-family home, where we’d stay long-term.

Eventually, I agreed to consider his point of view, but the only homes in our price range were fixer-uppers on the fringe areas of town. I was skeptical, but it didn’t take long to talk myself into the job. “You love HGTV,” I thought. “It’ll be fun!”

Besides, I’d always loved the idea of creating order from the chaos, and when do you get to do that more than during a home renovation? Getting to pick my own finishes also made a home more appealing than an apartment or condo, and, financially, I knew I’d get a lot more bang for my buck if I picked a home that needed fixing.

It only took a few weeks to find a place I liked, and I closed in July 2013. I spent just $65,000 on the house — via a mortgage — then borrowed another $58,585 from the bank for renovations.

Until that point, I’d never bought a car, started a business, or made payments on a loan. So buying a home wasn’t just my largest purchase to date — it was my only purchase. Yet I went into closing with a sense of adventure, naively thinking that renovating a home would be as easy as it looked on television. Ha. 

My first ‘adult’ money mistake

Though some might consider the entire process a mistake, I don’t. I think the most expensive error I made was not properly vetting my first contractor. Real estate agent friends and contractors I’ve worked with since have confirmed what I suspected then: I paid close to $75,000 for just $40,000 worth of work and upgrades. He knew I was young and inexperienced, and took advantage, consistently running late and going over budget.

About $60,000 of that cash came from my bank loan, but I financed the rest with $5,000 from my savings account, and put $10,000 on a credit card. And, no, I don’t have the tricked-out house you’d think $75,000 worth of renovations would buy you.

On top of everything else, my fiance and I parted ways around the time conversations with my contractor became contentious. Because the home was in my name alone, he could just leave and start over — which is exactly what I wanted to do, too.

But I couldn’t. I was an adult with a mortgage and could no longer move at the drop of a hat like a renter. Since the renovation wasn’t finished, I couldn’t find a tenant, either, and if I sold it, I’d suffer a big loss. The house had taken every penny I had — plus some.

As they say, the only way out was through.

The big pay-off 

It took me two years, but I buckled down, and eventually built my savings back up and paid off the credit card debt. I cut expenses, found roommates, and began freelance writing as a side hustle, using that cash exclusively to pay down debt. Over time, I eventually began to enjoy living in the home I’d built, and new, happy memories replaced the bad.

Once I’d paid off my credit card balance, I could see the financial benefits to owning my home. Rents have soared in Atlanta in recent years, but my mortgage and renovation loan have remained a moderate $825 per month. When you factor in the $500 I receive monthly from roommates, that gives me a lot of freedom. Plus, the equity I now have can be used to fund more real estate investments in the future or anything else, whenever I decide to sell.

Of course, this experience has also taught me some key lessons about the importance of taking your time and researching big financial decisions before jumping in feet first. It pains me to think of all the money and heartache I could have saved had I just shopped around for multiple bids from contractors, called references, or considered a move-in-ready home.

But perhaps my biggest takeaway is that when life gets tough, adults don’t get to hide under the covers and wait out the storm. I had the fortitude to endure a tough situation, making a plan to get back on my feet — not because I wanted the participation trophy or because my parents wouldn’t let me quit the team, but because it was the right thing to do when my money and credit were on the line.

Although it was by far my biggest financial mistake to date — and it took me years to dig out — coming on on the other side is also my biggest accomplishment.

SEE ALSO: Why I'll never buy a home again

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From the time she left foster care at age 18 until her late 20’s, Carly was homeless, staying at shelters or couch-surfing with acquaintances in the Boston area.

In August 2014 she finally got an apartment with the help of a housing voucher from an agency called Home Start. The one-bedroom apartment, located in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood, rented at US$1,150 per month. The location wasn’t ideal – the area is where she’d spent time, over a decade earlier, in a gang and dealing drugs. But it was the only apartment she could find with a landlord who was willing to rent to her.

From the outside, the building appears to be quite nice. Inside, it’s a different story: the stairwell is collapsing, and even daily sweeping doesn’t eradicate the fresh mice droppings that dot the floor. Disparate piles of sawdust (likely leftover from some sort of wood-munching insect) appear near the floorboards. The walls are soaked with mold.

