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Some Amazon Employees Bought NYC Condos Before News of HQ2 Location Emerged, Says WSJ Report (thehill.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: At least two Amazon employees reportedly purchased condos in a New York City neighborhood before news emerged that the area had been picked to host the company's second headquarters. The employees decided to buy units in a new 11-story condo building in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens just before the first reports of Amazon's HQ2 location were released this month, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. While employees of companies are barred from buying or selling stocks based on information that has not yet been made public, lawyers told the Journal that they were unaware of any such ban affecting real estate transactions. There are no exact numbers on how many units have gone into contract in the Long Island City area since the announcement, but the Journal reports that one brokerage firm sold nearly 150 units just last week, 15 times its normal volume. Earlier this month, Amazon announced plans to split its second headquarters evenly between New York's Long Island City and Arlington County's Crystal City neighborhoods.
Gets worse every day. The last election was best time to vote the bastards out. The second best time is now
I find the trolls exhausting. While I feel the urge to contribute to intelligent discussion, the amount of horrifying racism and, quite frankly, cis privilege trolling on this site is horrifying.
I doubt it. Lots of companies change their mind about any number of things. You would hardly find every beaurocrat in the world and tell them things they wouldnâ(TM)t believe anyway without signed leases etc.
Queens isn't a neighborhood in Long Island City. Long Island City is a part of Queens.
This sort of problem has arisen before and solved by requiring people knowing about big deals (i.e. accountants and lawyers) having to abide by codes of conduct within their professional associations. Even the appearance of a conflict of interest should be avoided to stay onside.
I wonder if Google employees in general have such codes of conduct written into their employment contracts.
Looking at what we have so far for comments what a sad and petty pathetic society we now have.
It's all good! TRUMP motherfuckers!
Hardly. It sounds as though they started buying within the same week as the announcement. The deal would have been locked in, but a few people probably got a slight heads up, especially if they were expected to relocate for their job.
If you’re going to use this as a line in the sand instead of all manner of other corporate malfeasance, then I’m not really sure what to make if you. This deals like some kind of manufactured outrage.
don't blame the employees for buying condos before the announcement. I have no problems with this as long as the purchase was for their own use and not to resell after the announcement.
I think it depends if they bought it for their own use or if they bought to resell based on that information.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Real estate is not publicly traded as a commodity. Martha lied to investigators. That's why she went to prison or it would have been a fine and a slap on the wrist.
If lots of existing Amazon employees are now relocating to New York NY (and Arlington VA) - how many new jobs are actually being created in these locations? Because job creation is ostensibly one of the major reasons these cities fell all over themselves to give Amazon billions of dollars.
#DeleteChrome
Insider trading only refers to stocks and other securities (like stock options and bonds). Real estate transactions are not covered by insider trading laws.
America is here to be looted by the 1 percent, at the expense of the 99 percent, it's all part of the Kaiser's plan.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Regardless, insider trading is for securities, not real estate. I can't remember the specifics of how an insider is defined, but I think an insider trading rap would be a stretch because the information they had was not confidential to the real estate owner.
I think it depends if they bought it for their own use or if they bought to resell based on that information.
No, this does not matter at all. The only thing that matters is whether it involves securities regulated by the SEC.
New York apartments don't fall under the SEC's jurisdiction, unless they are part of a REIT.
How is this not insider trading? Buying real estate using information not known to the public should result in prosecution. Martha Stewart served jail time for less.
According to the SEC , As defined by the courts, illegal insider trading refers to purchasing or selling a security while in possession of material, non-public information concerning that security, where the information is obtained from a breach of fiduciary duty, or a duty arising from a relationship of trust or confidence.
So, since real estate is not a security, that is how this is not insider trading. And by the way, Martha Stewart was not convicted of insider trading; she was found guilty in March 2004 of felony charges of conspiracy, obstruction of an agency proceeding, and making false statements to federal investigators.
TIL
Martha Stewart served jail time in relation to "insider trading" of stocks and bonds. It wasn't real estate. Bid difference according to the summary.
I can't imagine any that folks at Amazon belong to. Maybe the really top guys and the lawyers, but this is probably the engineers who're getting dragged to NY against their will...
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Not the employees, but the other commentators here. This story is mostly meaningless without info on if they had also attempted to buy apartments in the other cities as well. Real estate investors have no issues putting a bunch of units under contact then canceling the purchases if what theyâ(TM)re betting on doesnâ(TM)t occur.
Or maybe it was just executives with inside information getting in before the lowly workers started driving up real estate prices in the neighborhood. Seems ethically pretty similar to insider share trading to me, even if it is not illegal.
