 |
|
|
|||||
Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Zillow economists just published their updated 12-month forecast, projecting that U.S. home pricesas measured by the Zillow Home Value Indexwill rise +1.2% between August 2025 and August 2026. Heading into 2025, Zillows 12-month forecast for U.S. home prices was +2.6%. However, many housing markets across the country softened faster than expected, prompting Zillow to issue several downward revisions. By April 2025, Zillow had cut its 12-month national home price outlook to -1.7%. However, in recent months, Zillow has stopped issuing downward revisions. In August, Zillow revised its 12-month outlook to +0.4%, and it is now revising that outlook to +1.2%. Sellers took a step back from the housing market in August in response to slow demand from cash-strapped home shoppers. Buyers still in the market have plenty of opportunity, especially in inventory-rich environments. But competitive momentum that has been swinging fast in buyers favor in recent months is showing signs of stopping nationwide, Kara Ng, a senior economist at Zillow, wrote in a September report. While Zillows national home price forecast is no longer negativeit isnt exactly bullish either. High housing costs continue to sideline prospective buyers, making it easier for those still in the hunt. Zillows market heat index shows the market is balanced between buyers and sellers nationwide, with less competition among buyers than in any August since 2018, Ng wrote. Homes are lingering longer before finding a buyer as well. The median time on market for a sold home is 27 daysa full week longer than last year and one day longer than pre-pandemic norms. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}})}(); Among the 300 largest U.S. metro-area housing markets, Zillow expects the biggest home price increase between August 2025 and August 2026 to occur in these 15 metros: Atlantic City, NJ 4.7% Torrington, CT 4.7% Saginaw, MI 4.6% Pottsville, PA 4.4% Rockford, IL 4.3% Kingston, NY 4.3% Concord, NH 4.3% Knoxville, TN 4.2% Hartford, CT 4.1% New Haven, CT 4.0% Hilton Head Island, SC 4.0% Vineland, NJ 4.0% Fayetteville, AR 3.9% Norwich, CT 3.9% Youngstown, OH 3.7% Among the 300 largest U.S. metro-area housing markets, Zillow expects the biggest home price decline between August 2025 and August 2026 to occur in these 15 metros: Houma, LA -7.9% Lake Charles, LA -7.5% Lafayette, LA -5.3% New Orleans, LA -4.8% Beaumont, TX -4.5% Shreveport, LA -4.5% Alexandria, LA -4.5% Odessa, TX -3.3% Corpus Christi, TX -3.2% San Francisco, CA -3.0% Santa Rosa, CA -2.7% Monroe, LA -2.7% Chico, CA -2.6% Texarkana, TX -2.6% Austin, TX -2.4% U.S. home prices, as measured by the Zillow Home Value Index, are currently down +0.01% year over year. If Zillows latest 12-month outlook (+1.2%) comes to fruition, it would represent a tiny acceleration. Below is what the current year-over-year rate of home price growth looks like for single-family and condo home prices. The Sun Belt, in particular Southwest Florida, is currently the epicenter of housing market weakness right now. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}})}();
Category:
E-Commerce
Early on the morning of September 23, a 12-foot-tall bronze statue appeared on the lawn of the National Mall. It depicted President Trump and convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein holding hands and frolicking together, and the plaque at its base read: We celebrate the long-lasting bond between President Donald J. Trump and his closest friend, Jeffrey Epstein. By the next morning, the statue had been hauled away by U.S. Park Police. The installationtitled Best Friends Foreverwas intended to spotlight Trumps 15-year friendship with Epstein, a chapter thats faced intense scrutiny over the past several months. Trump has continuously attempted to discredit stories linking himself to Epstein, even as new evidence of their association continues to come to light. It’s just the latest in a series of similar satirical statues that have cropped up on the National Mall and around Washington, D.C. In a statement to NPR on September 24, a group called The Secret Handshake claimed responsibility for Best Friends Forever, as well as most of the other statues that have materialized in recent