“The landlord – he’s a slumlord,” Carly explains. “He will not fix anything.”

Now pregnant, she’s received a $1,500 voucher for a two-bedroom apartment. But after weeks and weeks of searching, she hasn’t been able to find one.

We’ve spent months researching how poor and homeless people struggle to find permanent housing. It’s become clear that Carly – and thousands of others like her – are trapped in a system that fails to acknowledge the realities of the housing market, requires navigating a maze of bureaucratic hurdles and allows landlords to easily discriminate against voucher holders.

New strategy doesn’t negate systemic flaws

Throughout the United States, communities have come a long way from the “housing ready” approach. According to this policy, homeless people needed to complete treatment programs before they were deemed “ready” to receive stable housing. Without housing, however, many found it immensely difficult to undergo successful treatment and become eligible.

Today, most public housing agencies use the “Housing First” approach, which has been shown to be more successful at achieving stable housing for people who have psychiatric disabilities, substance abuse problems or are underemployed. Even if chronically homeless clients have addictions, they’ll be offered supportive housing and the opportunity to choose where they live.

But as Carly’s experiences demonstrate, the actual available choices may be limited – or altogether nonexistent.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) allocates funding to states through the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program, which provides government and social service agencies with funds to help pay the monthly rents of low-income people.

The agencies that distribute housing choice vouchers pay the housing subsidy directly to the landlord, but most of the housing search is left to voucher holders, many of whom lack the skills and perseverance of savvy apartment hunters.

For example, in Massachusetts in 2014, 4,000 people who received vouchers didn’t end up using them, typically because they couldn’t locate an affordable, acceptable apartment.

Booming housing costs render vouchers useless

With cities across the nation becoming gentrified and more desirable to high-income tenants, poorer populations have been priced out.

America’s 2007 foreclosure crisis pushed large numbers of people into the rental market, increasing the competition for available rental housing.

Gentrification is not just an American problem. The British government is having difficulty controlling rental costs, and there’s an affordable rental housing crisis in Australia.

Challenges to the U.S. housing voucher program extend across the nation. A Baltimore study found that landlords can manipulate the rules to their favor by selecting tenants they prefer and segregating voucher holders to undesirable neighborhoods. In New York, voucher holders can afford rental housing only in the most dangerous neighborhoods.

And in Boston, high housing costs mean stable housing is hard to find. Paula Saba, chief of leased housing programs at the Boston Housing Authority, notes that Massachusetts has the highest rent prices in the U.S., with a vacancy rate of less than one percent.

In the Boston metro area, the permitted monthly rent for voucher holders ranges from $1,056 for an efficiency apartment to $1,567 for a two-bedroom apartment. Compare that to the average apartment rent within 10 miles of downtown Boston: $2,283 a month and $2,758 a month for a one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartment, respectively.

As Joe Finn, president and executive director of the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance, explains, “Cost is the single biggest factor in people not being able to find apartments when paying with vouchers… The voucher values are behind market value.”

GoSection8, an online rental resource for voucher holders, listed only nine apartments in Boston within the “fair market” rent ranges.

The barrier of brokers

Carla’s been desperate to move. The adverse living conditions of her apartment set off her asthma, and over the past year, she’s had half a dozen stints in the hospital in order to get her breathing under control.

Asked to estimate how many phone calls she’s made since October (when she began her most concerted effort to move), she looked over her papers and replied, “About a hundred.”

The problem, she explained, is that even apartments listed on Craigslist are handled by real estate agents and brokers.

These people “screen you. They ask where you work and other questions and then when you say you have a voucher they say that the landlord will only take cash.”

After scouring the Boston area, she expanded her search to other parts of the region – and still hasn’t gotten to the step of viewing an apartment.

Even though Massachusetts, like a number of other states, has broadened Fair Housing Act protections to cover housing voucher discrimination, landlords and realtors can find ways to skirt the law.

For example, some landlords require letters from previous landlords and proof of employment – documentation that people who have been living in shelters or unemployed for years cannot provide.

Real estate brokers admit the existence of rampant discrimination. One broker in the Boston area (who asked to remain anonymous) told us, “When the market is tight [landlords] discriminate against vouchers, and vouchers don’t keep pace with market values.”

