Open floor plans versus walls: which layout sells faster
Buyers say they want open. Their offers sometimes say otherwise. What the layout trade-off really looks like at showing time.
What a mortgage plumbing deal means for the cost of getting a loan
short-term rental occupancy: the number that decides profit or loss
What it takes to turn an office tower into apartments
The Waldorf Astoria reopened after eight years, and now people live there
Residential
Why some office buildings become apartments and most never will
Floor plate depth, operable windows and the year on the cornerstone decide which empty offices can hold homes — and what those homes feel like to live in.
What Passive House certification means for a homebuyer
The world's strictest energy standard is mostly invisible — no solar panels, no gadgets, just an envelope so tight the occupants heat the house. Here's what that's worth.
Duplex living: what it really costs, earns, and asks of you
House-hacking a duplex can cut your housing bill in half — the honest math includes tenants, shared walls, and a second of everything to maintain.
How to read HOA rules before you buy (and which ones bite later)
The CC&Rs decide whether your fence, your rental, your EV charger, and your paint color are actually yours to choose. Read them while you can still walk away.
What is an ADU, and how does adding one to your property actually work?
Backyard cottages and garage conversions are having a moment. Here's what an accessory dwelling unit legally is, what it costs to build one, and where the rules trip people up.
The double-height room, and why it came back
Two-story living spaces went from Victorian status to modernist cliché to the most requested feature in new apartments — the reasons are physics and psychology.
Why glass block keeps coming back
Borrowed light without a borrowed view: the century-old masonry of privacy has survived Art Deco, disco, and the 1980s — and it's creeping into new bathrooms again.
How to read a floor plan before you fall for the apartment
A floor plan tells you where daylight dies, whether the bedroom wall touches the elevator, and how much of the advertised square footage is hallway — if you know where to look.
Why the federal historic tax credit will not touch your own house
The 20% credit behind a decade of mill-to-apartment conversions runs on one rule about income-producing use — here is how it actually works.
How to read a survey (and the plat map that came with it)
The most boring document in the closing stack decides where your property actually ends — fences, driveways, and disputes included. Twenty minutes of map literacy prevents all of it.
What to check on a first apartment tour (beyond the staging)
Thirty minutes and a phone's worth of tests — water pressure, phone signal, noise, and the lease's fine print — separate the apartment from its photographs.
Fannie Mae earned $14.4 billion last year, and your mortgage quietly depends on it
The FHFA's annual report to Congress on the housing GSEs shows the machinery behind half of American mortgages — and the policy fight over what happens next.
Downsizing without the regret: a working sequence
The successful move to a smaller home is decided months before the For Sale sign — by measurements, use data, and one honest guest-room negotiation.
The prefab house arrives in pieces on purpose
Factory-built homes deliver in days what site builders take months to frame — and the method's history is longer and stranger than the box jokes suggest.
Downtown Pittsburgh's next conversion breaks ground: 39 apartments on Smithfield
A nearly $30 million office-to-residential conversion on Smithfield Street adds 39 affordable homes to the Golden Triangle — the latest in Pennsylvania's state-backed conversion push.
Hospitality
How an office tower turns into a hotel, floor by floor
From a Midtown Manhattan filing to a wave of conversions in Nashville, the mechanics of turning desks into guest rooms are more involved than a coat of paint.
Lobby scent, and the materials that make memory
Hotels engineer smell as carefully as lighting — signature scents and chosen materials are the parts of a stay guests can't photograph and can't forget.
Hotel breakfast spaces became the new lobby — on purpose
The communal table by the coffee machine is the most engineered room in the hotel: mornings pay for the building, and design has noticed.
Cliffside resorts: the architecture of the edge
Building a luxury hotel on a cliff is an engineering dare wrapped in a view — and the techniques that keep them up there explain a lot about building on difficult sites anywhere.
Property News
How a 1970s tax credit is turning old offices into homes
The federal historic tax credit only covers 20 percent of qualified rehab costs, but it's become the financing backbone behind hundreds of thousands of apartments carved out of old buildings.
The September deadline quietly reshaping where housing investment goes
A buyer's playbook for a cooling market
Flat prices, growing inventory, and patient sellers are back for the first time in years — here is how to use the leverage without waiting yourself out of a good home.
Why downtown apartments are getting cheaper
The remote-work era quietly re-priced city centers: new towers delivered into softer demand, and the rents followed — with the exceptions that prove the map.