Some Amazon Employees Bought NYC Condos Before News of HQ2 Location Emerged, Says WSJ Report (thehill.com) 94
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.
Corporate corruption (Score:1)
Gets worse every day. The last election was best time to vote the bastards out. The second best time is now
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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.
Re:Can we do something about slashdot trolls? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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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.
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I must apologize, I was referring to a totally different type of comment, see the link below:â
https://games.slashdot.org/com... [slashdot.org]
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.
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Who's the crazy one now?
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Mod this sentient up please.
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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.
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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.
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Don't be so sure of yourself sparky:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Yeah, I don't get that complaint, either. This isn't at all like buying stock based on knowledge of what a company is about to do.
if a company announces that it is going to do something amazing in two years, that company's stock will rise immediately on expectation of that future profit, thanks to rampant speculation and broad global demand. The information, when it becomes public knowledge, has an immediate and significant effect on the market.
By contrast, Amazon's new headquarters will increase housing
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This isn't at all like buying stock based on knowledge of what a company is about to do.
This is sort of like insider stock trading in that non-public information was use for financial gain. However, it's not illegal in the same sense that insider stock trading wasn't illegal before SEC regulations made it illegal. When Kennedy made his fortune based on insider stock trading, it wasn't illegal. It only became illegal after he became the SEC head and made it illegal from that point onward.
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If I had the money to invest, and I knew there was a 50:50 chance the company might move there, and prices go up regardless, then it would be worth making the purchase either way.
Re: Not exactly (Score:1)
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"
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in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens
The summary wasn't wrong.
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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.
Code of Conduct (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Certainly not enough, for example I was left out.
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That's an interesting and off-topic question! The article is about Amazon, not about Google.
Replying because the net moderation would be zero anyway.
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Thanks for pointing out my mistake.
(I did read the article before posting.)
Now that two big companies have been mentioned, I wonder if any employees of either company must follow a code of conduct.
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What professional associations? (Score:2)
Re:What professional associations? (Score:4, Interesting)
No, it almost certainly isn't. They're building a headquarters. Buildings don't go up overnight. Nobody buys a new house based on hoping that they will get transferred in two or three years.
If it is engineers, it is because they're leaving Amazon to work at some other company in New York, and the timing is a fluke. Amazon has over 613k employees. That's an area of NYC with a lot of new construction, which makes it an attractive location for people on tech salaries to live. There's a lot of tech in NYC. So I could easily see this happening entirely by chance. (Admittedly, only a small percentage of those employees are tech workers, but there's nothing stopping non-tech workers from moving there, either, notwithstanding the cost.)
That said, it is more likely that there are Amazon (facilities) employees who are going to be overseeing work on the new headquarters (and then staying on permanently as the facilities reps in the new location). It makes perfect sense for them to start planning their moves as soon as the plans are solid, so that they won't have to spend months in a hotel.
And further (I'm responding more to the GP post than to your comment here), even if we assume that it was somebody who overheard the new location in the hallway, it still would not be a conflict of interest to act on it. How could Amazon's interests possibly be harmed by some of their employees owning homes near their new location?
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If they heard that NYC had a good chance of winning then speculatively buying property there makes sense. Even if NYC didn't win in the end it's hard to lose money on property in in-demand areas like that. Worst case you just rent it or sit on it while the value goes up.
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If they're going to live in it, what is the problem? Should you have to wait for artificial speculation to hit a market when you need somewhere to live just because you know you're about to have to move? That's ridiculous.
If a person was a teacher an became aware that a new school was going to be built and eventually they would move to a new suburb, should they also be banned from buying land in the area until the school is finished and everyone has moved in? Now most teachers probably won't have access to
Good lord (Score:1)
Looking at what we have so far for comments what a sad and petty pathetic society we now have.
no problems here (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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I do not have a problem with it. Good on them.
The SEC on the other hand. They will. Having recently started working at a large bank. The SEC and FTC have *very* strict sort of rules on this sort of thing. At least according to the 30+ hours of training I just went through and laws I was forced to read.
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The SEC on the other hand. They will.
Nope. They won't. Not their area of governance.
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I have had contracts with banks and technology companies for projects, and the line is a little squishy. I could not act directly in a way that could impact (or be construed to impact) negotiations or entitlements on a property purchase or lease. Buying up 10 condos across the street could hit that line easily, but 10 people putting in offers in the days as negotiations are closing with a third party could be ok.
When working for a bank, this extends to their clients buying property as well. Same theoretica
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The SEC could not care less. This in no way defrauds investors which is what they do care about. So some people got a better deal on a condo before prices sky rocketed, or are even able to flip it for more money. Nobody loses money with that. Hell, anyone who knew ahead of time was free to go and buy a condo with the sole intention to flip it. That's not illegal. Nobody loses more money as the final price is when all is said and done is what the market demands. Realtors may not have made as much, but they
It's screwing developers (Score:2)
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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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 [wikipedia.org].
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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.
Re:Insider Trading (Score:5, Informative)
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 [seclaw.com], 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.
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Of course this makes me wonder... (Score:2)
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.
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Does a tenth of a percent of the population moving away really affect real-estate prices? Heck, do an extra 25k people in NYC (if they were all transplants) really effect prices in a city with 8ish million?
People say that's the case, but I just don't get how.
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.1% of the population might be 120% of available apartments.
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New York City has an income tax as well, in addition to New York State. Lots of new tax money to go around.
You say that like it's a bad thing (Score:1)
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.
Disgusting (Score:1)
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.
What's the big deal? (Score:2, Insightful)
Gambling (Score:2)
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?
Far below statistical expectation (Score:3)
About 264,000 people moved to NYC last year [streeteasy.com]. 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. [statista.com]. 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.
Standard practice (Score:2)
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-Ba