BofA Rewards is Bank of America’s tiered rewards program. If you keep enough in deposits or investments with BofA or Merrill Edge, you can qualify for perks like a bonus on your credit card rewards. We covered the details in The New BofA Rewards: $100k Assets Now Get 50% Credit Card Rewards Bonus, $1M Required for 75% Bonus.
If you’ve reached BofA Rewards Preferred Honors ($100K+) or Premier ($1M+) status, there’s a new perk you can claim for free for a limited time. It’s GHA DISCOVERY Titanium status.
Offer link (login required):
The main perks of Titanium status are:
Free breakfast for you and one guest staying in your room when you book directly with a participating hotel.
A two-category room upgrade at check-in, subject to availability.
Checkout as late as 4 p.m., subject to availability.
What hotels are part of the Global Hotel Alliance (GHA)? Its member brands include Kempinski, Capella, Anantara, Pan Pacific, Marco Polo, Niccolo, The Sukhothai, OUTRIGGER, Viceroy, NH Collection, and others.
Here is the official hotel directory if you want to see what’s available. There aren’t many properties in the U.S., but there are more in Europe.
The offer ends on January 7, 2027. The status lasts through the end of the calendar year after you claim it. If you wait and claim it between January 1 and 7, 2027, your Titanium status will last through the end of 2028. If you claim it now, it’ll only last through the end of 2027. So if you don’t have a stay coming up where you’d use it, I’d wait until January.
If you already have $100K or more with BofA or Merrill Edge and have reached Preferred Honors, you might as well pick up free GHA Titanium status.
HT: FM.
If you like this post, don’t forget to give it a 5 star rating!
Construction equipment rental company EquipmentShare.com (EQPT -21.28%) stock crashed 21% through 10:40 a.m. ET Tuesday despite beating on earnings last night.
Analysts had forecast EquipmentShare to earn $0.12 per share on $1.4 billion in Q3 sales. The company actually earned $0.16 per share on sales of nearly $1.5 billion, according to data from StreetInsider.com.
Image source: Getty Images.
EquipmentShare Q3 earnings
So why are investors so upset with EquipmentShare today? After all, the company grew its revenue by 55% year over year, with rental revenue, in particular, up 49% and equipment sales revenue surging 76%. Net earnings nearly tripled to $20 million.
Still, that was less than half the company’s “adjusted” net income number ($46 million). So while EquipmentShare’s adjusted profit may have been $0.16 per share, its actual earnings calculated under generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) were just $0.03 per share.
Free cash flow was even worse. Much worse. Operating cash flow so far this year is negative $179 million. Subtract from that the cost of buying equipment to rent (net of equipment sold), purchases of “property and other fixed assets,” and capitalized software costs, and I’d put EquipmentShare’s total cash burn so far this year at more than $1.1 billion, and on course for $1.5 billion in cash burn for the year.
EQPT – EquipmentShare.com
$12.76-$3.45 (-21.28%)
NASDAQ · As of 10:51 AM ET 11/10/26
What’s next for EquipmentShare stock?
EquipmentShare is burning cash like mad. Regardless of what the company says its “profit” might be, this doesn’t give me a lot of confidence in its quality of earnings. Earnings beat or no earnings beat, I’d probably avoid this stock.
With the earnings quality in question, it’s just too risky.
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Treasury is creating a new system called Treasury .033 to hold Education Department records on federal student loan borrowers, grant recipients, parents and spouses.
Treasury wants records that include Social Security numbers, income and student loan forgiveness history, and it lists research and forecasting among its uses.
Student Defense and EPIC filed comments on November 6 asking Treasury to narrow the system and publish the documents behind it.
The Treasury Department is building a new data system to hold federal student loan and financial aid records on tens of millions of Americans. The system isn’t limited to the defaulted student loans Treasury agreed to collect in March, and it covers people who never missed a payment.
Treasury is creating a new system called Treasury .033 to hold federal student aid records from the Education Department. It published notice of the system in the Federal Register back in October, as the Privacy Act requires for any new system of records.
The Education Department will feed it personal data on federal grant recipients and federal student loan borrowers, under the agreement that made Treasury the new collector for defaulted student loans. The data comes from three Education Department databases, including the National Student Loan Data System.
