At the end of every month, The Atlantic’s Business section editors compile a list of the best things they’ve read (or listened to). This edition includes stories about everything from the rapid growth of rental prices in San Francisco, to the rise of third-party investments in litigation, to what the future holds for Bitcoin. And because it’s almost summer, there’s also a piece on the surprising drama surrounding ice-cream trucks in New York.
If you’re interested in other stories our team has deemed too good to miss, you can check out some of our previous round-ups here and here.
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“‘This Can’t Happen by Accident’”
Emily Badger | The Washington Post
When the new subdivisions were rising everywhere here in the 1990s and early 2000s, with hundreds and hundreds of fine homes on one-acre lots carved out of the Georgia forest, the price divide between this part of DeKalb County and the northern part wasn’t so vast.
Now, a house that looks otherwise identical in South DeKalb, on the edge of Atlanta, might sell for half what it would in North DeKalb. The difference has widened over the years of the housing boom, bust and recovery, and Wayne Early can’t explain it.
The people here make good money, he says. They have good jobs. Their homes are built of the same sturdy brick. Early, an economic development consultant and real estate agent, can identify only one obvious difference that makes property here worth so much less.
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