Economy

BENGALURU (Reuters) – Purchasing affordability for first-time U.S. homebuyers will worsen over the coming year on tight supply and just a few more Federal Reserve interest rate cuts, even as average home price rises slow, according to a Reuters poll of property experts.Without enough entry-level housing for sale, particularly for families, affordability has long been the burning issue in the housing market of the world’s largest economy, consistently pricing out prospective first-time homebuyers.Slightly lower interest rates over the coming six months will not be enough to entice new buyers into a housing market where prices are still over 50% higher than pre-pandemic levels, according to a Nov. 12-27 Reuters poll of property analysts.On purchasing affordability expectations, 10 of 19 survey respondents changed their view to “worsen” from “improve” compared with an August survey. All 26 polled in August said it would improve.”Take the U.S. and a lot of the West – they’re getting older. That’s where the wealth is. They take on second homes, even third homes, pricing out younger generations who just haven’t had enough time to build up any savings,” said John LaForge, head of real asset strategy, Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) Investment Institute.”We continue to have these big overhangs – do you have the money for down payments? Do you have savings with the younger generation? I’d say we’re getting better, but we’re nowhere close to where we need to be.”The median age of U.S. homebuyers is 49, up from 31 in 1981, according to recent research from Apollo Global Management (NYSE:APO).Average U.S. home price rises, based on the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller composite index of 20 metropolitan areas, will slow from 5.1% this year to 3.2% next, and 3.5% in 2026, Reuters poll medians showed.Those forecasts are roughly unchanged from August. That comes despite financial markets currently pricing only about three more quarter-point interest rate cuts from the Fed, just half what was expected then, on worries of an inflation resurgence following Donald Trump’s election victory.HOUSE PRICE RISES TO OUTPACE RENTSExpensive homes have also forced many to keep renting, making up slightly over one-third of occupied U.S. housing. Asked what would happen to average rent inflation over the coming year, over 70% of survey respondents, 13 of 18, said it would stay about the same or decrease.Nearly two-thirds of respondents, 13 of 20, said average home prices would rise faster than average rents over the coming year.”We expect house price growth will continue to slow as low affordability forces more buyers out of the market. Sellers will have to adjust their expectations on price increases to sell their properties,” said Cristian deRitis, deputy chief economist at Moody’s (NYSE:MCO) Analytics.Existing home sales, comprising more than 90% of total sales, are forecast to rise only slightly to a 4.0 million unit annualized rate next quarter and stay around that rate over coming quarters. That is well below 6.6 million units in 2021, in the middle of the pandemic boom.Fewer Fed rate cuts will also prevent mortgage rates from falling much more.The 30-year mortgage rate, which averaged nearly 7% through 2023, is forecast to average 6.5% next year and decline only to 6.3% in 2026 – higher than 6.1% and 5.9%, respectively, predicted in the August survey.”With home prices expected to continue to rise and mortgage rates declining less than we previously expected after Trump’s election, conditions for first-time buyers are likely to worsen,” said Grace Zwemmer from Oxford Economics.(Other stories from the Q4 global Reuters housing poll)  More

The so-called Second Financing for the Future Act is intended in particular to improve the tax framework for investments in venture capital, while obstacles to investment in infrastructure and renewable energies are to be removed and bureaucracy reduced. The draft, seen by Reuters, states it would offer tax relief for companies of 45 million euros ($47.37 million) per year.However, it is questionable whether the current minority government will find a majority for the law to be approved in the two houses of parliament before the new election on Feb. 23.The act was largely drawn up by former finance minister and leader of the Free Democrats Christian Lindner, which is why his party might be inclined to support the plan in parliament even after Chancellor Olaf Scholz fired him, paving the way for the snap elections.The project is one of the 49 measures from the government’s growth initiative that is meant to strengthen Germany as a business location and boost anaemic economic growth.($1 = 0.9500 euros) More

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The bank said in a note Wednesday that the minutes reveal a Fed inclined toward gradual easing, contingent on labor market developments and inflation trends.The minutes indicated a shift from September’s 50bp “recalibration” to a more measured approach, with the committee now focused on moving the policy rate toward a neutral stance.This adjustment was underpinned by the perception that downside risks to employment and activity had lessened.“Such gradualism would allow the committee to adjust policy to changes in the balance of risks,” Barclays (LON:BARC) noted, while uncertainties remain regarding the neutral policy rate.Confidence in the inflation trajectory was evident, with participants citing several factors supporting the outlook, including “waning business pricing power, well-anchored inflation expectations, and diminishing wage pressures.”However, Barclays noted that a couple of participants expressed concerns that disinflation could take longer than anticipated.The upcoming November payrolls report will likely play a pivotal role in cementing the December rate cut, according to the bank.“This outcome likely hinges upon the magnitude of the bounceback in payroll employment,” Barclays explained.Looking ahead, Barclays projects two additional 25bp cuts in 2025—one in March and another in December—assuming no major disruptions from tariffs or policy shifts.Beyond that, the forecast includes two further cuts in 2026, in June and September, which would lower the target range to 3.25%-3.50% by the end of that year.While the FOMC avoided direct speculation on incoming Trump administration policies, Barclays believes the minutes hinted at potential challenges tied to the sustainability of recent supply-side gains, which could lead to heightened tensions in the future. More