The system took effect the day the notice was published. Its routine uses control who Treasury can share the records with. Those uses were set to take effect November 6, unless Treasury changed the notice after public comments.
That same day, Student Defense and EPIC filed a 15-page comment (PDF File) asking Treasury to narrow the scope of the system. The comment is the latest pushback on the Education Department’s use of interagency agreements to shift its programs.
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Why It Matters
The Department of Treasury is set to take over collections as phase one of a three-phase project to eventually (and potentially) take over the entire student loan servicing portfolio.
Treasury’s collection job covers about 7.8 million borrowers in default, who owed $179 billion as of December 31, 2025. Treasury .033 reaches much farther. It also covers borrowers in good standing and Pell Grant recipients who never borrowed. Parents and spouses listed on a FAFSA are included too.
The records also go to a different part of Treasury than the one that collects debts. The Bureau of the Fiscal Service runs the Treasury Offset Program that seizes tax refunds for defaulted student loans.
Treasury .033 belongs to the Office of the Fiscal Assistant Secretary and the Office of Economic Policy instead.
What Data Does Treasury Want, And Why Does It Matter?
Treasury wants nearly everything the Education Department knows about a borrower, from the first FAFSA to the final payment. The notice lists 24 categories of records, drawn partly from the database behind your federal student loan history.
Social Security number, date of birth, driver’s license number, addresses, phone and email
Applicants, borrowers, endorsers and co-signers
Family Finances
Social Security numbers, marital status, income and asset information
Parents and spouses listed on a FAFSA
FAFSA And Eligibility
Student Aid Index, dependency status, household data, citizenship and veteran status
FAFSA filers
Student Loan History
Balances, payments, deferments, forbearances, delinquency and default, from origination to final payment
Federal student loan borrowers
Repayment And Forgiveness
Income-driven repayment, PSLF, disability discharge and SCRA records, plus employer names and dates
Borrowers who used those programs
Collections
Offsets, refunds, debt certification and Treasury Offset Program records
Borrowers in default
Customer Service
Complaints, call summaries and recordings, chat transcripts and emails
Borrowers who called, chatted or filed a complaint
School And Program
School and program codes, enrollment and completion dates, median debt and earnings data
Students who received federal financial aid
Source: Federal Register. The College Investor.
Treasury says it wants the records for oversight and management of the federal student aid portfolio. Its stated uses also include research, modeling, forecasting and policy development, along with the transfer and ownership of the portfolio. None of those uses is limited to collecting defaulted student loans.
The scope matters because records with names and Social Security numbers do the most damage if they’re ever exposed in a data breach. The Education Department’s own analytics platform hides that personal information from its users and shares only deidentified results with other agencies, according to the Student Defense and EPIC comment (PDF File). Treasury’s notice doesn’t commit to doing the same.
The notice also lists complaint records, call summaries, chat transcripts and email communications. Records tied to Public Service Loan Forgiveness and other forgiveness programs are included, along with employer names and dates of employment. Borrowers shared those details with the Education Department and its contractors, not with Treasury.
The notice doesn’t say whether IRS data comes along. Every FAFSA contributor must consent to share federal tax information to qualify for federal financial aid, and the Education Department uses tax data to set payments on income-driven repayment plans like RAP.
Treasury .033 lists income, family size and Student Aid Index values but never says where those figures come from. Federal tax law limits how that data can be reused, so Student Defense and EPIC asked Treasury to say whether any of it enters the system.
Which Borrowers Are Covered?
Anyone with federal student loans or federal grants on record falls within the notice, along with the parents and spouses on their FAFSA. That includes borrowers on every federal student loan repayment plan, not only those in default.
Who’s Covered By Treasury’s Student Loan Data System
Group
Data Treasury Wants
What To Watch
Borrowers In Good Standing
Full student loan history, repayment plan, income and family size
Treasury use of the data before it formally takes over servicing
Borrowers In Default
Collection, offset and debt certification records
Which agency certifies the debt and hears disputes
Pell Grant Recipients With No Student Loans
FAFSA, grant and enrollment records
Advocates say grant-only records go beyond “student loan data”
Parents And Spouses On A FAFSA
Social Security numbers, marital status, income and assets
Whether IRS tax data or figures built from it are included
Borrowers With Forgiveness Or Discharge Records
PSLF, income-driven repayment, disability discharge and SCRA records
How Treasury uses employment and disability records
Source: Federal Register. The College Investor.
