Home prices for Cape Coral-Fort Myers have tumbled 11% in the two years through May, the most of any major metro area. The metro area of about 800,000 is feeling the effects of elevated home prices, ballooning insurance premiums and property taxes, natural disasters, a return to the office for remote workers, and waning demand from investors after a glut of building in the area brought rental prices down.
Only 26% of people in the top third of earners—households making about $130,000 or more—said in the three months ending in June that they were better off than a year ago, near the lowest level since the depths of the financial crisis in 2009.
The city’s most recent report about rent-stabilized units says landlords’ profit was up 12.1% between 2022 and 2023.
BlackRock plans to offer a 401(k) target-date fund with a 5% to 20% allocation to private investments, depending on an investor’s age. BlackRock estimates target-date funds with private investments could earn an extra 0.5% annually on average before fees.
Hotel owners have to contend with what local Los Angeles union leaders say will be the highest minimum wage in the country. The city council voted last month to boost the wage for workers in hotels with 60 rooms or more. Hourly pay, currently $20.32, will increase every year until it reaches $30 in 2028.
America’s housing market is showing increased interest from international buyers. The data showed the share of home shoppers who came from outside the U.S. grew from 1.3% in the first quarter of 2020 to 1.9% during the same time this year. It was also up from 1.7% in the fourth quarter of 2024.
A Swiss building-materials company will spinoff of its North American operations, Amrize, the biggest cement provider and second-biggest commercial roofing provider in North America. It will debut as a public company with a market capitalization of $30 billion, marking the biggest spinoff so far this year.
An investment arm of insurer Prudential Financial will buy up to $500 million of consumer loans from technology-backed consumer lender Affirm Holdings for a period of three years. Most of the loans come due in six months and Affirm will be able to re-lend the investment throughout the life of the deal, allowing it to finance $3 billion of buy-now-pay-later loans. The deal is part of a growing wave of transactions pairing a handful of large private-credit investors with financial technology companies that are replacing banks as go-to lenders for the American public.
Apartment occupancy among the nation’s 50 largest metro areas stayed steady in May month-to-month, at 95.7%, but is up 90 basis points year-to-date. And while all of those markets posted annual growth in occupancy, 40% were down on a monthly basis.