In these transactions, there’s an element of race involved. Some have argued that “Section 8” has become a racial slur. The broker we interviewed uses an application form that asks if an applicant is a “convicted felon,” which is often used as a subtle indicator for race (25 percent of the adult black population in the U.S. has a felony conviction, compared to 6.5 percent of nonblacks).

In the end, this broker highlighted the primary way landlords weed out undesirable tenants without breaking anti-discrimination laws: real estate agents. Most rentals in the Boston area are handled by agents who are typically paid by tenants, not by landlords.

“The biggest issue is that Section 8 people can’t afford realtors,” he said. “In this market, that’s a problem. It’s an owner’s market.”

The realtor fee is usually one month’s rent, which the homeless often can’t afford.

According to Gabrielle Vacheresse, housing search program manager for HomeStart, Inc., most agencies – including her own – “typically do not have the funding to pay for broker’s fees. Some landlords have caught onto this and are able to weed out folks with vouchers by charging a fee, knowing that most will not be able to pay.”

Simple fixes

When people receive vouchers, they have only a certain window of time to find an apartment. “People typically need all of that time,” one housing search coordinator told us.

Depending on the agency, that window could be 60 days or 120 days. Afterwards, clients will need to ask for extensions. Some housing authorities provide these; some don’t.

Carly, like other voucher holders, is expected to navigate all of these challenges. While she’s in the somewhat enviable position of doing so from her own (albeit dilapidated) apartment, other homeless people are forced to carry out their searches from park benches. They need to hold onto phone numbers and forms, shuttling them to and from the streets and the shelters.

Complicating matters, each municipality and agency has a different list of available apartments, many of which aren’t up-to-date. For someone making calls from a borrowed phone or a prepaid phone with limited minutes, fruitless calls can be a real hurdle.

There are a number of reforms that could improve the process. Shouldn’t it be relatively simple to develop a single, streamlined, up-to-date list of open apartments in a metro area? What if vouchers also covered broker fees? And if the vouchers were increased to be more in line with market rates?

Of course, it’s unrealistic to expect bureaucratic fixes to eliminate the hardships caused by centuries of racial discrimination, historically unequal opportunities to acquire property, a growing class of people stuck in low-wage and insecure jobs, and the pressures of gentrification of America’s cities.

But until these changes are made, voucher holders like Carly will continue to operate under a system that doesn’t acknowledge the realities of their desperate situations.

Susan Sered, Professor of Sociology, Suffolk University and Miriam Boeri, Associate Professor of Sociology, Bentley University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Dubai, the land of towering skyscrapers, is getting yet another set of buildings. 

The Rosemont Hotel & Residences is a massive, double-tower complex that's currently being constructed under the direction of ZAS Architects Dubai. 

Part of a the new Rosemont global hotel brand, the $550 million project will consist of two towers rising over 50 stories each, adding up to over 2 million square feet on a 140,000-square-foot site.

One tower will be a hotel, and the other will be serviced apartments, all slated to open in 2018. In case you weren't certain you were living in a Jetsons alternate reality, robotic room service and luggage handling should clue you in.

The world's first indoor rainforest is another perk.

Take a look at what the next big thing in luxury real estate will look like.

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The 75,000-square-foot outdoor rainforest will have a café, stream, and space for "adventure play", according to information provided by ZAS Architects Dubai.

The lot — in the upscale Al Thanyah neighborhood, near Ski Dubai and the Mall of the Emirates — was previously vacant.

To make sure the rainforest functions, despite being located in a building in one of the most arid desert climates in the world, water will be collected and stored from condensation. The rainforest area will present a "unique all weather atmosphere" with shade and mist sprays from trees, and there will even be "activity trails" to explore the rooftop rainforest.

2015 was a tough year for Chinese property developers.

Plagued by falling property prices, largely as a result of a mounting supply glut in smaller cities, one third reported an operating loss.

According to the state-run People’s Daily newspaper, citing an article in the Beijing Times, 15 Chinese real estate companies projected a loss for 2015, accounting for nearly 30% of developers that have already released their preliminary earnings reports.

Alongside the 15 firms that reported an operating loss, 23 indicated that their profitability had declined.

12 reported an increase in overall profitability.