Borrowers in good standing are the biggest change. The March 2026 agreement (PDF File) moves their servicing to Treasury only in a second phase, “to the extent practicable,” after Treasury reviews the portfolio.
Student Defense and EPIC say they found no published update to the agreement that starts that phase. House Republicans have filed bills that would move federal student loans, Pell Grants and the FAFSA to Treasury permanently.
How Does The Data Notice Compare To The Treasury Agreement?
The data notice goes well past what the published agreement (PDF File) covers. The agreement limits data sharing to student loan data needed to assess the portfolio and collect defaulted student loan debts.
The notice adds research and policy uses, and it lists ownership of the portfolio as a purpose.
Student loan data needed to assess the portfolio and collect defaulted debts
Grant recipients, all federal student loan borrowers, parents and spouses
Treasury Office
Bureau of the Fiscal Service
Office of the Fiscal Assistant Secretary and Office of Economic Policy
Main Purpose
Collect defaulted student loans through cross-servicing
Oversight, research, modeling, forecasting and policy work
Ownership
Referrals “do not transfer ownership” of the debt
Lists “transfer, ownership” of the portfolio as a purpose
Data-Sharing Terms
Left to an attachment missing from the copy the Education Department posted
Relies on that same unpublished arrangement
Source: Treasury and Education Department. The College Investor.
The ownership language matters because the agreement says referrals don’t move a debt off the Education Department’s books. The agreement also relies on the Economy Act, a law that lets one agency “buy” services from another.
Student Defense and EPIC argue (PDF File) that law can’t be used to hand an agency’s core functions to Treasury. That argument echoes the case against breaking up the Education Department through side agreements.
What Did Student Defense And EPIC Ask Treasury To Do?
The two groups asked Treasury to justify each data transfer and publish the documents behind the system before it shares any federal student loan records. Their comment lists seven requests:
Identify the Education Department rule that allows each data transfer, and say when Treasury first received the records.
Remove the “ownership” and “transfer” purposes, or name the agreement that supports them.
Leave out people with no student loan debt, and use deidentified data for research.
State whether federal tax information, or figures built from it, will enter the system.
Publish the data-sharing arrangement and any privacy impact assessment, then add 30 days to the comment period.
Explain who will certify debts and handle notices, disputes and hearings for borrowers in default.
Respond to the comments in writing before any part of the notice takes effect.
What Does This Mean For Borrowers In Default?
For borrowers in default, the open question is who decides whether a debt is valid. Federal law gives borrowers at least 60 days to show a debt isn’t past due or legally enforceable before a tax refund offset. The notice doesn’t say whether Treasury staff will use these records to certify debts or hear disputes once Treasury runs the Education Department’s Default Resolution Group. The comment says borrowers need to know “which agency’s employees will hear their disputes.”
That question gets more urgent as the government prepares to restart involuntary collections. The Education Department and Treasury plan to resume wage garnishment on defaulted student loans, and garnishment costs more than the lowest-payment repayment plan for nearly every borrower.
Borrowers in default can still get out of default through rehabilitation or consolidation before garnishment starts.
What Can Borrowers Do Now?
Borrowers can’t opt out of Treasury .033. The Privacy Act lets agencies share records without consent when a published routine use covers the disclosure. Borrowers can still protect their personal information and keep track of what the government holds. Treasury’s notice says people can request their records through its Privacy Act procedures.
Log in to StudentAid.gov and confirm your servicer, student loan status and contact information are current.
Watch for letters from Treasury and its contractors if your student loans are in default, and check any new phone number through StudentAid.gov before you pay.
Never share your FSA ID, since student loan scams are surging in 2026.
Request your records from Treasury under 31 CFR 1.26 if you want to see what it holds about you.
