The look and feel of a spa-inspired lavatory are still in, but homeowners seek a fresh take. Individual style and a touch of luxury make an impression.

Putting a philanthropic attitude at the core of your business can motivate customers to stick by you. Here's how you can develop a giving strategy for your business

Staging is an expected feature when showing houses in the San Francisco market, and a lack of staging could send up a red flag to buyers. "The way you live in a home and the way you stage a home is completely different," says Danielle Cirelli, owner of Designed to Sell. "It's all about spatial awareness and making the rooms look big."

Real estate investor Xavier Preterit advises firms to build genuine relationships when mentoring talent, including recognition and encouragement of goals and providing feedback. "Your feedback is essential. Whether it is positive or negative, it will help the future leader to improve," Preterit writes.

If you could build the house of your dreams, what features would you include? What about a hidden entrance, an in-house cafe or a custom garage for your fleet of luxury cars?

Applications for mortgages and to purchase a home rose last week in an apparent response to a slight drop in mortgage rates. "Lower mortgage rates, combined with signs of more inventory coming to the market, could lead to a rebound in purchase activity," said Joel Kan of the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Fredrik Eklund, who gained fame on the show "Million Dollar Listing," is launching a app called REAL, described as a social media platform for real estate. "I would say it's like a brainchild of maybe Zillow, WhatsApp and, maybe most of all, Instagram, because it's this beautiful feed of only real estate—curated real estate, verified real estates, actual beautiful listings," Eklund said.

Affordable housing advocates are calling out real estate investment technology companies as a driver of high prices, saying these platforms enable investors to buy up available units. "If you had homes for everybody, maybe the investors wouldn't even be in the market because they wouldn't have to bank on so much demand," said Sheharyar Bokhari, a senior economist with Redfin.

The owner of the Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles says he can fill its 600 units with low-income and formerly homeless people, even though tens of millions of dollars spent on converting the historic hotel into homeless housing has yielded just 73 occupants so far. The conversion is unusual for such projects in that private developers are funding the project rather than public sources.

Construction has begun on Starhill Phase I, an affordable housing development by Services for the UnderServed and Bronx Pro in the Morris Heights section of the Bronx in New York. The project is part of the state's $25 billion, five-year housing plan that starts in fiscal 2023.

The House has passed a legislative package intended to assist Western states in responding to the risks posed by the rising severity of wildfires and drought. The legislation, which now advances to the Senate, includes provisions to lock in pay increases for federal wildland firefighters, bolster resiliency and mitigation projects, safeguard watersheds and streamline the federal aid process for wildfire victims.