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Finally, some good news from The Social Security Administration (SSA): Over three million retirees and their spouses, including some teachers, firefighters, police officers, and federal employees, will see bump in their Social Security benefits by the end of the month, thanks to a law President Joe Biden signed before leaving office in January, called the Social Security Fairness Act. Here’s what to know about the update to Social Security benefits. What is the Social Security Fairness Act? The Social Security Fairness Act increases monthly Social Security benefits to 3.2 million Americans workers because it repeals the Windfall Elimination Provision and Government Pension Offset, which will trigger retroactive payments and monthly increases to a select group of retirees. According to Yahoo Finance, this benefit is mostly for retirees who receive a government or state pension based on work not covered by Social Security, like a second part-time job or side hustle. For example, this would apply to a teacher who got summers off and worked at a camp each summer. Previously, if that teacher had a pension, it meant they weren’t getting Social Security benefits from that second job. This new rule changes that. However, as Forbes noted, the bad news is: By reversing the policy, the SSA will now resume withholding 100% of benefits to recover overpayments starting at the end of March. Who is eligible for the updated Social Security benefits? Who exactly is eligible? As noted above, this law applies to Americans who receive a pension based on work that was not covered by Social Security because they did not pay Social Security taxes. Those Americans could include some but not all of these types of workers: Teachers, firefighters, and police officers in many states Federal employees covered by the Civil Service Retirement System People whose work had been covered by a foreign social security system How much will Social Security payments increase? Beneficiaries will start receiving their new monthly benefit amount, which could range from a few hundred to over $1,000 larger, based on an average Social Security check of $1,900, in April 2025, for March 2025 benefits. (Social Security benefits are paid one month behind.) Additionally, the SSA increased payments are retroactive back to January 2024, and those who are eligible will get a one-time payment for a lump sum, via direct deposit, by the end of March. (For those who don’t have their Social Security direct deposit set up yet, now is the time to do it.) How has Social Security changed in the Trump era? President Donald Trump and his adviser Elon Musk have attacked the Social Security program, claiming that the Social Security Administration is plagued by immense waste and “fraud.” Those claims have been repeatedly debunked, and a report from the agency’s Inspector General found “less than 1% of payments in recent years were determined to be improper.” The new benefit from the Biden administration also comes as the Trump administration’s SSA is about to require millions of Americans to potentially verify their identity in person, even as the federal government plans on closing offices nationwide and has cut thousands of jobs at the agency as part of the Department of Government Efficiencys (DOGE) slashing of the federal workforce. Many older Americans rely on Social Security as their monthly income, for housing, food, and healthcare.
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Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Lennarthe nation’s second-largest homebuildertold investors on Friday that their spring selling season is off to a soft start. We do not see the seasonal pickup typically associated with the beginning of the spring selling season. So we continue to lean into our machine focusing on converting leads and appointments and adjusting incentives as needed to maintain sales pace. These adjustments came in the form of mortgage rate buydowns, price reductions, and closing cost assistance, Jon Jaffe, co-CEO of Lennar, said on the Friday earnings call. In addition to Lennar acknowledging a soft start to the spring season, here are six other key takeaways from its Q1 2025 earnings report, covering the period from December 1 to February 28. 1. Lennar continues to see weakness in Florida and Texas As ResiClub as reported, many markets in those states, particularly San Antonio in Texas and Cape Coral and Punta Gorda in Southwest Florida, have seen active inventory rise well above pre-pandemic levels and home prices decline amid weakened housing demand. “In general, homebuyers in Florida and Texas, our two highest volume states, needed more help than most other markets around the country,” Jon Jaffe, co-CEO of Lennar, said on the Friday earnings call. “We needed more incentives in Florida and Texas markets to assist buyers achieve mortgage payments they can afford as well as to offset both a slowing in migration environment and increased inventory. All markets around the country require incentives to assist buyers in the current home buying environment. 2. Lennar is deploying bigger sales incentivesespecially in Florida and Texas Lennar’s average sales price, net of incentives, declined 1% from $413,000 in Q1 2024 to $408,000 in Q1 2025. Last quarter, Lennar spent the equivalent of 13% of the final sales price on sales incentives, such as mortgage rate buydowns. For a $400,000 home, that translates to $52,000 in incentives. According to John Burns Research and Consulting, thats the highest incentive level Lennar has offered since 2009and its significantly higher than Lennars cycle low in Q2 2022, when it spent 1.5% of the final sales price on sales incentives. (See historical chart here.) Lennar co-CEO Stuart Miller said on Friday that: “These are outsized [incentives] for the moment and normalized incentives should be around 5% to 6%. In other words, where and when neededlike pockets of Florida and Texas where active housing inventory has bounced back and buyers have gained leverageLennar is cutting net effective prices through larger incentives to find the market and keep sales rolling. That said, a homebuilder’s average sales price can also be skewed by changes in home size. To at least some degree, this is the case for Lennar, which has introduced more smaller home offerings over the past few years. 