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When it comes to AI agents, the makers of QuickBooks are hoping that youre into it. Intuitthe fintech platform that owns TurboTax, Credit Karma, Mailchimp, and QuickBooksannounced that it has implemented a new set of AI agents into its products. The company showcased how the AI agents work within QuickBooks at an event on June 24, and Fast Company was able to see a demonstration of how the agents can help business owners and entrepreneurs use them to speed up their bookkeeping and accounting processes. QuickBooks will incorporate a Payments Agent, an Accounting Agent, a Customer Agent, and a Finance Agent, all of which are designed to become intimately familiar with a businesss specific customer base and financial track record, offer up insights, and make additional analyses. And though its just now being rolled out, the new AI capabilities have been in the works for a long time. This is five or six years in the making, Sasan Goodarzi, Intuits CEO, tells Fast Company. Weve made huge investments in the past five years, he says, and the company has taken its time because when it comes to bookkeeping and accounting, accuracy matters. [Image: Intuit] In other words, Goodarzi says that while an AI tool like ChatGPT might spit out wrong or incorrect information, a customer relying on QuickBooks to crunch their numbers needs to be absolutely sure and trust in Intuits accuracyotherwise, they could find themselves with serious issues. As such, Intuit wanted to make sure everything was above board before launching to its full customer base. If it screws up, its a big problem, he says. Additionally, Goodarzi says that business owners are relying on a huge number of apps and platforms to run their companies, an issue that Intuit is trying to simplify. What Im hearing from customers all the time is that theyre over-digitized, there are too many apps. Theyre not getting the benefit from their time and money, he says. This is about creating a one-stop shop, a refreshed way to discover all of the capabilities within QuickBooks, he says, noting that many of Intuits customers are unaware of how many tools exist within the QuickBooks ecosystem. And its the discovery and engagement with those tools that Goodarzi says has been the area of the most positive feedback. But the primary question: Are the AI implementations actually producing value for users? Yes, Goodarzi says. He notes that during the testing phase, the new AI capabilities have led to significant time and money savings for users, though that can be difficult to quantify, and expects that the new features will both resonate with QuickBooks wider user base when they officially launch on July 1, and help the companys bottom line. I was talking about AI changing the world six years ago, and people were laughing at me, he says. Now, were actually seeing natural adoption, driving incredible value.
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E-Commerce
Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Since the Pandemic Housing Boom fizzled out, major homebuilders across various marketsespecially in top pandemic boomtownshave had to cut net effective home prices to avoid a deeper sales pullback. However, some builders, like Lennar and D.R. Horton, have primarily done so through larger incentivessuch as mortgage rate buydownsin part to protect community comps and avoid upsetting buyers already in their backlog. Speaking to analysts on Tuesday, KB Homewhich prefers outright home price cuts over incentivessaid that some buyers turning to some of their competitors are effectively overpaying for new builds just to get rate buydowns, and if they need to sell in the immediate future, they might not be able to fetch the artificially high base price they paid. I believe that there are customers [of other homebuilders] that are overpaying for the home to effectively get an incentive. So they’re tied into this higher price that they’re gonna be stuck with forever until they sell that home. They may potentially be upside down when they try to sell that home versus a clean, simple, transparent way of sellingthe value of what we offer, KB Home COO Rob McGibney said on the builders June 23, 2025 earnings call. Below are ResiClubs other takeaways from KB Homes Q2 earnings report and earnings call this week. KB Home says the 2025 housing market is softer than expected KB Homes net new orders by Q2: Q2 2018 > 3,532 Q2 2019 > 4,064 Q2 2020 > 1,758 (COVID-19 lockdowns) Q2 2021 > 4,300 Q2 2022 > 3,914 Q2 2023 > 3,936 Q2 2024 > 3,997 Q2 2025 > 3,460 The actions we began to take late in our 2025 first quarter, evaluating base pricing in every community relative to local market conditions, then repositioning our communities with a focus on offering the most compelling value, led to strong net orders in March. However, our net orders declined in April and May, which did not follow the typical spring trajectory, said KB Home COO Rob McGibney. McGibney added that: As a result, even though our average community count was in line with our projection, and our cancellation rate was fairly steady, our monthly absorption pace per community was 4.5 net orders compared to 5.5 in last year’s second quarter. While our net order pace was below our internal goal, we believe it ranks high among the large production homebuilders. KB Home: All of the markets we operate in experienced some level of softening at some point during the quarter While the pricing story continues to be very local and vary a great deal across the country, most markets are at least seeing some softening. I would say that all of the markets we operate in experienced some level of softening at some point during the quarter, KB Home COO Rob McGibney told investors on Tuesday. Markets that I would say where we’re still seeing relatively strong demand and sales performance would be Las Vegas, the Inland Empire, the North Bay in Northern California, Texas markets like Houston and San Antonio. McGibney added that: By contrast, some of the markets that are facing some more significant headwinds recently are like Sacramento and Seattle. They’ve slowed