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US Existing Home Sales Disappoint (Again) In July, Hover Near Record Lows

With mortgage rates rising and the 'low hire, no fire' economy leaving many anxious about their household finances, the ugly spring selling season has not been followed by a consistent rebound in existing home sales in the US.

After falling 1.4% MoM in June (revised up from a 2.4% MoM decline), US existing home sales fell again -1.7% MoM in July (worse than the -1.0% MoM exp). This dragged the annual increase in sales down to just 0.74% YoY...

Overall, existing home sales SAAR is holding very modestly off record lows, holding just above the 4 million mark...

“Home sales have been remarkably stable, even amid the rising mortgage rate environment of the past few months,” Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, said in a statement.

He added that “there’s no doubt that the housing market would be thriving if average mortgage rates were to return near 6%.”

In recent months, home-financing costs and prices went in the wrong direction. Thirty-year mortgage rates have been climbing since the late-February start of the war in Iran, and recently reached a one-year high of 6.81%.

The median sales price increased 2% from a year earlier to $434,100.

That was the highest selling price for any July on record and extended a stretch of annual price gains that started in summer 2023.

Inventories of new homes for sale remain relatively high (and are thus pressuring homebuilders to choke back on additional supply)...

But, the inventory of existing homes for sale fell slightly (-0.6%) from a year earlier to 1.54 million - the first annual decline since Oct 2023...

By region, previously owned home sales in the South, the nation’s biggest home-selling region, decreased 3.1% to a four-month low. Sales in the Midwest fell 2%. They were unchanged in the West and up in the Northeast.

First-time buyers accounted for 29% of sales in July, down from 33% a month earlier.

One silver lining is the nation’s affordability crunch is easing when compared with last year as rising household income growth has generally outpaced home price appreciation, Mark Fleming, chief economist at First American Financial Corp., wrote in a recent blog.

However, even some of that improvement has been eroded lately because of rising mortgage rates.

Tyler Durden Tue, 08/11/2026 - 10:09

"It was a celebration, and it ended in tragedy," the survivor said.

This marks the end of a schlong and painful saga for the one-inch-wonder, whose allegedly aspirin-sized phallus places him well within the threshold of a micropenis.

Trade $25 on NFL Preseason games and get up to $500 in bonuses with the Kalshi promo code NYPMAX.

Fresh off National Ice Cream Month, the California Post set out to crown LA’s ultimate ice cream, with a visit to food festival Smorgasburg’s “ice cream alley,” described as a selection of the best independent ice cream makers in the city.  I sampled ice cream — as well as frozen yogurt and gelato — from...

The "Secrets We Hide" author told Page Six that long summer days spent in the library as a kid made her love all kinds of books.

The "Secrets We Hide" author told Page Six that long summer days spent in the library as a kid made her love all kinds of books.

“I definitely did not see this coming, and it's just exciting.”

Get ready for a Richmond reunion!

A pumpkin spice latte tastes better with brand-new loungewear for fall.

Golfer Zach Holland — who played collegiately at William Carey University — resigned from his membership at WingHaven Country Club after security footage showed him faking a hole-in-one during the members-only event.

“I know my daughter and she did not do this to herself.” 

A Modest Proposal: Performance Reviews For Senators

Authored by Frank Miele via RealClearPolitics,

It seems as though only one thing motivates Congress to act - the threat of elections.

That's why both the House and Senate have moved to pass a continuing resolution to keep funding the government until December. Originally funding was going to run out on Oct. 1, the date that was decided during the last shutdown crisis.

But with virtually every member of the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate up for election in November, almost no one in Congress wanted to call attention to their own inaction by letting a new shutdown occur.

It's the political version of Pavlov's dogs. You know, the famous experiment by the Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov who trained canines to salivate at the sound of a bell because they associated the bell with the expectation of food being served.

The same thing happens with members of Congress when they hear that an election is scheduled within the next three months. Suddenly they want to be productive.

A representative can ignore constituents for 22 months and then suddenly rediscover them during the last two. And senators can become unresponsive to their voters for most of their six-year term, enjoying junkets and the other fruits of power while being under no obligation to get anything done.

Makes you almost sympathize with the Democratic Socialists of America, who have made abolition of the Senate one of their top priorities. Six-year terms have their virtues, but they also make senators especially prone to forgetting who they work for.

But maybe we could salvage the Senate if we could adapt Pavlov's experiment in a way that would hopefully train senators to do their job on the regular instead of just once in a blue moon.

Call this my modest proposal. Like Jonathan Swift's famous satirical essay proposing that poor Irish parents sell their infants as food, it isn't intended as a serious legislative recommendation. It's meant to expose an absurdity - in this case, a Congress that suddenly remembers how to govern only when voters are about to fire it.

Sadly, the proposal has little likelihood of being put into effect by those senators whom it would put on notice. Yet if its argument is accurate, then we can at least all agree that senators - and yes, all members of Congress - are little more than trained monkeys. If only we could train them well, perhaps they would do their job more consistently.

No doubt you are wondering how we could possibly accomplish such a remarkable goal. It's a relatively simple mechanism, akin to the bell that Pavlov taught dogs to associate with food.

Namely, the Senate can institute a rule that once a month, the citizen constituents of each state will be able to vote electronically on whether they wish to retain or dismiss their senator.

Now, before you worry about constitutional entanglements and the risk of meddling in the results of such digital ballots, understand that the votes will not be binding. Instead they will simply keep senators on their toes, just as the threat of real elections does today. The results will be widely publicized, and any senator who consistently fails to win majority support from his state's voters will be publicly humiliated.

But if it were taken seriously, it could have a much wider impact. Political parties could guarantee additional campaign support to senators who consistently earned the confidence of their state's voters. And the opposite would be true as well. Suppose a senator has only a 30% retention rate from the citizens of his or her state. Donors would flee. Challengers would emerge. Even the most complacent senators might begin to reconsider their inaction.

The genius of elections is not that they remove bad politicians. It's that the possibility of removal changes behavior long before Election Day. Congress doesn't need more elections. It simply needs to remember every month that one is coming. Perhaps Pavlov's bell could do the trick.

And then, instead of Congress passing a continuing resolution to fund the government for a month or two, we could return to regular order and watch appropriations bills passed for an entire year. What a revolutionary concept!

Frank Miele, retired editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Mont., is a columnist for RealClearPolitics. His book "The Media Matrix: What If Everything You Know Is Fake" is available from his Amazon author page. Visit him at HeartlandDiaryUSA.com or follow him on Facebook @HeartlandDiaryUSA and on X/Gettr @HeartlandDiary.

Tyler Durden Tue, 08/11/2026 - 09:45

Zack Snyder returned to the Warner Bros. lot on Tuesday night in a major sign the studio and its once-favorite son are ready to bury the hatchet.

While Spider-Man and Odysseus ruled movie theaters over the weekend, one surprise film that snuck in at No. 10 at the box office was "CatVideoFest 2026."

Coulier — along with John Stamos, Lori Loughlin, Jodie Sweetin and Andrea Barber — danced along to "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)" on TikTok.

Coulier — along with John Stamos, Lori Loughlin, Jodie Sweetin and Andrea Barber — danced along to "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)" on TikTok.

It's a meat madness after over 29,600 pounds of beef has been recalled.

By Dave Roberts’ estimation, the Dodgers were past the point of being able to tell themselves everything would work out for them.

Give your fingers a break.