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US home price growth picked up in March despite COVID-19

By Tommy Flemm 1 year ago

Home price growth in the US accelerated in March, leading into the widespread lockdowns imposed by states to deter the spread of the novel coronavirus. 

Standard & Poor’s said Tuesday that its S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller national home price index posted a 4.4% annual gain in March, up from 4.2% a month earlier. The 20-City Composite posted a 3.9% annual gain, up from 30.5% in February — beating analysts’ estimates of 3.4%, according to Bloomberg. However,  the 20-City Composite really represents 19 cities because there were delays in transaction records for the Detroit metro area (Wayne County, Mich.) due to the novel coronavirus. 

“Housing prices continue to be remarkably stable,” said Craig J. Lazzara, managing director and global head of index investment strategy at S&P Dow Jones Indices, in a press statement, adding that the gains continue “a trend of gently accelerating home prices that began last autumn. March results were

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Mattress sales awakened by need to feel cozy and comfortable at home during coronavirus

By Tommy Flemm 1 year ago

Bed sales are waking up during the COVID-19 pandemic mostly because our daily lives have been totally upended.

“People are staying home and they’re investing in getting the best sleep possible. And I think what this environment has done is just pulled forward a lot of trends, and people are obviously very focused on wellness,” Casper co-founder and CEO Philip Krim tells Yahoo Finance. 

Krim is on the mark here. Let’s go through a typical day for some folks right now.

Thrust into work-from-home situations seemingly overnight back in March, the bed has become the command post for Americans. It’s where Zoom calls are comfortably done in the attempt to win new business or hold onto business during what has amounted to a severe U.S. economic downturn. What better place to project calm resolve during a tense business negotiation on a video call (with the camera turned off, naturally) then

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‘Now the home is a safe haven’

By Tommy Flemm 1 year ago

The housing market is blaring with signs of a recovery — rising mortgage purchase applications and homebuilder sentiment.

Housing was healthy going into the coronavirus pandemic, which forced Americans to stay and work from home. With Americans stuck at home, they are expecting more out of their homes and are eager to move somewhere that suits their needs.

“What you’re really seeing right now is a giant reshuffle in the housing market,” Barbara Corcoran, host of ABC’s Shark Tank and founder of the Corcoran Group, an New York City-based residential brokerage firm, told Yahoo Finance. “Everybody who’s sitting at home has the time to think about, is this what I want. What would we change?”

Suddenly, features like yard size and office space have become vastly more important to homeowners — previously, homebuyers mostly considered school district and the number of beds and bathrooms, according to Corcoran.

“It’s vastly different

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Plan to work from home for the rest of 2020

By Tommy Flemm 1 year ago

American Express (AXP) is the latest household name corporation to paint a picture publicly as to how work life will look different in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

And the credit card giant will look different (it will for other companies, too), as it will gradually returns it workspaces to some form of normalcy. But even that semblance of normalcy will take on a new dynamic for Amex employees compared to the pre-COVID days.

“We still don’t know exactly when we will start coming back, but we expect it will take several months in most locations. The key here is that returning to the office will not happen all at once. We will open buildings on a location-by-location, floor-by-floor, and colleague-by-colleague basis as each location and floor is different. The main thing to understand is that the work environment will be completely different when we go back than when

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Parents are more productive working at home than workers without kids: Study

By Tommy Flemm 1 year ago

Working from home might not be so bad for productivity after all.

A new survey from tech workplace advisory firm Valoir reveals that the shift to working from home might only be reducing overall worker productivity by a marginal 1%.

The survey, which polled more than 325 workers from around North America, also showed that about 40% of workers would prefer to work from home in the future rather than return to an office environment.

Interestingly, the survey also found parents to be reporting a smaller drop in productivity compared to workers without children. Parents reported a 2% drop to productivity in the work-from-home environment compared to the 3% drop for workers without kids at home.

Kids are reportedly less of a distraction when working at home than social media, according to a new survey.

“Parents have a slightly bigger productivity hit of 2% on average, but the folks

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