China’s real estate sector suffered a sharp deceleration in 2015 with property investment growing just 1%, well below the 10.5% pace seen a year earlier.

Despite the sharp deceleration in investment, unsold housing inventory continued to balloon, particularly in smaller cities.

According to data released by China’s National Bureau of Statistics, the number of unsold new homes nationwide increased 14% to 437 million square metres as at October 31 last year.

Based on analysis from the CBA, the property inventory overhang in lower-tier Chinese cities could take anywhere from two to five years to clear based on the current pace of sales.

Given the importance of China’s property market as a driver of economic growth – not only from an investment perspective but also for household consumption – it’s little wonder why ratings agencies, along with markets, remain nervous towards the sector.

You can read more here.

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Billionaire hedge funder Kenneth Griffin — founder of the hedge fund giant Citadel — is looking to sell his beachfront penthouse and adjoining condo in Miami Beach, Florida, for a combined price of $73 million, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Griffin bought the two properties in the chic Faena House complex for $60 million last fall, around the time he was finalizing his high-profile divorce.

When the deal closed, it was the most expensive home to ever sell in Miami. Griffin had shelled out $10 million over the asking price.

The five-bedroom penthouse will be available for $55 million, and the three-bedroom condo directly beneath it will be up for $18 million. (Unlike the penthouse, however, the condo does not have its own private pool and wraparound terrace.) It's being listed with Eloy Carmenate and Mick Duchon of Douglas Elliman Real Estate.

Griffin has played the big real-estate game in various markets over the past few years, picking up properties in Palm Beach, Chicago, and New York, according to The Journal.

Here's what the next owner of the Faena House penthouse can expect.

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The 12,516-square-foot penthouse tops the 18-story condominium tower, which sits pretty on the edge of Miami Beach's idyllic white sand beach. There are 47 residences at Faena House; the penthouse is the crowning glory, and it was customized for Griffin.

It's situated directly on the beach, facing the Atlantic on one side and the Indian Creek Canal on the other.

Perks of living in Faena House? There's a valet and private concierge service, an in-house spa and fitness center with ocean views, a private beach club with full cabana service, and two pools.

At one time, this "bonkers" estate was the most expensive home in Brooklyn, on sale for $30 million in 2013.

But the next year, it was given a price chop — down to $17 million.

After briefly disappearing from the market, it's up for grabs once more, still priced at $17 million. This time, a whole extra home has been thrown in to sweeten the deal.

The ten-bedroom Mill Basin property is a gated waterfront compound with a storied past and more than 23,000 square feet of interior space. The main house was originally built and owned by John Rosatti, a multi-millionaire with mob connections to the Colombo crime family. He then sold the property to Russian heiress Galina Anisimova (known as the mother of the "Russian Paris Hilton") for $3 million in the late '90s.

Outside, the mansion has a 1,000-square-foot pool, a 40-person pavilion for parties, and 30,000 square feet of outdoor gardens. And then there's the 7,800-square-foot guest house — priced as an independent property at $8 million, according to Curbed NY— which is now yours for free if you purchase the mansion. It's a full three-story home of limestone, glass, and cast iron, with a bamboo garden, three full bedroom suites, a roof deck with Manhattan skyline views, and an elevator.

The main house boasts a downstairs wine cellar, 257 feet of waterfront, a four-car garage, and a two-boat marina. Taken together, this is quite a compound, admittedly more akin in style to something you'd see in Miami than in Brooklyn. 

James Cornell and Leslie Marshall of Corcoran Real Estate Group are currently sharing the listing.

Megan Willett wrote an earlier version of this story.

SEE ALSO: Billionaire hedge funder Ken Griffin is selling his Miami Beach penthouse and condo for $73 million

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Here's the entrance to 2458 National Drive, at one time Brooklyn's most expensive property.

The home is perched right on the Mill Basin waterfront, and has its own private marina.

Mill Basin is pretty deep in Brooklyn — about an hour's car ride (or longer on public transportation) from Midtown Manhattan.

Is buying a first home becoming more a privilege than an American birthright?

That’s the provocative question posed recently by Issi Romem, chief economist of BuildZoom.com. And he answers it, cautiously, with data suggesting it’s true.

Romem’s most concerning assertion: Young buyers have nearly 10% higher incomes than they did less than a decade ago.

