Here is your home news digest to start the week—read more by visiting the page.
🫣 Another day, another blow to the housing market. Sellers are having a really tough time: Sales of existing homes fell in March to a six-month low, with the pace of sales the slowest since September 2024. Potential buyers are stalling due to economic uncertainty, job insecurity, high interest rates, and increasing home prices. There’s no sign of the trend reversing, either.
💰 High home prices aren’t just affecting those looking to upgrade. The average national price of a starter home is still relatively attainable at $192,514, but 233 cities nationwide have typical starter home costs that eclipse that. Cities in states like California, New York, and New Jersey have starter homes that are worth $1 million or more. Just five years ago, only 85 cities nationwide could claim that eye-popping stat.
🍂 Actor Cate Blanchett has a bone to pick with leaf blowers. Her comments on an episode of the video series ‘Subway Takes with Kareem Rahma‘ went viral: “Leaf blowers need to be eradicated from the face of the earth […] My rage went through the roof in Washington [D.C], where I think there’s the highest concentration of leaf blowers and they banned them. They did a study back in, I don’t know, 2010 or something, that 30 minutes on a leaf blower has more pollution than driving a pickup from Texas to Alaska. So they banned them in Washington.” The verdict? She’s not wrong. According to the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, “In 2011, engineers at the car company Edmunds estimated that driving a Ford F-150 Raptor truck from Texas to Alaska would emit the same amount of air pollution as a mere half-hour of yard work with a two-stroke, gas-powered leaf blower.” Here’s hoping we’ll see leaf blower technology upgrades soon.
- Sophie Kaemmerlé, Executive Editor