(Reuters) – Rank-and-file attorneys in the federal government fear major budget cuts when President-elect Donald Trump assumes office and are hunting for private-sector jobs in unusually high numbers, five legal recruiters told Reuters. Each new administration sparks an exodus of political appointees and other senior legal officials, but the recruiters said they are also hearing from far more lower-level, career government lawyers this year.”It absolutely feels different than the transition to the first Trump administration,” said Rachel Nonaka, a former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission attorney-turned-recruiter in Washington. Another Washington headhunter, Dan Binstock, said government attorneys have approached his firm Garrison at five times the normal post-election rate, and far more of them are career civil servants.”The level of uncertainty is like nothing we’ve seen,” said Binstock, who has been a recruiter for 20 years. More than 44,000 licensed attorneys serve in the federal government, according to March data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. About a third of those lawyers work in the Justice Department, and fewer than 400 of them are non-career political appointees.The Department of Education, which Trump has claimed he would try to abolish, employs nearly 600 lawyers. The number of lawyers in all cabinet-level agencies grew by about 2,500 during both the Trump and Biden administrations.This month, Trump created a new unofficial Department of Government Efficiency led by billionaire Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk and former biotech executive Vivek Ramaswamy, who argued last week that executive actions to lift regulations could pave the way for mass reductions in the federal workforce. “The Trump Administration will have a place for people serving in government who are committed to defending the rights of the American people, putting America first, and ensuring the best use of working men and women’s tax dollars,” transition spokesperson Brian Hughes said in a statement.Trump has accused government lawyers of frustrating his first-term agenda and faced two federal criminal indictments by what he described as a politicized Biden Justice Department. His nominee for attorney general, Pam Bondi, has called for an investigation into how those cases were prosecuted.”The prosecutors will be prosecuted. The bad ones. The investigators will be investigated,” Bondi told Fox News last year. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in June rejected accusations by House Republicans that he had politicized the criminal justice system and accused them of peddling conspiracy theories that could endanger federal law enforcement officers.GOING PRIVATEJesse Panuccio, who served as acting associate attorney general during the first Trump administration, said at an event hosted by the conservative Federalist Society this month that civil servants’ job is to advance their elected leaders’ agenda.”If they don’t want to carry it out, there are a lot of great jobs out there in the private sector,” said Panuccio, who is now a partner at law firm Boies Schiller Flexner.Washington boasts one of the country’s top legal markets, with dozens of firms that take advantage of the revolving door between government and corporate law. Senior lawyers leaving the Biden administration may have an easy time finding jobs at companies and big law firms, which are flush with cash this year. But for more junior lawyers with narrow specialties, finding private-sector jobs may not be so easy.Not all government legal jobs easily translate to the private sector, said Jeff Jaeckel, vice chair of law firm Morrison Foerster. He said large law firms like his want attorneys with a “very specific and valuable skill set” to serve clients, such as advising financial institutions facing regulatory scrutiny. In contrast, a government lawyer who reviews nuclear-treaty texts may lack commercial appeal, one recruiter said.Recruiters also warned that civil servants this year may be competing for jobs directly with their own more experienced bosses. “They’ll lose,” Nonaka said.For those that fail to find new employers, the new administration may bring less change to some jobs than anticipated. “I’ve been through a lot of different administrations,” said Rod Rosenstein, who served as deputy U.S. attorney general under Trump and as Maryland’s U.S. attorney under both Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Barack Obama. “Most of the work of the department goes on unaffected.” More

