Every day, The Real Deal rounds up Los Angeles’ biggest real estate news. We update this page at 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. PT. Please send any tips or deals to tips@therealdeal.com
This page was last updated at 9 a.m. PT
Madison Hildebrand
“MDL’s” Madison Hildebrand is the latest victim of an online scam. A phony contract scam has been targeting celebrities, and just took the “Million Dollar Listings” Los Angeles star and Compass agent for $300,000. Hildebrand signed what he thought was a legitimate deal to speak at an event in Dubai, but also had to wire money first. [CBS]
Downtown’s Hoxton hotel almost ready for its closeup. Rooms at the British brand’s first L.A. outpost will start at $179 per night. The hotel has a total of 174 rooms. British developer Ennismore bought the property — then a vacant office building — in 2015 for $30 million and has been renovating it since. [Curbed]
A Little Tokyo community organization launches real estate fund. The Little Tokyo Community Impact Fund was founded over concerns about the closure of long-standing stores in the neighborhood amid gentrification. The fund will invest in local properties to support what it calls heritage-based businesses in the neighborhood. [Rafu Shimpo]
L.A. developers step up competition for tenants with luxury amenities. Hankey Investment Company has added custom cabanas that cost as much as a car to its 2-acre amenities deck at Downtown L.A.’s Circa condo tower. Meanwhile, Cusumano Real Estate Group’s Talaria at Burbank has a 34-seat theater. Residents can have staff deliver groceries from the ground-floor Whole Foods to their refrigerators. [LAT]
Colony Capital’s losses widen. Tom Barrack’s Downtown L.A.-based firm posted a $442 million loss in the second quarter, more than six times its loss over the same period in 2018. Colony plans to sell a multibillion-dollar portfolio of 450 industrial properties by the end of the year to raise money. [LABJ]
Joe Farrell, Donald Trump, and Stephen Ross (Credit: Getty Images)
Here are the real estate bigwigs who went to Trump’s fundraisers in the Hamptons this weekend. President Trump held two fundraisers on the famed vacation spot this weekend: one at developer Joe Farrell’s home in Bridgehampton and another hosted by Related Companies chair Stephen Ross, which had prompted a massive backlash against Equinox and SoulCycle. Guests at the fundraisers from the world of real estate included Neal Sroka, Vornado’s Steve Roth, Richard LeFrak, Cantor Fitzgerald’s Howard Lutnick, Steve Witkoff and Andrea Catsimatidis. [NYP]
Lower mortgage rates probably aren’t enough to speed up the slow housing market. The low rates might provide the market with a modest increase, but the main problem is still expensive home prices and the lack of options for starter homes in several markets, according to the Wall Street Journal. Average 30-year mortgage rates fell to 3.6 percent last week, their lowest level since November 2016, and they have been dropping throughout most of the year. [WSJ]