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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
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.
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.
in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens
The summary wasn't wrong.
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'
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
Oh how I agree with you. I used to come here for some knowledge and discussion, but now it's all APK, trumpeters and people with lower IQ than a banana.
I use up all my MOD points on off-topic and troll posts.
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"
Agreed. All the shitposting and comment filtering is really bringing /. down. I've seen eerily similar postings elsewhere, even YouTube. I don't think it's all coming from somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds. There's a whole troll industry out there. We saw just tip of the iceberg in 2016 with the likes of Nimble America, AggregateIQ and Cambridge Analytica. That some of them could still be active makes me wonder why?
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.
I love how people can non-ironically call for echo chambers. You people really do spend all your energy on removing thought you disagree with, don't you? It must be a nasty surprise to come in to a website where you encounter dissident views. It's telling that your natural response is, instead of engaging with such views, is to remove them from view.
They tried that, you know...it didn't work. Without accurate information (dissidents telling you where you're going wrong) your whole society goes off the rails. George Orwell goes into this in "1984" - but in his society, people like you successfully suppressed all dissent.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Meh, /. has always had their share of goatse posts and misc junk floating at -1. The signal-to-noise ratio looks worse mainly because the signal is weak, as a news aggregation it always sucked but the comments/discussions used to be great. Now it's mostly loons that don't have the sense to leave, like me. I feel like I'm clinging on because I don't want an era to end, kinda how I still watch the Simpsons even though they've grown stale a long time ago.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
You people really do spend all your energy on removing thought you disagree with, don't you?
That's akin to me saying the exact same thing about the pigeon shit on your car. How dare you spend your energy removing it? They have the right to shit wherever they want and their shit has the right to stay there for everyone to admire it.
The crap you refer to isn't "thought". It's crap. Period.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
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.
I use up all my MOD points on off-topic and troll posts.
Here's an idea, instead of modding down stuff you don't like, why not make the decision to only mod up things that are interesting? Even if you don't agree with the argument being made, at least it can generate some good debate.
Down-modding creating a debate-free monoculture is the biggest issue for Slashdot right now. I'm not blaming you, I accept you are modding legitimately bad posts, I'm just saying that rather than being the janitor you have an opportunity to reverse the decline.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Thoughts that disagree with your own are treasures - they tell you where you're going wrong. Without accurate criticism, how can you know where you need improvement? Or even if you're completely wrong and need to go home and rethink everything?
When you come to conclusions like "everyone but me can't think" that is an obviously invalid conclusion and you need to go home and rethink your life.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Don't be so sure of yourself sparky:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Mod this sentient up please.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
yes and people do this already. follow the money when you want to know where to buy.
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.
I must apologize, I was referring to a totally different type of comment, see the link below:â
https://games.slashdot.org/com...
When people post their opinion, no matter how weird, it's okay. But trolls are the ones posting comments like the one above.
I should have exemplified, I hadn't and once again, my apologies. Sometimes I write what I think, but I don't think (about) what I write, and confusion ensues.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Who's the crazy one now?
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)