The average household income for first-time buyers — as opposed to homebuyers who are trading up — is nearly $85,000, up from about $78,000 from 2004-2007.

First-time homebuyers now come from higher up the income distribution than they used to, clocking in near the 60th percentile.

“The ability to transition into homeownership is gradually becoming the privilege of a narrower group of first-time buyers that is more financially select,” Romem says.

Fewer first-time buyers stifles economic recovery.

That leads to a second problem, one that impacts the entire economy: First-time homebuyers are conspicuously absent from home buying at the moment, which is stifling the economic recovery. In 2005, the U.S. hit an all-time high of 3.2 million first-time homebuyers, Romem says, but they buy fewer than 2 million homes annually today. That accounts for fewer than half of the nearly 4.65 million homes sold in the U.S. in 2015, according to figures from the National Association of Realtors.

First-time buyers are critical for the economy because their purchases set in motion sales for others who are trading up – usually, families looking to expand need to sell their “starter” homes first.

“A shortage of first-time buyers will cause the equivalent of famine in the housing market: a slowdown in home sales and presumably also in prices,” Romem wrote in a recent post titled “The Rising Income of First-Time Home Buyers.”

Nationally, sales to first-time homebuyers are 16.5% below the historical norm, Romem says, but in some parts of the country, the dropoff is even more dramatic. In the West region, sales fall below the norm by 23.9%; in the South, by 22.6%. That compares with the Northeast, where sales to first-time buyers actually exceeded the historical norm by 3.6%.

There are two ways to look at the news. Tougher lending standards, such as larger down payment requirements, clearly have something to do with a dropoff in young buyers. That might help prevent a repeat of the housing bubble and collapse, said Logan Mohtashami, senior loan manager at AMC Lending Group.

The upside: Today’s homebuyers are qualified.

“To be able to buy a home now more than ever…means you’re doing well in this economy. This cycle of homebuyers is the best I have ever seen in my 20 years,” Mohtashami said. Exotic interest-only or low-down-payment loans helped some buyers get into their first homes a decade ago, and that didn’t work out well for many of them. “I always wondered how much of the previous data was jaded because a lot of first-time homebuyers bought homes without the right income needed.”

On the other hand, the housing market is being buoyed by all-cash buyers – some investors, some foreign buyers – while young adults are renting in an expensive rental market or being forced to live with parents into their 30s. Ramem worries about the social issues that might create.

“The notion that homeownership is slipping out of reach for a growing share of the population is an uncomfortable one, especially if the trend continues,” he said. “Do we really want homeownership to become a privilege rather than a choice?”

Income is just one factor that affects your ability to qualify for a mortgage (and how much house you can afford). Your credit score is also a major factor. You can check your credit scores for free on Credit.com to see where you stand.

More from Credit.com

• What's a Good Credit Score?
• How to Get Pre-Approved for a Mortgage
• Private Mortgage Insurance: Do You Need It?

SEE ALSO: The 10 best big cities in the US to buy a home instead of rent

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Urban skylines are constantly changing, with modern, unique structures rising amidst more traditional buildings.

From decade to decade, new developments have long breathed fresh life into cities, awing residents with their aesthetics and innovations.

Here are five unusual and eagerly awaited developments set to open this year.  

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The Sky Pool (London, UK)

Londoners who enjoy luxury, fancy themselves good swimmers and have somewhat of a daredevil streak may want to consider moving into the Embassy Gardens development in the city’s Nine Elms district. Once completed, the building will be the first to have a “sky pool” situated 10 stories high. The 25-meter-long pool will connect the development’s two apartment buildings. Even more thrilling, the Ballymore Group, the developers of Embassy Gardens, plan to make the pool entirely transparent. But not to worry: The pool’s glass is 8 inches thick.   

The Louvre Abu Dhabi (Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates)

Dubbed “the universal museum in the Arab world,” the Louvre Abu Dhabi is the result of a joint agreement between the United Arab Emirates and France to help establish the UAE as the next great art destination. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Jean Nouvel, the building will be covered by a white dome that is “an emblematic feature of Arabian architecture, evoking mosque, mausoleum and madrasa,” the museum says on its official website. While the opening of the museum has faced repeated delays, it is expected to open to the public sometime this year. 