months. [Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images] Despite receiving a National Park Service permit to remain on the mall until Sunday evening, the statue was removed just 24 hours after it appeared. A spokesperson for the Department of the Interior told NPR that it was removed because it was not compliant with the permit, though they did not specify how. An anonymous member of The Secret Handshake told the media outlet that “some people within the parks department, aka most likely the Trump administration, were trying to find ways to say we were not in compliance. “They showed up in the middle of the night without notice and physically toppled the statue, broke it, and took it away,” the source added. According to Ken Lum, a sculpture artist and chair of the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania, The Secret Handshake’s brand of irreverent critique is part of a long tradition that dates back five centuries. He says the removal of Best Friends Forever signals that we’re living in a “humorless” time. [Photo: Volkan Furuncu/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images] A medieval tradition Sculpture as a form of social protest is nothing new. One of the examples that might be most familiar to an American audience, Lum says, is Fearless Girla statue of a small girl of maybe 6 or 7 that was erected in opposition to the famous Wall Street sculpture Charging Bull in 2017. The sculpture, meant to call attention to gender inequality in the Wall Street community, made national headlines and drew crowds for months. But Lum says he believes Best Friends Forever and The Secret Handshakes other recent statues critiquing Trump belong to a different genre of artone that has its roots in a centuries-old practice first pioneered in medieval Europe. I wouldn’t say it’s really protest art necessarily, Lum says. There’s a range of art in betweensocial criticism, satire, cheeky expression. The first thought I have goes back to medieval carnivals. Starting in the early 1500s, Lum says, communities in England and France held carnival celebrations that were sometimes also known as the Feast of Fools. During this period, the ruling class allowed a brief role reversal, in which working people were permitted and even encouraged to play the role of the king as a buffoon and openly satirize the prevailing social order. Satirical art emerged as a key tool to expose societal inequities and allow open discussion of citizens grievances. [Image: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty Images] I think there’s something to be said about [medieval carnivals], even though its not practiced anymore, Lum says. The situation right now is humorless. Hundreds of years later, Lum believes that this genre of artistic parody still serves a critical purposenot just to allow for open dialogue, but also to bring some measure of levity to the discourse between the people and their government. Best Friends Forever pulls on that satirical lever through its sarcastic tone and absurdist take on Trump and Epsteins friendship. [Photo: Tom Brenner for The Washington Post/Getty Images] Further, Lum notes, the sculpture uses a strategy called anti-monumentalism, or the adoption of traditionally powerful sculptural aesthetics, to question the powers that be. In this case, Trump and Epstein are rendered in an imitation of bronze, a material thats been invested with a kind of authority, Lum says. Thats to imitate a long tradition, going back thousands and thousands of years, where bronze, marble, and other types of stone are seen as the most important, or even sacred, materials for depicting topics of national importance, Lum explains. Specifically, he adds, bronze is commonly associated with universality and univocality. Theyre playing on that, being very irreverent and even impudent. The Secret Handshakes message may even be amplified by the sculptures immediate removal. While Lum wouldnt necessarily characterize Best Friends Forevers removal as censorship, given that it was initially permitted to go up, he says its swift removal demonstrates a lot of practicing sanctimony. That it was removed is no surprise, Lum says. The surprise is that it was allowed to be put up, however temporarily. But the cheeky humor of the work met up against an absolutist self-righteousness.