3. More margin compression During the pandemic housing boom, publicly-traded homebuilders achieved record profit margins as home prices soared and buyer demand ran red hot. Once the national housing demand boom fizzled out in the summer of 2022, many large homebuilders made affordability adjustments where and when needed to maintain their sales pace. Despite some profit margin compression, almost every major homebuilder entered 2024 with gross margins still above pre-pandemic 2019 levels. However, in recent quarters, margin compression has returned. During Lennar’s December 2024 earnings call, CFO Diane Bessette stated that they anticipate further margin compression, with gross margins expected to range between 19% and 19.25% for Q1 2025. Lennars Q1 2025 gross margin ended up being 18.7%its lowest in over a decade. On the March 2025 earnings call, Lennar co-CEO Stuart Miller said he expects the company’s Q2 2025 gross margin to be 18% and that they expect to continue to see margin pressure on deliveries that will be sold during the quarter. 4. Lennar chooses volume over margins Last year, when it became clear that Lennar would have to choose between offering greater incentives in 2025 (i.e., smaller margins) or lower volume, the builder made it clear it would choose the former. We’re going to adjust to market. We’re going to maintain [sales] volume, Lennar co-CEO Stuart Miller said in December. Thats exactly what it did. Its also why net new orders in Q1 2025 (18,355) were essentially flat compared to Q1 2024 (18,130) despite the choppier sales environment. 5. No impact from tariffsyet Given that Lennar is Americas second-largest homebuilder, it serves as a good proxy to figure out how Trump administration policy could be impacting homebuilders. On Friday, Lennar executives stated that tariff policy has not yet impacted their business. “We’ve been in discussions regarding the potential impacts of tariffs with our supply chain,” Lennar co-CEO Jon Jaffe told investors on Friday. “These discussions all start with a review of margin reductions Lennar has already taken. This leads to a constructive effort to identify alternative sourcing and material strategies. Additionally, we prepare our trade partners to absorb potential increases to their supply chain costs in the event of tariffs To date, we have had no impact to our cost from tariffs and we will work closely with all our trade partners that further tariffs present themselves to mitigate offset cost impacts.” 6. No impact from immigration policyyet While it’s unclear how many undocumented immigrants work in construction, we know its a chunk. In 2016, Pew Research Center estimated that 13% of the U.S. construction workforce is undocumented. In 2021, the Center for American Progress estimated that 23% of construction laborers are undocumented (see the full breakdown above). While undocumented workers are more likely to be employed by subcontractors rather than the builder, business disruptions due to deportations, if they are to occur, would still be noticed by general contractors and homebuilders. So far, Lennar hasnt seen disruptions caused by changes in immigration policy. “With respect to potential labor disruptions that could derive from immigration policy enforcement, our consistent high volume makes our construction a priority for our trade partners,” Lennar co-CEO Jon Jaffe told investors on Friday. “To date, there has been no shortage of labor or impact to cycle time. Again, our strategic trade partners appreciate the financial impact to our margins of maintaining our consistent high volume and we expect to be as well-positioned as possible should any disruptions present themselves.”
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3:52 a.m.: Wake up. 3:54 a.m.: Pour out a cup of Saratoga Water. 4:04 a.m.: Work out next to a bottle of Saratoga Water. 5:49 a.m.: Dunk face in ice-cold bowl of Saratoga Water. These are just a few of the steps of fitness influencer Ashton Halls extremely specific morning routine, which grabbed the internets attention over the weekend for its oddly regimented timing and near-comical flaunting of wealth. One particular video of Halls schedule has amassed 98.4 million views on TikTok and 674.5 million views on X, spawning countless reactions and copycats, as well as shout-outs from Mr. Beast and Sweetgreen. And theres one brand thats clearly the winner amidst all of this publicity: Saratoga Spring Water. Viewers were quick to notice that Halls routinewhich also includes rubbing a banana peel on his face, doing dead sprints on a treadmill, and eating breakfast seemingly prepared by an in-home cheffeatured a disproportionate amount of product placement shots for Saratoga-branded water. In his most viral TikTok alone, the eye-catchingly blue bottle appears in around 25 different shots. Apparently as a result of this discourse, Saratoga Water’s parent company, Primo Brands, saw its stock rise by as much as 16% in premarket trading this morning, according to MarketWatch, although it was essentially flat by midday. Meanwhile, according to Google Trends data, search queries for the brand have spiked more than 1,000% to an all-time high since Sunday. Saratoga’s big brand moment? Now, dozens of TikTok and X users are putting their own spin on Halls ultra-privileged routine. Several influencers have attempted to capitalize on the moment by mimicking Halls routine shot-for-shot, including by purchasing their own bottles of Saratoga. Brands including the Detroit Lions and Sweetgreen have both posted tweets referencing Hall’s video. Even Jimmy Donaldson (aka MrBeast), the most popular creator on YouTube, took to X with his own joke about participating in the trend. Some have been more overtly critical. Makeup artist Matt Bernstein said in an Instagram story that the Hall’s video had an “extreme undercurrent of misogyny,” noting the presence of a woman who appears out of frame to present him with food and water. Others are taking a more satirical route. One X user posted a photo of their grocery cart, filled with only bananas and Saratoga water, and asked, am I forgetting anything? Another user captioned a GIF of rapper Lil Baby counting stacks of money, Saratoga water CEO for the next three weeks. One tweet with 4.3 million views simply shows a man standing in front of a fridge full of Saratoga with the caption “Locked in.” Saratoga finally responded to the trend with an Instagram post on Sunday telling users, Plunge. If you must, and crediting Hall for his video. Still, the brand has yet to truly capitalize on this moment with its own contenta move that seems like the natural next step, given its sudden visibility in the cultural zeitgeist. While Halls original viral video doesnt specifically list Saratoga as a brand partner, it seems probable that the content is sponsored, given that the brand invariably appears in almost all of Halls TikToks. We’ve reached out to Hall for comment. In a presentation for investors last month, Primo Brand executives shared that the brand has grown significantly since it was acquired in 2021, going from $13 million in sales that year to $71 million in 2024. Saratoga did not immediately respond to Fast Companys request for more information on how the recent trend has influenced sales.
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E-Commerce
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