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco, CA)

After undergoing a three-year-long transformation, SFMOMA will reopen to the public in May 2016. It will boast three times the previous exhibition space and an architectural design “that weaves the museum into the city as never before,” the museum announced late last year.

Norwegian architecture firm Snøhetta’s new design expands upon the 225,000-square-foot building that was originally designed by Mario Botta. This recent iteration of SFMOMA will create 45,000 square feet of free public access to the ground-floor galleries. 

When people renovate their homes, they often factor in whether those renovations will add to the resale value.

While few homeowners recoup the full cost of home renovations, updated bathrooms and kitchens, plus other improvements, can help you sell your home more quickly, and for more money.

The added bonus is if you do the renovations while you live in the home, you get to enjoy the renovated spaces for at least a little while before it goes on the market.

But some renovations can actually damage your home's value. These supposed improvements not only add nothing to your bottom line, they may make your home less attractive to potential buyers and bring down its value.

How much they hurt will depend. If the home is in a highly desirable location, potential buyers may be willing to overlook purple walls and an ugly kitchen counter, or they may be willing to do their own renovations. In a subdivision where many similar homes are for sale, the one with bad renovations may linger unsold.

In general, real estate agents and design experts advise keeping resale in mind when you renovate, especially if you don't plan to stay in the home forever.

"Renovations are always best done when they're neutral and tasteful," says Gea Elika, principal broker of Elika Real Estate in New York and a regional director of the National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents. "Don't personalize it if you plan on selling it."

According to Remodeling magazine's 2015 Cost vs. Value report, the home renovations that bring the greatest return when you sell are a new entry door (which brings you 101.8% of what you spend on the national average), the application of manufactured stone veneer (92.2%) and a garage door replacement (88.4%). The ones with the smallest return are a sunroom addition (48.5%), a home office remodel (48.7%) and a bathroom addition (57.8%).

The value of some features varies by geography. A swimming pool, for example, is more desirable in Florida or Hawaii than in Minnesota or Maine, but even in Florida some buyers might not want the added maintenance cost.

In Pittsburgh, where flat yards are rare, a home with a fabulous flat yard may sell quickly no matter what has been done to the interior. "You could get away with doing certain things to a house here that you couldn't in Florida," says Kevin Brown Jr., president of Praedium Real Estate Services in Pittsburgh and a regional director of NAEBA.

Here are six renovations that may hurt your home's selling price or keep it on the market longer than it would be otherwise.

SEE ALSO: 9 home improvements you should always negotiate

Converted garage.

Some homeowners see converting a garage as a cheaper way to add more living space than building an addition — and it is. But many buyers would prefer a garage, especially in cold and rainy climates. "That room will always feel like a cold garage," says Sabrina Booth, an agent with Redfin in Seattle. "A garage is much more valuable than an extra room in Seattle."

Eliminating a bedroom or powder room.

In older homes, combining smaller rooms in the public living space might add to the value because today's homeowners like large, open spaces. Eliminating a powder room, however, is a bad idea. And turning a bedroom into a master closet or combining two bedrooms to create a large master suite may not pay. "You've eliminated a whole living space," Brown says.

Heavy personalization.

We all want to make our homes into our signature spaces. But some unusual features may turn off potential buyers. Matt Francis, branch manager of Better Homes and Gardens Mason-McDuffie Real Estate in the San Francisco Bay Area, once showed a $1.5 million home with a custom kitchen that had two college dorm refrigerators instead of a full-size fridge and no freezer. "Anything that is too personal or too specific would not appeal to the broadest pool of buyers," Booth says.

In the market for a home?

If yes, then you may want to consider looking in the hottest neighborhoods out there, where your home value could continue to grow over the next several decades.

Real-estate site Redfin released its annual list of the 10 hottest neighborhoods nationwide, a prediction based on the most recent growth in page views and favorites per home on their site.

Their experts also chose three neighborhoods in 30 of the largest US cities that are expected to break through as the most desirable places to buy a home in 2016.

Here, we've highlighted the top neighborhood for each city, along with the median number of days a home is on the market in that neighborhood and the median sale price, from Redfin. We also included the median sale price of homes in the metro area for the month of December, also from Redfin, to give you a price comparison.

