The average rate on the standard 30-year fixed mortgage dropped below 6.5% last week in the sharpest decline of the year. That was more than a percentage point lower than its peak last year of nearly 8%.

The National Association of Realtors, or NAR, reached a landmark legal settlement and in August most of its roughly 1.5 million members will be subject to the new rules. Two main changes are happening now. First, listings in local databases called multiple-listing services will no longer show whether a seller is offering to pay a buyer’s agent, or how much. Second, buyers will be required to sign agreements specifying how much their agents will be paid. Buyers will do this before they start touring homes with agents.

Investors this year added an average of $556 million a week into U.S.-based derivative-income exchange-traded funds, which sell options contracts on stocks held in the fund to juice returns. Net flows into those products plunged to about $117 million last week.

Hotels and airlines expect Americans to partake in less leisure travel and pare down the trips they take in the months ahead.

The average rate on the standard 30-year fixed mortgage fell around a quarter percentage point to 6.47%, a low not seen since May 2023 and the sharpest weekly decline in around nine months.

More than $40 billion of office loans were in distress at the end of the second quarter, which is around three times the value of distressed apartment loans. But the pool of apartment mortgages that could get into difficulty in the future is larger—$56.9 billion are at risk of distress, compared with $50.9 billion for offices.

Major department stores now occupy less than half of all anchor spaces at enclosed shopping malls, with roughly 500 vacant department-store spaces nationwide.

People who leave cash uninvested in retirement accounts lose out on more than $172 billion a year in retirement wealth as a result.

A stock-market selloff intensified around the world, sending U.S. indexes sliding and volatility spiking to its highest levels since the Covid-19 pandemic.

A July poll showed that voters rank housing as their second biggest concern when it comes to high prices—behind only groceries. That is a shift from a November 2021 poll, which found that housing was ranked below the cost of groceries, gas and utility bills.