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Mortgage application payments decreased to $2,167 in June, a 2.4% decline from $2,219 in May, according to the Purchase Applications Payment Index by the Mortgage Bankers Association.
Homebuyer affordability conditions are beginning to improve, according to experts.

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Home affordability has slightly improved for buyers this summer, according to a recent report. 
The median new mortgage payment was $2,167 in June, a 2.4% decline from $2,219 in May, according to new data from the Mortgage Bankers Association. The index measures how new monthly mortgage payments change over time, relative to income. 

A decrease in the index shows borrower affordability improved, which can happen when loan application amounts and mortgage rates decrease, or homebuyer earnings grow.
“Homebuyer affordability conditions improved for the second straight month as declining mortgage rates continue to increase purchasing power and is enticing some borrowers back into the housing market,” Edward Seiler, MBA’s associate vice president of housing economics, wrote in the release.
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Lawrence Yun, chief economist and senior vice president of research of the National Association of Realtors, also sees promising indicators for homebuyers.
“Housing affordability is improving ever so modestly, but it is moving in the right direction,” he said.

‘The bigger picture’ shows payments are still high

The median loan amount on new applications fell to $320,512 in June, from $325,000 in May, a sign that home-price growth is moderating as well, according to MBA data provided to CNBC.
A slight decrease in mortgage rates in the month of June definitely helped buyers, said Yun.
The 30-year fixed rate mortgage declined to 6.78% on July 25, down from 7.22% on May 2, according to Freddie Mac data via the Fed.

But it’s a “very small improvement” in context, he said — the typical monthly mortgage payment has essentially doubled from pre-Covid years. Before Covid, a $1,000 mortgage payment was the norm; today it’s above $2,000, he said.
“In the bigger picture, it is a substantial increase on pre-Covid conditions, yet on a month-to-month basis, it is a slight improvement,” Yun said.

More sellers, less competition for buyers

Investors think the Federal Reserve could cut interest rates about three times in the latter half of the year, which would “further improve housing affordability,” Yun added,
While the housing market isn’t yet a buyer’s market, more supply and declining rates indeed create favorable conditions for buyers, according to experts.

Housing affordability is improving ever so modestly, but it is moving in the right direction.

Lawrence Yun
chief economist and senior vice president of research of the National Association of Realtors

“The market is certainly tilting more towards buyers,” said Chen Zhao, the economic research lead at Redfin, an online real estate brokerage firm, who said the market is balancing itself.
While there’s still an affordability challenge broadly, conditions are “moving towards a more neutral market,” Orphe Divounguy, a senior economist at Zillow.
In some areas, buyers are getting pickier as more listings pop up. Total housing inventory registered at the end of June was 1.32 million units, up 3.1% from May and 23.4% from a year ago, according to NAR. Unsold inventory is at a 4.1-month supply, up from 3.7 months in May and 3.1 months a year ago.
“It’s very good news for the buyer side,” said Yun, as you’re less likely to get caught up in a bidding war.
Competition is easing fastest in the South, where all major southern markets except Dallas and Raleigh are either neutral or buyer-friendly, according to the June 2024 Zillow Housing Market Report.
“With more inventory, that does certainly mean that buyers have more options,” said Selma Hepp, chief economist at CoreLogic. “But that is very regional. And the ones with the most increases in inventories, they’re struggling with other issues,” like high insurance costs.

Some sellers are cutting prices to attract buyers, said Divounguy.
“Sellers are having to do a little bit more to entice buyers,” he said. “We see one in four sellers are cutting their prices — the most for any June in the last six years — to try to sway buyers.”
About one in five, or 19.8%, of homes for sale in June had a price cut, the highest level of any June on record, according to Redfin. That’s up from 14.4% from a year ago.
“Sellers are always trying to maximize their prices, but the sellers should be mindful that there’s more competition,” Yun said.
Home builders are also trying to attract buyers: About 31% of builders cut prices to increase home sales, up from 29% in June and 25% in May, according to a July 2024 survey by the National Association of Home Builders.
However, “the number one thing” for buyers is to “stay within budget,” Yun said. “Just because mortgage rates declined  does not mean time to overstress their budget.” More

Bill Ackman, Pershing Square Capital Management CEO, speaking at the Delivering Alpha conference in NYC on Sept. 28th, 2023.
Adam Jeffery | CNBC

Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman is looking to raise $2 billion in the initial public offering of Pershing Square USA, with 40 million shares priced at $50.
The firm will also give its underwriters the option to purchase up to 6 million additional shares, according to an announcement from the firm.