SEE ALSO: How long you have to live in 15 major US cities to make buying a home worth your money

Atlanta, Georgia: West End

Median days on the market: 48

Median sale price, West End: $122,000

Median sale price, Atlanta: $195,000

See more West End real-estate trends.

Austin, Texas: Hyde Park

Median days on the market: 29

Median sale price, Hyde Park: $449,000

Median sale price, Austin: $273,000

See more Hyde Park real-estate trends.

Baltimore, Maryland: Hampden

Median days on the market: 32

Median sale price, Hampden: $198,000

Median sale price, Baltimore: $235,000

See more Hampden real-estate trends.

Miami Beach is where people go to play. So it only makes sense that this new spec house— available for a neat $34 million — is upping the stakes by making a two-floor concrete water slide its central feature. Adult pool party, anyone?

Developed by Barry Brodsky and Brodson Construction and designed by Cape Town's award-winning SAOTA architects, it's a six-bedroom, 13,500-square-foot contemporary party palace, complete with pool, basketball court, and 100 feet of water frontage onto Indian Creek Canal, the waterway that runs through the spit of land that is Miami Beach.

"This is an impressive home that commands attention for a variety of reasons, so warm contemporary furnishings was important to create areas where family and friends can gather," Paulo Bacchi, CEO of Artefacto, who oversaw the interiors for the project, said to Business Insider.

But it's really that double-height waterslide that lends the whimsical selling touch to the place.

Check it out below.

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The 13,500 house maxes out a one-acre lot with ocean views from the second floor.

Inside, the open-plan design allows for the beachy vibe to permeate. The lot is just across the canal from Miami's famous five-star Fontainebleau Hotel.

Clean lines and lots of glass make the indoor-outdoor distinction obsolete. It was designed with architectural cutouts to bring in extra light and air.

The U.S. Treasury’s decision to track all-cash property purchases made through shell companies sent a shiver through the spine of the real estate industry earlier this month.

But just how many anonymous corporations are buying New York City real estate?

Anecdotal evidence suggests plenty, according to brokers and lawyers who say their clients value privacy and the legal protection afforded by purchasing property anonymously through a corporation.

As for hard numbers, there were 1,380 residential purchases at all price points in Manhattan made by LLC buyers in 2015, according to data compiled by StreetEasy for The Real Deal. That’s more than 50 percent of all residential LLC buyers across all five boroughs last year.

In 2010, there were just 861 LLC buyers in Manhattan, StreetEasy data show. Even five years ago, that accounted for nearly half of the 1,729 LLC deals.

Overall, Manhattan residential sales accounted for 37 percent of the 35,725 recorded sales last year.

Based on that volume, LLC purchases represented a small slice of the deal flow at 7.7 percent, slightly higher than 2010’s 4.9 percent.

But federal authorities still have high hopes for the new rule, a measure partly aimed at reining in the flow of foreign capital. “We are concerned about the possibility that dirty money is being put into luxury real estate,” Jennifer Shasky Calvery, a top Treasury official, said Jan. 13.

Under the new rule, title insurance companies will be required to disclose the identity of buyers who purchase Manhattan real estate priced at $3 million or more in cash through a shell company.

Sources told TRD, however, that buyers who want to remain anonymous will be able to do so by jumping through one of several financial loopholes to the provision, such as utilizing a straw buyer or setting up a trust. The new rule takes effect in March.

SEE ALSO: A third of the most expensive apartments in New York are empty most of the time

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When the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire wiped the city clean, the wealthy stood around the burned rubble of their Nob Hill homes and took a cool, hard look at San Francisco Bay. The best view in the city was in Pacific Heights, and with that swath of real estate now up for grabs, the big money built there and settled in.

Through the Great Depression and both world wars, the residents of Pacific Heights built mansions in an ex-frontier town that now has a median sale price of more than $1.12 million, according to Trulia.

Today's buyers have given this slice of San Francisco the name "Billionaire's Row." And those billionaires include a lot of tech names mingling with San Francisco's "Old Money" crowd — Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison, Apple design genius Jony Ive, and Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, just to name a few.

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Pacific Heights sits atop a series of steep hills in the northern part of San Francisco.

