Author: Press Room
What’s trending in porcelain and ceramic tile? And why should builders, designers, architects, homeowners and even real estate professionals care? Tile is a versatile, multi-surface, time-tested material that can enhance the sustainability, wellness potential and resilience of the homes it clads. “All of the above are important considerations when selecting tile,” emailed Jennifer Richinelli, editorial director of TILE and Contemporary Stone & Tile Design magazines that cover these realms for the building industry. “Sustainability is very important to many specifiers, and I have noticed that more and more manufacturers are promoting their sustainable campaigns – some even now having carbon-neutral…
As U.S. home prices show signs of cooling and the Fed continues its aggressive rate hike campaign, one of America’s largest real estate groups is signaling market affordability will continue to put pressure on homebuyers this year. “Affordability has certainly been a hot topic,” RE/MAX President and CEO Nick Bailey said in an exclusive interview on “The Claman Countdown” Tuesday. “If people are going to have a chance at better affordability, we need more product out there, and we’re not going to see that any time soon with new construction.”Even though U.S. home prices fell for the seventh month in…
A billion here and a billion there properly spent is going to make a cost difference for the corporate breakeven. Then there is a billion here (on low-cost assets) followed by a billion there of sales of noncore assets. Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM) management is working on the cost structure of the company to reduce the corporate breakeven over time. That will offset any perceived future negative pricing action. When this cost reduction effort is combined with slow growth, the company will not need help from commodity prices to produce higher earnings. First, The Sales Exxon Mobil announced the sale of…
A federal judge in Texas has ordered the US Food and Drug Administration to withdraw its approval of a popular abortion pill in a move that, if upheld, would amount to a nationwide restriction on the drug.District judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ordered a preliminary injunction of the drug mifepristone, one of two drugs used to end pregnancies, which would affect access to it even in states with abortion protections.However, the ban ordered by the Donald Trump-appointed judge will take effect in seven days, allowing the Biden administration time to appeal against the decision. Attorney-general Merrick Garland said he “strongly disagrees” with…
A federal judge in Texas issued a ruling Friday on medication abortion drug mifepristone, saying he will suspend the US Food and Drug Administration’s two-decade-old approval of it but paused his ruling for seven days so the federal government can appeal. But in a dramatic turn of events, a federal judge in Washington state said in a new ruling shortly after that the FDA must keep medication abortion drugs available in more than a dozen Democratic-led states. Read the Texas and Washington rulings here. Read the full article here
Stocks remain off to a winning start in 2023 despite rising recession fears and uncertainty around the stability of the banking sector. Take a closer look, however, it’s clear the market is far from moving in lockstep.Instead, the S&P 500 has demonstrated a high degree of dispersion, a measure of the variation in returns within an index or a market. Dispersion is on display as investors jump quickly on a hot stock or other investing trend, and are even quicker to get out of industries and sectors heading lower, said stock-market technical analysts, who described the phenomenon as a sign…
The Federal Reserve soon plans to roll out its FedNow offering, a real-time payments service that will provide another option for instant payments in the U.S. The service, which is scheduled to launch in July, will let money “be transferred from the account of a sender to the account of a receiver in near real-time and at any time, any day of the year,” the Fed says on its website. See more: Fed says its instant-payments service FedNow will launch in July While the U.S. already has a real-time payment option that’s run by the Clearing House, a bank-owned association,…
Mortgage rates are at the lowest level in two months, but consumers still think it’s a bad time to buy a home, according to a new report. Fannie Mae’s FNMA, -0.41% Home Purchase Sentiment Index, released Friday, fell by 3.3 points in March to 61.3, which is only slightly above an all-time low set late last year. “With the spring homebuying season now upon us, a large majority of consumers continue to believe that it’s a bad time to buy a home,” Mark Palim, vice president and deputy chief economist at Fannie Mae, said in a statement. “Homeowners sharing this…
The office of Vice President Kamala Harris said she’ll take a flight Friday afternoon to Nashville, Tenn., and meet there with state legislators. The trip comes after Tennessee Republicans on Thursday expelled two Democratic lawmakers from the state legislature over their role in a protest that called for more gun control in the aftermath of a deadly school shooting in Nashville. Harris, who initially had no public events on her schedule for Friday, denounced the GOP move in Tennessee in a tweet on Friday, saying it was “undemocratic and dangerous.” Read the full article here
By Chuck Mikolajczak NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury yields and the dollar climbed in an abbreviated session on Friday after employment data for March indicated the labor market remained tight last month, raising the odds that the Federal Reserve has at least one more rate hike in store. Wall Street exchanges were closed until Monday due to the Good Friday holiday. European markets are closed on both Friday and Monday. Nonfarm payrolls increased by 236,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said, very close to the 239,000 expectated by economists surveyed by Reuters. Data for February was revised higher…