Category:
E-Commerce
No matter how flashy a smartphone might be, how many features it touts, it has a single piece of technology packed inside that is more important than any other: the battery. When it runs dry, your smartphone can no longer be the worlds best camera or the ultimate communication device. It is nothing more than a useless slab of glass and metal. Which is exactly why manufacturers do everything they can to prolong battery life. Over the past several years, Apple has been cramming higher-capacity batteries into its smartphones so that they last longer on a single charge. The company has also been optimizing its software to prolong the iPhones juice. In iOS 26, Apple has added four new features to the iPhone that can help users eek out as much battery life as possible. Heres how to use them. Enable Adaptive Power Adaptive Power is one of the best features of iOS 26, because it can help keep your iPhone going longer on a single charge. The feature utilizes machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence, to track your recent iPhone usage patterns. It then uses this data to predict whether you may need extra battery life for the day. If Adaptive Power determines that you are, in fact, going to need more battery life for the day, it will help conserve your iPhones power by lowering the screen brightness by 3%, limiting background activities, turning on Low Power Mode when your battery reaches 20%, and making other performance adjustments. It does all this automaticallyprovided that you have Adaptive Power enabled. Heres how to do that: Open the Settings app. Tap Battery. Tap Power Mode. Toggle the switch next to Adaptive Power to ON (green). Additionally, if you toggle the Adaptive Power Notifications switch to ON (green), your iPhone will also show you a notification whenever Adaptive Power mode kicks in. If this toggle is disabled, Adaptive Power mode will still engage; you just wont be notified of it. It should be noted that, while Adaptive Power is an iOS 26 feature, not all iPhones that can run iOS 26 can take advantage of this. Since Adaptive Power relies on artificial intelligence, it only works on the iPhone 15 Pro and later. Quickly enable Low Power Mode when the iPhone needs it most Low Power Mode is another feature that you can use to conserve your iPhones battery life. Low Power Mode has been available on iPhones for some time, but with iOS 26, Apple has introduced a new way to turn the mode on easily. If your iPhone has the Dynamic Island, a notification will now appear there, alerting you that your iPhone’s battery life is down to 20%. The notification will also show you a toggle that you can tap to turn on Low Power Mode quickly. Previously, you needed to turn on Low Power Mode by going into the Settings app or via the iPhones Control Center. Putting the toggle in the notification itself means that Low Power Mode is just a tap away when you need it most. What sets Low Power Mode apart from Adaptive Power is that it works on iPhones older than the iPhone 15 Pro. But to use the new Low Power Mode notification toggle, youll need an iPhone with a Dynamic Island, which is the iPhone 14 Pro and later. If youve got one of those supported phones: When the Low Battery notification appears in the Dynamic Island, tap the red toggle to turn on Low Power Mode. The red toggle will change to yellow when Low Power Mode is engaged. When Low Power Mode is on, your iPhone will reduce its brightness and some visual effects, turn off background app refresh and email fetching, pause iCloud Photos syncing, and implement other power-saving features. See how long your iPhone battery will take to charge Another welcome new feature in iOS 26 that can help you manage your battery life is a new charging time indicator on the iPhones Lock Screen. This indicator will tell you how long your iPhone will take to charge to 100% (or a lower percentage if youve set a battery charging limit). Its a convenient feature that takes the guesswork out of determining how long your iPhone needs to remain plugged in. Heres how to use it: Plug your iPhone into a charger. Once the screen turns off, tap it with your finger. Above the clock, youll see a notification that tells you what percentage of your battery is currently charged and how many minutes or hours it will take to charge your iPhone to its desired charging level (usually 80% or 100%, depending on your preferences). How to better understand your iPhones battery health Using the three tips above can help you conserve and manage your iPhones battery for longer. But these arent the only features Apple has built into iOS to help you understand your iPhones battery life. For years now, Apple has included a Battery Dashboard inside the Settings app. This dashboard gives you an overview of not just your batterys charge, but also which apps are using the most power. In iOS 26, the Battery Dashboard has received a visual makeover. To access it, open the Settings app and tap on Battery. On the next screen, youll see key battery metrics that can help give you a better understanding of how your iPhones battery is being used, including which apps and system activities are taking up the most power, how long ago your last charge was, and what remaining capacity your battery has left. Understanding this information, and taking advantage of the new iOS 26 battery features listed above, can help you keep your iPhone running longer.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||