down a little bit, and we’ve had to do a little more there with price relative to some of the others. Markets like Austin and Colorado, Jacksonville, Orlando, and Florida [have been weaker too]. Places where resale supply has increased and starts putting pressure on pricing and creating more competition and just more choices for buyers. But, you know, it is very local, very specific, [we] can’t put a market condition on an entire state or even an entire market in most cases, it’s community by community. KB Home had to make some bigger price cuts in markets where resale inventory is above 6 months On Tuesday, KB Home told analysts that it cut base home prices in half of its communities in the quarter ending May 31st. In the markets where you’ve seen resale inventory or resale supply get back to norms or above those norms of six or seven months of supplythose resales become a more formidable competitor than they were to us back when we would measure months of supply in terms of weeks instead of months. And on the flip side, most of the markets where resale supply has stayed fairly suppresed and limited, we’re tending to see better results there, KB Home COO Rob McGibney told analysts on Tuesday. Margin compression continues During the Pandemic Housing Boom, many publicly traded homebuilders achieved record profit margins as home prices soared and buyer demand ran red hot. Ever since the national housing demand boom fizzled out in the summer of 2022, many large homebuilders have reduced margin and made affordability/pricing adjustments where and when needed to maintain their sales pace or prevent a bigger sales pullback. That includes KB Home, which reported a housing gross profit margin of 19.3% in Q2 2025or 19.7% excluding inventory chargesdown from a cycle peak of 26.7% in Q3 2022. Its margin has now compressed all the way back to pre-pandemic 2019 levels. KB Home: Only two minor price increases [related to tariffs] to date So far, tariffs havent had much impact on KB Homes material costs. Homes that we started in May came in at the lowest cost per square foot year to date, as our divisions are continuing to drive better performance on cost. Our costs, including lumber, are protected for almost all of our third-quarter starts under the terms of our supply contracts. Our national purchasing team, working with our divisions, has done an excellent job holding off tariff-related cost increases, with only two minor price increases to date, KB Home COO Rob McGibney told analysts on Tuesday.
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E-Commerce
The U.S. economy shrank at a 0.5% annual pace from January through March as President Donald Trumps trade wars disrupted business, the Commerce Department reported Thursday in an unexpected deterioration of earlier estimates. First-quarter growth was weighed down by a surge of imports as U.S. companies, and households, rushed to buy foreign goods before Trump could impose tariffs on them. The Commerce Department previously estimated that the economy fell 0.2% in the first quarter. Economists had forecast no change in the department’s third and final estimate. The January-March drop in gross domestic product the nations output of goods and services reversed a 2.4% increase in the last three months of 2024 and marked the first time in three years that the economy contracted. Imports expanded 37.9%, fastest since 2020, and pushed GDP down by nearly 4.7 percentage points. Consumer spending also slowed sharply, expanding just 0.5%, down from a robust 4% in the fourth-quarter of last year. It is a significant downgrade from the Commerce Department’s previous estimate. Consumers have turned jittery since Trump started plastering big taxes on imports, anticipating that the tariffs will impact their finances directly. And the Conference Board reported this week that Americans view of the U.S. economy worsened in June, resuming a downward slide that had dragged consumer confidence in April to its lowest level since the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. The Conference Board said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index slid to 93 in June, down 5.4 points from 98.4 last month. A measure of Americans short-term expectations for their income, business conditions and the job market fell 4.6 points to 69. Thats well below 80, the marker that can signal a recession ahead. Former Federal Reserve economist Claudia Sahm said the downward revision to consumer spending today is a potential red flag.” Sahm, now chief economist at New Century Advisors, noted that Commerce downgraded spending on recreation services and foreign travel which could have reflect great consumer pessimism and uncertainty.” A category within the GDP data that measures the economys underlying strength rose at a 1.9% annual rate from January through March. It’s a decent number, but down from 2.9% in the fourth quarter of 2024 and from the Commerce Department’s previous estimate of 2.5% January-March growth. This category includes consumer spending and private investment but excludes volatile items like exports, inventories and government spending. And federal government spending fell at a 4.6% annual pace, the biggest drop since 2022. In another sign that Trump’s policies are disrupting trade, Trade deficits reduce GDP. But thats just a matter of mathematics. GDP is supposed to count only whats produced domestically, not stuff that comes in from abroad. So imports which show up in the GDP report as consumer spending or business investment have to be subtracted out to keep them from artificially inflating domestic production. The first-quarter import influx likely wont be repeated in the April-June quarter and therefore shouldnt weigh on GDP. In fact, economists expect second-quarter growth to bounce back to 3% in the second quarter, according to a survey of forecasters by the data firm FactSet. The first look at April-June GDP growth is due July 30. ____ This story has been corrected to show that the drop in federal spending was the biggest since 2022, not 1986. Paul Wiseman, AP economics writer
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