First off, the only people that would be upset are people that wanted to buy into the nearby neighbourhood and are now looking at higher prices. What did they expect? Of course this is going to happen. Let's face it, the whole exercise in NY's bid was to have Amazon move in. And guess what, a ton of people are going to be moving in with them. Whether they move in a week before the bell or after, prices are gong up and things are gonna change. "Insider" knowledge is not the issue here, but jealousy, that may play a part...
The status? The only status they care about is if you plan to live there as a primary residence, or if you will be renting it.
They don't ask about your reasoning to purchase a home, and even if they did it wouldn't require a level of detail beyond, "because I want to"
I live in Denver and I'm damn glad they're not coming here. Heaven knows how much tax money NY gave away to that clown. He's there because there's lots of hungry people to employ. He's really just interested in the Virginia operation because that's close to his future rental in DC.
If they bought single family houses that were owner-occupided, I would be pissed. They would be screwing the little guy. But they bought new condos. So, my heart bleeds so very little for the real estate developers.
Now that I think about it, it probably would have been smart (if you had the cash) to buy property in all the finalist cities. I doubt the value went down when Amazon declined to go to Austin.
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We knew the short list, right? It was public.
I can readily imagine many Amazon employees made speculative decisions and brought condos in different cities. Since resources are finite, each made their own decision as to how they would use their available resources for investment, even WITHOUT any insider knowledge.
We are hearing about the lucky ones who chose correctly. What about the others?
What about the vast trove of people who did the same, but are not Amazon employees?
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Exactly. Plus it was "two people" and they didn't name anyone. That is, they weren't some top level executive.. making their names newsworthy.
I can see myself doing this. Probably, there were whispers a few days ahead of the announcement. So I talk to a buddy, we divvy up the task, and we start looking for excellent purchases in the area. Just a few hours a night after work, whatever.
Then as the article says "just before" (it's not clear on timelines or names, of course), maybe even the day before, news leaked inside Amazon that things were 100%. So probably the offer was put forward with a deadline, the seller accepted, and at that point it's too late for either party to backout without penalties.
Done. Someone worked their ass off to time it right, and maybe made an extra $50k for retirement.
Good job.
About 11% of Americans move each year. That's about 35.5 million people.
About 264,000 people moved to NYC last year. So about 0.74% of all movers relocated to NYC.
Amazon has about 600,000 employees. I can't find a breakdown of U.S. vs overseas employees, but about 70% of their sales are in the U.S.. So figure 420,000 U.S. employees. If 11% of them move, that'd be 46,000 Amazon employees moving each year.. 0.74% of that is 340 Amazon employees moving to NYC each year.
Of that amount, most would rent. But it seems highly likely that more than two would end up buying.
Hmmm, so there is a legal way to use insider information?
Real estate purchases are public record. So, if you scraped for high level executive names cross-referenced with purchases in the last 30 days, you'd be onto something. Time to make friends with a real estate broker. :D
The moment you said that you revealed yourself to be a SJW jackass.
I prefer APK spam because at least I can skip over it unread. APK does not masquerade as a real person with something intelligent to say.
However, as an SJW sheep, I have to waste a few seconds on every post before I can move on looking for something worth reading because it sure as hell wont be anything from you.
Tl;dr: I prefer easily skipped APK to your SJW time wasting bullshit.
I can pretty much guarantee you that the 'lowly' workers cannot cause enough of a blip in the real estate prices to impact the executives in any way.
Those extra zeroes on the end of the executive salaries say they're not going to be directly competing with the rank and file workers.
yes and people do this already. follow the money when you want to know where to buy.
If so, it was a slam dunk that NYC would be selected.
When a company moves/add headquarters, 95% of the time, the company picks a place where the CEO lives.
Is it true that only faggots live on Long Island ? If it is then I'm moving there. I'm going to get my pasty white ass churned into butter or my name isn't Dale Cr....
Just watch me !
It is standard practice in large scale real estate development to assemble parcels of land into a larger development, with incremental purchases under various shell corporations that conceal the eventual owner. A seller is likely to want a higher price from National Megacorp headquarters project than from Rabbit Hole Limited Partnership XVII.
Acquaintances in Munich noted that some people decades ago made a great deal of money buying parcels that "happened" to be situated near what eventually became S-Bahn (suburban train) stations.
Here is what happened with the Amazon HQ:
The two locations for the HQ were determined in 2017 and were only going to be in places where Bezos had some existing business or personal property. One chosen location has Bezos property and the other location has a business.
Some of us knew they picked the location last year, but didn't understand what we were hearing from the press.
The idea was simple: pick the HQ locations first and then use the incentives offered up by the other cities as levers for negotiation.
Many of us have reason to believe that Amazon got much greater incentives from the selected locations because of all the freebies offered by cities which never had a chance. Spend 5 minutes around upper management and you will know these are the types of things they do all day.