Home prices and apartment rents in Austin, Texas, have fallen more than anywhere else in the country, after a period of overbuilding and a slowdown in job and population growth. Rents are down 7% while more home buyers searching sales listings are looking to move away from the Austin area than looking to move to it.
While the S&P 500 is up 8% year to date, total money funds added more than $150 billion in assets through the first two months of 2024, or about $50 billion more than they did in the same period last year.
Median rents in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Northwest Queens hit record highs in February as New Yorkers grapple with an ongoing affordability crisis. New lease signings also climbed, setting year-over-year records in Manhattan and Queens and the second-highest record for Brooklyn.
Choice Hotels is abandoning its hostile $8 billion takeover bid for Wyndham Hotels & Resorts.
A record share of 401(k) account holders took early withdrawals from their accounts last year for financial emergencies. Overall, 3.6% of plan participants did so last year, up from 2.8% in 2022 and a prepandemic average of about 2%.
U.S. cities added more than 2,900 buildings with more than 200 apartment units between the years 2021 and 2023. That is 17% more than were built from 2018 to 2020. It also outpaced the increase in the number of smaller properties of at least 50 units.
Stocks have switched from moving in the exact opposite direction to Treasury yields in the second half of last year, both as yields soared to a peak of 5% on the 10-year note and as they came back down, to having a slight tendency to rise and fall in line with yields.
Powell said that rate cuts won’t be warranted until officials have “gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably” toward the central bank’s 2% goal.
U.S. RevPAR is forecast to increase by 2.6% to $100.50 in 2024, driven by ADR growth of 3.1% to $160.50 while occupancy declines 0.5% to 62.6%.