How This Connects
Treasury .033 already covers the borrowers and grant recipients that later phases of the Treasury takeover of federal student loans would reach. Phase Two would move servicing for borrowers in good standing, and phase three calls for a Treasury review of FAFSA and eligibility rules, according to the Congressional Research Service.
The data notice came out before either phase appears in a published update to the agreement.
What’s Next
Treasury now has to weigh the public comments and decide whether the notice needs changes. Any changes would show up in a revised Federal Register notice. Borrowers in default should also watch for new contact from Treasury as the Default Resolution Group moves under Treasury oversight.
Editor: Colin Graves
The post Treasury Student Loan Data System: What Borrowers Should Know appeared first on The College Investor.
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Luxury home prices across the U.S. have fallen year over year for 31 straight months, according to a report by Realtor.com published Monday. But Florida is a major exception, driven by a mix of new wealth flooding the state and too few homes to buy.
Wealthy Americans have been moving to the state for years. Florida took in a net $137 billion in income from other states between 2019 and 2023—and that was before even more billionaires moved to the state ahead of the proposed wealth taxes in California and Washington.
Billionaires including Jeff Bezos, Ken Griffin, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on South Florida estates, drawn by no state income tax, the lifestyle, and the business climate. At the same time, the supply of million-dollar homes in many of the state’s markets is shrinking, and the luxury homes that do hit the market are selling faster. That combination is keeping prices up even as they fall across the U.S.
“Low rates lit the match, tight supply fed it, investors added heat, and wealthy newcomers poured gasoline on it,” Arman Javaherian, CEO of the homebuying platform Homa and a former Zillow executive, previously told Fortune.
Meanwhile, the national entry point for luxury housing, meaning the asking price that marks the top 10% of listings, fell to $1,197,014 in October, down 2.3% from a year earlier. The declines were steeper at the top of the market. The threshold for the top 5% of listings fell 4.1%, while the top 1% fell 6.2% to about $5.1 million, the report shows.
But in Florida, the luxury threshold in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metro rose 4.1% to about $2.3 million, and in Naples, it climbed 9% to about $3.75 million, more than three times the national entry point.
Only 12 of the 43 metros Realtor.com analyzed saw luxury prices rise at least 1% over the past year, and five were in Florida: Naples-Marco Island, North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota, Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, and Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater. Naples led the country with a 9% jump to about $3.75 million, making it the only one of the nation’s 10 most expensive luxury markets where prices climbed. Its priciest listings also sold a median 27 days faster than a year ago. In the Miami metro, the luxury threshold rose 4.1% to about $2.3 million.
Realtor.com senior economist Anthony Smith wrote that million-dollar inventory is shrinking in most of Florida’s gaining markets, and “that smaller pool of available homes may be helping support prices, even as luxury thresholds fall nationally.”
Florida is a magnet for billionaires
Citadel founder Ken Griffin relocated his hedge fund from Chicago to Miami in 2022, the same year he paid $106.9 million for a Coconut Grove estate. Now, that enclave in Miami is becoming so popular with the ultrawealthy that luxury hotelier Raffles is building 35 homes there starting at $4.5 million.
“We don’t really play in the middle market. We continue to see tremendous amounts of wealth moving into Florida, especially South Florida,” Camilo Miguel Jr., founder and CEO of Mast Capital, one of the partners on the project, previously told Fortune.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also sold his $63 million Seattle mansion for million and has spent $237 million on three properties on Indian Creek, the island nicknamed “Billionaire Bunker.” In September, a Delaware LLC reportedly tied to Bezos paid $69.5 million for an oceanfront estate in nearby Golden Beach. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, also closed on a $170 million Indian Creek estate this year, and Google cofounder Larry Page spent about $173.4 million on two Coconut Grove properties.
“Someone buying a $20 million or $50 million home in Miami is coming for no state income tax, the lifestyle, and the business climate,” South Florida luxury real estate advisor Michael Martirena told Fortune last week. Under Florida’s newly approved Amendment 3, the yearly cap on taxable-value increases for second homes will also drop from 10% to 5%. Experts said that change matters most to wealthy owners with multiple properties.
Elsewhere, the luxury market is still coming down from its pandemic-era gains. The pandemic packed years of luxury price growth into roughly 24 months, and as of May, the typical luxury market had held onto only 59% of that run-up, according to a June Realtor.com report.