In the years after the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, many of the city's wealthiest residents moved from tony Nob Hill to Pacific Heights, forever changing the face of the neighborhood.

Pacific Heights has been an elite enclave of moneyed families ever since. The Gettys and the Trainas are just a few of the names who have ruled the Pacific Heights roost for decades.

Where will American homebuyers turn in 2016?

According to real estate website Redfin, which releases an annual list of the hottest neighborhoods nationwide, buyers will be prioritizing affordability, charm, and access to public transportation in 2016. The emphasis on affordability explains why the San Francisco Bay Area — where the median sale price of homes is now over $1 million — didn't crack the top 10 for the first time.

"Another trend that has emerged in this year's hottest neighborhoods is that buyers are looking for homes and neighborhoods with character,"Redfin reports.

Here, we've highlighted the 10 neighborhoods projected to take off in 2016, which Redfin ranked by looking at the most recent growth in page views and favorites per home on their site.

We also included the median number of days a home is on the market in that neighborhood, the median sale price for 2015, and insights from local Redfin real-estate agents:

SEE ALSO: These will be the up-and-coming neighborhoods in 30 major US cities in 2016

10. Roosevelt, Seattle

Roosevelt, which has been heating up in recent years, rounded out the top 10, thanks in part to its prime location. "Roosevelt touches the interstate, so people have easy access to downtown Seattle or can easily escape for the weekend,"says local agent Dorothee Graham.

Plus, there are a bunch of easily accessible parks, including Cowen Park, Ravenna Park, and Green Lake.

Median days on the market: 7

Median sale price: $623,500

See more Roosevelt real-estate trends.

9. Powderhorn Park, Minneapolis

While Powderhorn Park cracked the top 10 nationwide, it has stiff competition in Minneapolis and ranked the second-hottest neighborhood in this up-and-coming Minnesota city. The median sale price is on of the lowest on this list: $180,000.

Plus, residents enjoy plenty of green space, thanks to Powderhorn Park and Lake situated in the center of the neighborhood.   

Median days on the market: 32

Median sale price: $180,000

See more Powderhorn Park real-estate trends.

8. Hampden, Baltimore

Hampden offers home prices that are hard to beat. "Houses are relatively affordable and have a historical touch and lots of potential to upgrade into a dream home,"says local agent Chris Calabretta.

The food scene is also top notch, with an abundance of locally owned restaurants, he notes.

Median days on the market: 32

Median sale price: $198,000

See more Hampden real-estate trends.

When it comes to mega-mansions, this 33-bedroom Florida compound on a private barrier island is pretty hard to beat. Sitting just south of Palm Beach in Manalapan, it's listed for $195 million, making it the second-most expensive home for sale in the United States right now.

(First place goes to the infamous Playboy Mansion, which is on the market for $200 million as of last month.)

The 16-acre estate, named Gemini, is the property of the billionaire family of deceased publisher William B. Ziff, Jr. Ziff passed away in 2006. He had developed a hugely successful empire of tech-focused magazines, including titles like Car and Driver and PC Magazine. The family sold the publishing arm of Ziff-Davis for $1.4 billion in 1994, the New York Times reported.

The massive, lush property is decked out with all of the perks that you'd expect for the astronomical price tag. It's bordered on both sides by private beaches and its own pier. On top of that, there's a golf course, pool, tennis court, and basketball court. 

Gemini is listed with Carmen D’Angelo, Jr., Joseph Liguori, and Gerard Liguori of Premier Estate Properties.

SEE ALSO: This $34 million waterfront Miami home has a two-story water slide

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Gemini spans the width of a barrier island in Manalapan, just south of Palm Beach. That means it has private waterfront access on both the ocean and river sides — not to mention plenty of green space.

The property includes a 12-bedroom main home, as well as a seven-bedroom guest house, two "ocean cottages", a manager's house and office, and a tree house. It makes for a grand total of 84,988 square feet of interior space.

A PGA-standard golf practice area means you never have to leave the private island to work on your drive. You'll also find a freshwater pond, bird sanctuary, and "sports complex" with tennis, basketball, mini golf, and playground setups. To top it off, there's a butterfly garden complete with model train, and a fully-furnished underground tunnel connecting different parts of the compound.

Source: Premier Estate Properties