The Pershing Square USA IPO will be in the form of a closed-end fund, and is expected to hold many of the same positions as Ackman’s other vehicles. Pershing Square also has a closed-end fund in Europe, which trades at a discount to its net asset value.
The initial public offering was expected to happen early this week but was delayed on Friday. At one point, Pershing Square was looking to raise as much as $25 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News. Ackman then said in a letter to strategic partners last week that he was expecting between $2.5 billion and $4 billion. (In an unusual circumstance, Pershing Square USA then disclosed the letter in a filing and officially disclaimed it.)
Bloomberg News reported on Monday that Seth Klarman’s Baupost Group has decided against investing in the new fund. More

The 30-year fixed rate mortgage declined to 6.78% on July 25, down from 7.22% on May 2, according to Freddie Mac data.
The first Fed rate cut is becoming more certain, and rates are expected to decline throughout the year.
Here’s what it may mean for homeowners and buyers.

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The Federal Reserve is poised to make the first interest rate cut in years this fall, which can influence mortgage rates to go down.
Even small cuts in rates could make a meaningful difference in what a homebuyer will pay. To that point, people in the market to buy a home have been eagerly waiting for the central bank to cut rates.

The Fed is meeting this week, but experts say it seems more likely the first rate cut will come in September. That would be the first rate cut since 2020 at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
While there is a less than 6% chance of a rate cut in the upcoming Federal Open Market Committee meeting, according to the CME’s FedWatch measure of futures market pricing, there is a much greater likelihood of quarter-point reductions in September, November and December.
That along with further cuts in 2025 would bring the the Fed’s benchmark fed funds rate to below 4% by the end of next year, according to some experts.
While mortgage rates are fixed and mostly tied to Treasury yields and the economy, they are partly influenced by the Fed’s policy. Home loan rates have already started to come down, in part induced by the Fed putting the brakes on rate increases.
Here’s what homeowners and buyers need to know.

Rate cuts are already priced into the market

The first rate cut is almost entirely priced into financial markets already, especially bond markets, said Chen Zhao, the economic research lead at Redfin, an online real estate brokerage firm. In other words, mortgage rates aren’t going to change much once the Fed actually begins to cut back, she said.
“A lot of these rate cuts are already priced in,” she said.
The 30-year fixed rate mortgage declined to 6.78% on July 25, down from 7.22% on May 2, according to Freddie Mac data via the Fed.

Refinance now or later?

“Refinancings are starting to tick up, it’s not a huge wave yet, but they are starting to pick up a little bit as rates start coming down,” Zhao said.
Refinance activity on existing home loans was up 15% from the previous week, reaching the highest level since August 2022, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. It was 37% higher than a year ago, MBA found.
Whether homeowners should refinance depends in part on their existing rate, said Selma Hepp, chief economist at CoreLogic.
“There are people that originated when mortgages peaked at 8% in the fall of last year,” Hepp said. For those buyers, “there is some opportunity there.”
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To be “in the money,” or when it makes sense to refinance, homeowners need to see a notable drop in mortgage rates in order to benefit, experts say. The prevailing rate should be at least 50 basis points below your current rate. A basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.
While that can be a good strategy, it’s not a “hard and fast rule,” said Jacob Channel, senior economist at LendingTree.
Timing the refinance of your home will depend on factors like your monthly mortgage payment and if you can pay closing costs, he said: “There’s a lot of variability.” (When you refinance a mortgage, you are likely to incur closing costs, as well as an appraisal and title insurance; and the total price tag will depend on your area.)
“The saving has to outweigh your upfront costs,” Zhao explained.
Even if your existing mortgage has a high rate, you might want to consider waiting until the central bank is further along in its cuts, with the expectation that rates are to steadily decline throughout the year and into 2025, Zhao said.
If you are thinking about it, reach out to lenders and see if refinancing now or in the near future makes the most sense for you, Channel said.