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The ECB is expected by investors to cut interest rates at every one of its upcoming meetings at least through next June and the 3.25% deposit rate is now expected to end 2025 at 1.75%, a level low enough – in the view of many economists – to start stimulating growth. Schnabel, however, appeared to push back on those bets, arguing that central bank stimulus does not resolve structural issues and even squanders valuable policy space for when an economic shock would require speedy ECB action. “Given the inflation outlook, I think we can gradually move toward neutral if the incoming data continue to confirm our baseline,” Schnabel said, referring to an interest rate level that neither stimulates nor slows growth. “I would warn against moving too far, that is into accommodative territory. I don’t think that would be appropriate from today’s perspective,” Schnabel said in an interview published on Wednesday. Some policymakers have called for faster rate cuts and possible stimulus because inflation is falling more quickly than predicted and could undershoot the target, a premise Schnabel also rejected. “Risks to inflation are now more balanced. But I don’t see a significant risk of an undershoot, in particular one that would warrant a response from our side,” she said.Schnabel added that she did not see a recession in the euro zone and said there were some signs of a consumption-led recovery, which could underpin the bank’s narrative for a modest recovery. More

The US is set to release the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price index, the Federal Reserve’s preferred gauge of underlying inflation, later Wednesday.There remains a degree of uncertainty over whether the US central bank will deliver another 25-basis point cut in December given recent stubbornly strong inflation data.While the US is due to release November data on both consumer and producer prices before the Fed’s next meeting on Dec. 17-18 this will be the final PCE report before then.Economists are expecting the PCE index to have risen 2.3% annually in October, an increase from 2.1% the prior month.The minutes of the Fed’s November meeting, released Tuesday, suggested members continue to support a gradual approach to monetary policy easing.US stock futures edged lower Wednesday, with investors acting cautiously ahead of the release of Federal Reserve’s most closely followed gauge of inflation. By 04:00 ET (09:00 GMT), the Dow futures contract was down 25 points, or 0.1%, S&P 500 futures dropped 8 points, or 0.1%, and Nasdaq 100 futures fell by 45 points, or 0.2%.The main benchmarks closed positively Tuesday, with both the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average posting fresh intraday and closing highs.Activity is likely to be subdued Wednesday, with the market closed for the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday and then set to end early Friday. Today’s main focus will be the release of the personal consumption expenditures price index [see above], as investors seek more clues over future Fed rate policy, particularly at its December meeting.There are more quarterly earnings to digest Wednesday, while Dell Technologies (NYSE:DELL) traded sharply lower premarket after the tech gaint issued disappointing guidance for the current quarter.Donald Trump is not even in the White House for his second term yet, but is already causing waves in global markets after threatening to impose more duties on imports from China, Canada and Mexico. Trump claimed that the measures were aimed at curbing illegal immigration and illicit drugs, but they also have the potential to dent corporate earnings, according to analysts at Citi, and the broader market had still not priced in this risk. Citi said on the earnings front, tariffs could cut earnings estimates for the S&P 500 in 2025 by “a few percentage points,” and could erode gross margins by more than 250 basis points. Still, the brokerage noted that a large number of corporations were granted relief from the tariffs during Trump’s first term. Citi said markets were moving from a period of election uncertainty into a period of policy uncertainty, citing the many unknowns over what Trump’s second term will bode for markets. Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) CEO Tim Cook appeared at the China International Supply Chain Expo in Beijing at the start of the week, using the opportunity to endear himself, and by association his company, to the country.China is a key market for Apple, and is also a major part of the company’s supply chain, with a bulk of its devices being assembled in the country. Cook’s appearance in China comes as Apple grapples with sluggish iPhone sales in the country, as the tech giant struggles with heightened competition from local players, including Huawei.Sales of foreign-branded smartphones, including Apple’s iPhone, in China fell 44.25% in October year-on-year, according to data released earlier Wednesday from a government-affiliated research firm.Apple’s upcoming iOS 18.2 release, set to debut in December, is set to be a critical factor for the company’s iPhone replacement cycle in the coming quarters, according to analysts at Citi.The “rollout of iOS 18.2 in December will be an important determinant for the pace of iPhone replacement,” Citi added.Crude prices edged higher Wednesday, with traders assessing the potential impact of a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hezbollah as well as an unexpected, substantial draw in US oil inventories.By 04:00 ET, the US crude futures (WTI) climbed 0.5% to $69.08 a barrel, while the Brent contract fell 0.3% to $72.54 a barrel.Both benchmarks settled lower on Tuesday after Israel agreed to a ceasefire with Lebanon’s Hezbollah. The deal will take effect today, potentially ending a conflict across the Israeli-Lebanese border, quelling some concerns that persistent fighting in the Middle East will disrupt oil supplies from the crude-rich region. Data from the American Petroleum Institute, released on Tuesday, indicated that US oil inventories shrank by nearly 6 million barrels in the week to Nov. 22, compared with the small build expected.If confirmed by official data later Wednesday, this would increase hopes that US fuel demand remained strong, potentially tightening oil supplies in the coming months.Attention will now turn to next week’s meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies, known as OPEC+, to determine future production plans.    More