In October, San Jose’s luxury threshold dropped 12.1% from a year earlier, New York-Newark-Jersey City’s fell 11.3%, and San Francisco’s fell 7.1%. Realtor.com has attributed San Francisco’s luxury slump primarily to tech-sector layoffs, people moving out of the area, and a smaller pool of buyers.
Key Insight: Learn how a bitter executive leadership battle cost Better Home & Finance millions of dollars, and lost productivity, in the third quarter.
Forward Look: Better says it will cut expenses by 40% by the end of the fourth quarter. Overview bullets generated by AI with editorial review.
Better Home & Finance is pulling brokerages onto its Tinman AI platform while replacing layers of its own management with AI agents, a pair of moves that could reshape how rivals staff and compete.
Processing Content
The lender has signed 39 brokerages to its platform, initially focused on home equity line of credit offerings, executives said on Monday’s earnings call. The multichannel lender is also committing further to retail, even as its direct-to-consumer volume has shrunk every quarter.
Tinman is already central to Better’s business: 57% of its loan volume came through the AI platform.
On staffing, founder Vishal Garg said the company has terminated traditional vice president, director and senior manager roles in favor of AI agents.
“Those management responsibilities are now performed by AI agents and dashboards, and delivered directly to the most senior people in each part of our organization,” Garg said.
Better hasn’t described itslayoffs in detail, but claims that the savings are substantial. Executives discussed a goal of cutting expenses by about 40% in the fourth quarter, to around $46 million. The company has pledged $64.2 million in annualized cost cuts, including $7.6 million already achieved this quarter and up to $9.4 million more before the new year.
The leadership fight and the numbers
The cost push comes after a leadership battle that took a big bite out of earnings. Garg blamed the people who ousted him, and macroeconomic factors, for the lender’s slip in productivity this summer as Better posted another eight-figure loss. Origination volume of $1.4 billion was up annually but representeda 16% decline from the second quarter.
“The fact is, the amount of effort and therefore productivity, and that reflected in our results, suffered,” Garg said on the call, referring to the period he was away from the firm.
The earnings were the first helmed by Gargafter his unlikely comeback in September, after the company’s former board members fired him Aug. 3. The former CEO, now head of product platform and innovation, fought interim CEO Daniel Lewis and the board in public and in court, a victory that cost the company millions of dollars.
Better’s adjusted EBITDA loss of $29.7 million included $12.8 million of proxy-related legal, public relations and other expenses. Excluding those, the $16.8 million negative EBITDA was still far from the company’s goal earlier this year of reaching breakeven by this reporting period.
Garg, who has said the company is searching for a permanent CEO, blamed Lewis for stalling partnership deals and causing waning productivity. Better published metrics showing fading monthly origination volume during Lewis’ August-to-September tenure, and a 20% decline in email correspondences by salespersons.
Inside the numbers
Better’s net loss of $36.5 million was an improvement over the $39.1 million lossat the same time last year, but a step back from a $30.6 million loss in the second quarter. The company hasn’t posted a net loss smaller than $30 million since it went public in August 2023.
Revenues slipped 17% quarterly, from $54.7 million over the spring to $45.1 million ending September. The company retains $77.5 million in cash and cash equivalents.
When a global consumer and retail enterprise’s CEO, COO, and CTO reviewed their quarterly transformation dashboard, progress looked solid. The cloud migration was almost complete, the global capability center (GCC) had expanded, and agentic AI pilots were improving demand forecasting and promotion planning. By every formal milestone, the program appeared to be on track.
But the business was telling a different story. Margins remained under pressure, inventory volatility persisted, teams hesitated to act on AI recommendations, and data still required manual reconciliation.
Nothing was visibly broken—and that’s precisely the problem. Decisions were improving locally but not at the enterprise level. Value was created in pockets but did not accumulate where it mattered most: margins, working capital, and overall enterprise performance.
Despite significant investments in AI, innovation, and GCCs, many consumer and retail enterprises still struggle to capture value. The problem is no longer a lack of transformation. It is that multiple transformations are happening at the same time, without being designed to work together.