Buy now or later?

While lower rates can come as a relief for cost-constrained homebuyers, the real effects of lower borrowing costs are still up in the air, according to Zhao.

For instance: If borrowing costs for home loans come down, there’s a chance more buyers will jump in the market. And if demand outpaces supply, prices might go up even more, she said. It can “offset the relief you get from mortgage rates.”
But what exactly will happen in the housing market “is up in the air” depending on how much mortgage rates decline in the latter half of the year and the level of supply, Channel said.
“Timing the market is basically impossible,” Channel said. “If you’re always waiting for perfect market conditions, you’re going to be waiting forever. Buy now only if it’s a good idea for you.”

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Vanguard, which built its reputation as a low-cost and investor-friendly brokerage firm, has seen criticism about its customer service in recent years.
The CEO pointed to scenario planning and digital onboarding as areas where artificial intelligence could be helpful.
The newcomer CEO has given no indication that he has plans for a major cultural shake-up at Vanguard, which was founded by index fund pioneer Jack Bogle.

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The new CEO at Vanguard said Monday that the asset management giant could lean on artificial intelligence as it looks to improve its customer service experience.
Vanguard, which built its reputation as a low-cost and investor-friendly brokerage firm, has seen criticism about its customer service in recent years. Difficulty in reaching a Vanguard representative on the phone is one common complaint seen in online forums.

CEO Salim Ramji told CNBC’s Bob Pisani on Monday that fixing the customer experience is “very high on my list of priorities” and that artificial intelligence looks like a promising avenue for help.
“A lot of the improvements that we’ve seen recently in some of the client experience has been due to applications of machine learning or instances of AI,” said Ramji, who officially took over the top role on July 8.

The CEO pointed to scenario planning and digital onboarding as areas where AI could be helpful.
“We have a whole series of live experiments and live pilots underway,” he said.
Ramji comes to Vanguard from rival BlackRock, making him the first outsider CEO for the roughly $9 trillion asset manager. The Malvern, Pennsylvania-based firm has been a key force in driving down the cost of investing since its founding in the 1970s. Vanguard is privately owned by its customers and generally launches new products and services at a slower rate than some of its public market peers.

The newcomer CEO has given no indication that he has plans for a major cultural shakeup at Vanguard, which was founded by index fund pioneer Jack Bogle. For example, Ramji has said he does not have plans to introduce a bitcoin exchange-traded fund, which has been a huge success at BlackRock.
“I want to continue the sense of purpose and mission of the company,” Ramji said.

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With the price of bitcoin hovering around $70,000 again, experts have tax advice for new and seasoned crypto investors.
While future crypto policy and regulation is unclear, there are some key rules investors need to understand.
For example, investors need to assign basis, or original purchase prices, for each crypto wallet before 2025, experts say.

Former President and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gestures while giving a keynote speech on the third day of the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, Tennessee on July 27, 2024.
Jon Cherry | Getty Images News | Getty Images

With the price of bitcoin hovering around $70,000 again, experts have tax advice for new and seasoned crypto investors.
The price of bitcoin rose to $69,982.00 on Monday before dipping below $67,000, according to Coin Metrics. 

Although bitcoin is down from a record high above $73,000 in mid-March, the price is still up more than 50% year-to-date as investors weigh comments from Former President Donald Trump and this week’s Federal Reserve meetings.
The price of bitcoin fell to a two-month low in early July after the Fed’s June minutes indicated they weren’t yet ready to cut interest rates.

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“For too long our government has violated the cardinal rule that every bitcoiner knows by heart: Never sell your bitcoin,” Trump said Saturday during a keynote at the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville.
“If I am elected, it will be the policy of my administration, United States of America, to keep 100% of all the bitcoin the U.S. government currently holds or acquires into the future,” Trump said.
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Meanwhile, investors are watching for signs of a possible Democratic crypto policy shift from Vice President Kamala Harris, who entered the presidential race last week after President Joe Biden dropped out. While Harris hasn’t outlined policy yet, some investors hope she’ll pivot from the crypto scrutiny led by Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
While future crypto policy and regulation are unclear, here are some key things to know about taxes, experts say.

How to calculate crypto taxes

When you trade one coin for another or sell it at a profit, it may be subject to capital gains or regular income taxes, depending on how long you owned the asset.
After holding crypto for more than one year, you’ll qualify for long-term capital gains of 0%, 15% or 20%, depending on taxable income. Higher earners may also owe an extra 3.8% levy, known as net investment income tax.

By comparison, short-term capital gains or regular income taxes apply to assets owned for one year or less.  
Your gain is the difference between your original purchase price, or “basis,” and the asset’s value when you sell or exchange it — and without establishing basis, the IRS assumes it’s zero, according to Adam Markowitz, an enrolled agent at Luminary Tax Advisors in Windermere, Florida.
With zero basis, you could wrongly report more capital gains to the Internal Revenue Service.
“The burden of proof is on the taxpayer to know what they paid,” which can be challenging for investors with multiple exchanges and hundreds of transactions, especially when they don’t know what counts as a sale, he explained.

New crypto reporting rules

The U.S. Department of the Treasury and IRS in June released final guidance for digital asset brokers, which phases in mandatory yearly reporting.
Required yearly reporting will phase in starting in 2026, with digital currency brokers required to cover gross proceeds from sales in 2025 via Form 1099-DA. In 2027, brokers must include cost basis for certain digital asset sales for 2026. 
With limited past reporting on basis, crypto investors can still establish a “reasonable allocation” before Jan. 1, 2025, according to an IRS revenue procedure released in June.
“Even in the current year, in 2024, as you’re selling tokens, it may make sense to speak to a tax professional about how you can specifically identify or allocate cost basis to those sales,” said Andrew Gordon, tax attorney, certified public accountant and president of Gordon Law Group.  More

Post-pandemic, rush hour isn’t what it used to be.
As commuters settle into flexible working arrangements, a truncated workday has become the “new normal,” according to a recent report.
Some employees are wrestling with return-to-office mandates, studies show, and more admit to “coffee badging.”

Commuters sit in traffic on southbound Interstate 5 during the afternoon commute heading into downtown San Diego on March 12, 2024 in San Diego, California. 
Kevin Carter | Getty Images

Young professionals may be falling back in love with the nine-to-five aesthetic — known as “corpcore” — but few are logging the hours at the office to back it up.
Despite the renewed interest in work-appropriate attire (think a corporate take on quiet luxury: tailored suits or blazers and pencil skirts), the standard 40-hour workweek is dead, new research shows — at least when it comes to commuting.

As more commuters settle into flexible working arrangements, the traditional American 9-to-5 has shifted to 10-to-4, according to the 2023 Global Traffic Scorecard released in June by INRIX Inc., a traffic-data analysis firm. Its analysis shows fewer early morning trips and a higher volume of midday trips compared to pre-pandemic traffic patterns.  

The workday is getting shorter

Now, there is a “midday rush hour,” the INRIX report found, with almost as many trips to and from the office being made at noon as there are at 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.
“There is less of a morning commute, less of an evening commute and much more afternoon activity,” said Bob Pishue, a transportation analyst and author of the report. “This is more of the new normal.”

Commuters have also all but given up on public transportation. Ridership sank during the pandemic, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis data shows, and never fully recovered.
The result is a surge in traffic congestion throughout the peak midday and evening hours, according to Pishue.

“Pre-Covid, the morning rush hour would be a peak and then the evening peak would be much larger,” he said, describing two apexes with a valley in between. “Now, there is no valley.”

‘Coffee badging’ is the worst of all worlds

“Employees have become accustomed to the flexibility of working from home and may only come to the office when absolutely necessary,” said David Satterwhite, CEO of Chronus, a software firm focused on improving employee engagement.
“That means they may jump out early to catch a train home, come in late, or pop in for one meeting and then leave,” Satterwhite added.
Also known as “coffee badging,” the habit of only going to work for a few hours a day has become widely accepted, or at least tolerated, other recent reports show.
More than half — 58% — of hybrid employees admitted to checking in at the office and then promptly checking out, according to a separate 2023 survey by Owl Labs, a company that makes videoconferencing devices.
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“We used to call it the jacket-on-the-back-of-the-chair syndrome,” said Lynda Gratton, professor of management practice at London Business School.
Whether a company has a strict return-to-office mandate or some variation of a hybrid schedule, “organizations need to be clear about what the deal is,” she said, “and an individual employee can decide whether they want the deal or not.”
However, because most people say they don’t want to come into the office because of the commute, coffee badging is the least successful type of compromise, Gratton added. “That is the worst of all worlds, they are still doing the commute but not putting in the hours at the office.”