Where Transformation Gets Disconnected
The disconnect was easier to absorb when businesses had more room for inefficiency. Years of cost pressure have changed that. Today even small misalignments can surface quickly as lost sales, excess inventory, or service issues.
And there are more points of connection to manage. Retailers are building data-driven media businesses, while consumer goods companies are investing more directly in customer relationships. Pricing affects promotions, promotions affect demand, demand affects supply, and decisions must increasingly move across planning, commercial, and finance.
Yet transformation has largely moved forward on separate tracks. GCCs have scaled. Platforms have modernized. AI is assisting decisions. Processes are being redesigned. Each can demonstrate progress on its own. The value gap emerges in the space between them.
When the business needs to respond quickly, data has to be revalidated, assumptions drift, and teams align in the moment. Nothing necessarily breaks. But the enterprise slows precisely when it needs to move as one.
Understanding Where the Enterprise Stands
The greatest risk is misjudging the enterprise’s readiness across data, processes, and operating models. If leaders get that wrong, they can end up scaling the fragmentation they are trying to fix.
Navigating complexity: For most enterprises, activity is high and progress looks real at the functional level. GCCs scale analytics and planning support, platforms modernize, and AI pilots show promise. But coordination still happens late, often through manual effort and escalation.
Accelerating: In some organizations, these gaps start to close. Responsibilities across data, process, and execution are clearer, and decisions move more smoothly across functions. The business starts to behave more like a system, but progress remains fragile.
Compounding: A smaller group reaches a different point. Data, processes, platforms, and AI reinforce one another through real operating cycles, allowing connected decisions to repeatedly deliver value.
Two situations change the starting point. Spin-offs and newly formed entities have a clean-sheet opportunity to design operating models, governance, and technology together. Established leaders with margin headroom and operational stability face a different risk: hesitation.
Knowing where the enterprise stands shapes the choices that come next.
Five steps to turn momentum into compounding value
Knowing where the enterprise stands only matters if it changes what leaders do next. Five actions can help turn transformation momentum into compounding value:
Establish enterprise-level ownership.
Most organizations can name leaders who own GCCs, platforms, AI, or supply-chain programs. But it’s often less clear who is responsible for bringing merchandising decisions, demand signals, and execution constraints together. A transformation office can make these dependencies visible earlier, helping leaders sequence decisions across planning, supply, commercial, and finance rather than relying on escalation and individual intervention.
Organize around end-to-end integrated processes.
Transformation often follows functional lines: Finance improves reporting, operations modernizes supply chains, and commercial teams invest in planning and pricing. The gaps appear when these efforts need to work together. Organizing around end-to-end processes such as connected planning and order to cash allows decisions, data, and accountability to move together when conditions change.
Tier the agentic ambition.
Agentic AI pilots can show promise but may become harder to sustain when data varies, responsibilities are unclear, and decisions still require manual validation. Organizations making more progress scale AI deliberately, starting where data is reliable and decision boundaries are clear, while operating model design, governance, and control mature alongside it.
Integrate data governance into the operating model.
When demand signals or trade assumptions differ, teams spend time reconciling inputs instead of making decisions. Leaders need clarity on who owns the data across planning, supply, commercial, and finance. Building governance into everyday decision making creates a more consistent view of demand, value, and performance.
Lead with value and use it to redesign the enterprise.
Programs can improve while enterprise outcomes remain unchanged. Rather than asking which programs to fund, leaders should focus on where value is created, how it moves across the enterprise, and where it drops off. Investments can then follow outcomes rather than initiatives, with programs accelerated, reshaped, or stopped as conditions change.
The era of transformation for its own sake is reaching its limit. Consumer and retail organizations have invested heavily in analytics, platforms, GCCs, and agentic AI, but capability alone will not deliver the return. The risk is mistaking activity for progress while the gaps across functions remain.
Closing this gap is a leadership decision, not a technical fix. It requires discipline around how data, decisions, and execution connect across the enterprise.
The decisions executives make next on GCC models, clean-sheet opportunities, and how agentic AI scales will be difficult to unwind. Those who act with intent now are positioned to turn transformation into sustained returns.
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