Productivity is suffering

In part, workers are wrestling with employee burnout and their level of commitment has taken a hit.
After mostly trending up for years, workplace engagement has flatlined. Now, only one-third of full- and part-time employees said they are engaged in their work and workplace, while roughly 50% are not engaged, which can also be seen in the rise of “quiet quitting.” The rest, another 16%, are actively disengaged, according to a 2023 Gallup poll released earlier this year.
Not engaged or actively disengaged employees account for approximately $1.9 trillion in lost productivity nationwide, Gallup found.

These days, employees are more likely to consider work/life balance, flexible hours and mental health support over career progression, other reports also show. And fewer want to spend any more time at the office than they already do.
If the ability to work from home was taken away, 66% of workers would immediately start looking for a job that offered more flexibility, Owl Labs found — and a bulk of those employees, roughly 39%, would promptly quit.
“What we need to get to is a clearer description of how is it you are at your most productive, and that requires a senior team who are seeing this as an opportunity to redesign work and not simply responding to what happened during the pandemic,” Gratton said.

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The number of federal student loan borrowers with six-figure debts is on the rise.
“There are quite a number of people who owe the federal government over $2 million in federal student loans,” said Wayne Johnson, who served as the chief operating officer of the Office of Federal Student Aid from 2017 until 2019.

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The number of federal student loan borrowers with six-figure debts is on the rise.
In the second quarter of 2024, 2.4 million borrowers carried a federal student loan balance between $100,000 and $200,000, up from 1.8 million people who owed that much during the same period in 2017, according to new data by the U.S. Department of Education.

Meanwhile, 1 million people had a federal student loan balance of more than $200,000, up from 600,000 individuals.
Wayne Johnson, who served as the chief operating officer of the Office of Federal Student Aid from 2017 until 2019, tells CNBC he saw some eye-popping balances during his time at the Education Department.
“There are quite a number of people who owe the federal government over $2 million in federal student loans,” Johnson said.
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In 2018, The Wall Street Journal profiled a doctor whose balance at the time topped $1 million.

The U.S. Department of Education did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Why more borrowers have big balances

“There are several factors that have contributed to the increase in the number of borrowers carrying six figures in student loan debt,” said Betsy Mayotte, president of The Institute of Student Loan Advisors, a nonprofit that helps borrowers navigate the repayment of their debt.
The biggest one, though, is the fact that higher education has become significantly more expensive over the decades, Mayotte said.
The annual sticker price for certain schools, after factoring in tuition, fees, room and board, and other expenses, is now nearing $100,000. (With financial aid, families typically pay less.)

However, it’s graduate students who take on the largest federal student loan debts, experts say.
While undergraduate students face limits on how much they can borrow in federal student loans, graduate students do not. They can borrow as much as a program costs.
As a result of that government policy, schools don’t need to worry much about affordability as they set their prices, said Johnson, a Republican who is now running for Congress in Georgia.
“Almost every college looks at their graduate programs as their cash cows,” Johnson said.

Dentists with $300,000 student debt balances

Overall, more than 10% of graduate and professional students owe $100,000 or more in federal and private student loan debt, according to higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz. (For comparison, less than 1% of students borrow above that amount for bachelor’s degree programs.)
Graduates of dental programs owed an average of around $307,0000 in 2019-2020, Kantrowitz found, while veterinarians were about $170,000 in the red.

The large debts can be huge stressors on graduates.
Nearly 80% of those who owe between $130,000 and $139,000 report feeling a “high” or “very high” amount of stress from their debt, compared with around 25% among those with a balance under $10,000, according to data analyzed by Kantrowitz. He looked at the 2012 follow-up to the 2008 Baccalaureate and Beyond longitudinal study by the National Center for Education Statistics.

Parents saddled with student debt

In addition to graduate students, parents can also borrow unlimited amounts in Parent Plus loans, Johnson said.
Annual Parent Plus disbursements tripled between 2000 and 2016, to more than $15 billion from about $5 billion, the Century Foundation found in a 2022 report.
“Seeking to help their children find upward mobility through higher education, low-income and low-wealth parents taking out these loans risk making themselves downwardly mobile, a consequence no family should suffer in the name of college opportunity,” the foundation wrote.

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Home insurance premiums rose 21% last year, according to data from Policygenius.
Experts say a rise in severe weather largely contributed to the increase, but it’s hard to tell how insurers are factoring climate risk into the cost of policies.
Some insurers have pulled out of certain areas completely, making state-sanctioned options a necessity.

A view of flooded streets after 24 hours of continuous heavy rain over Fort Myers, Florida, United States on June 13, 2024.
Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty Images

Consumers preparing to renew their homeowners insurance policy may experience some unexpected sticker shock.
Between May 2022 and May 2023, home insurance prices rose an average of 21% at renewal time, according to Policygenius.

A rise in catastrophic severe weather events contributed to this jump, experts say, and the rate of price increases is not expected to slow. As insurers face higher costs, they pass those along to consumers in the form of pricier premiums.
However, insurers don’t share data on individual homeowners’ premiums and risks, so it’s difficult to calculate just how climate risk is factored into the price of policies.

“The levels of risk and the kinds of hazards that a property can be exposed to are massively changing,” said Carlos Martín, director of the Remodeling Futures program at the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.
“And right now there’s a lot of confusion, not just among the homeowners, but also among the insurers about how they should be pricing this actuarially,” he said.

‘Minimal’ data available from insurers

Though home insurance premiums jumped significantly in price last year, it isn’t a new phenomenon. To that point, between 2012 and 2021 the average premium rose from $1,034 to $1,411, according to the Insurance Information Institute.

Some of the annual increases within that stretch of time were bigger than others, according to Kenneth Klein, a professor at California Western School of Law, adding that climate change creates the potential of economic “fat-tailed losses,” because storm damage isn’t spread evenly across all insured properties or evenly over time.
“For many insurance companies in the Gulf Coast area, if they economically survived Katrina, the next year was one of their most profitable years,” he said. “Because their premiums adjusted for Katrina, but there wasn’t a Katrina event. So that’s the challenge of insuring climate change.”
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Understanding how premiums will continue to rise in response to severe weather is hard to gauge, according to Martín.
“The data is pretty minimal,” Martín said. “Insurers don’t share how much they’re charging individual homeowners with the world, and there’s not a lot of reporting.”
Scott Shapiro, KPMG U.S. insurance sector leader, said the industry does gather this data on weather-related losses to inform policy premiums, but the detailed data isn’t publicly accessible.
“This data is crucial for rate making and filings,” Shapiro said. “A key challenge is the increasing exposure to weather-related risks and the uncertainty of whether historical losses accurately predict future losses.”

Insurers are pulling back in high-risk areas

The cost of home insurance might be rising, but for some in areas at risk of flood or fire, homeowners may have few options.
In May 2023, for example, State Farm stopped accepting new applications for California policies. Allstate announced in November 2022 that it would pause new home, condo and commercial policies in the state.
Insurance companies “are not in the business of giving you money just because you need it, and they are not in the business of doing the right thing just because it feels like the right thing,” Klein said. “They are businesses that are trying within a set of laws and regulations to make a profit.”
Fewer and pricier insurance options can prove to be a significant barrier to homeownership, experts say, as most mortgages require insurance.

Florida’s legislature created Citizens’ Property Insurance in 2002 as an option for Floridians who couldn’t find home insurance in the private market. California’s FAIR plan was established as a statute in the state’s insurance code to provide fire coverage unavailable in the traditional market, though it’s not a state or public agency. 
Though state-run programs might serve as a last resort, they don’t always provide the same quality of coverage that a private insurer might offer.
“They sometimes are not built on the same actuarial principles as private insurance company would build them,” Klein said. “And as a consequence, it’s problematic. It’s often not good coverage.”
Those feeling the pain of rising premiums the most are existing homeowners, Martín said.
“They’re feeling it, because they see what they’re paying when they first bought the house, and now they see what they’re paying,” he said. “And it’s increasing.”

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