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Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. When assessing home price momentum, ResiClub believes it’s important to monitor active listings and months of supply. If active listings start to rapidly increase as homes remain on the market for longer periods, it may indicate pricing softness or weakness. Conversely, a rapid decline in active listings could suggest a market that is heating up. Generally speaking, local housing markets where active inventory has returned to pre-pandemic levels have experienced softer home price growth (or outright price declines) over the past 30 months. Conversely…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. This week, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York published its quarterly Household Debt and Credit Report. It shows that while still low, distress is creeping back into the housing market. Here’s how the U.S. housing foreclosures in Q1 of 2025 compare to previous years: Q1 2014: 144,500 Q1 2015: 111,820 Q1 2016: 96,680 Q1 2017: 90,460 Q1 2018: 76,360 Q1 2019: 71,040 Q1 2020: 74,720 Q1 2021: 11,400 Q1 2022: 24,220 Q1 2023: 35,640 Q1 2024: 44,180 Q1 2025: 61,660 When COVID-19 lockdowns began, the fed…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. U.S. single-family home prices, as measured by the Freddie Mac House Price Index (which uses the repeat-sales methodology), rose 3.9% in the calendar year 2024. During that same timeframe, overall U.S. consumer prices rose 2.9%. Among the 384 metro-area housing markets that the Freddie Mac House Price Index tracks dating back to 1975, these are the 10 metros that saw the biggest year-over-year home price increase in 2024: Kingston, New York: +13.5% Springfield, Ohio: +11.8% Glens Falls, New York: +11.7% Binghamton, New York: +11.5% …

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Zillow economists use an economic model known as the Zillow Market Heat Index to gauge the competitiveness of housing markets across the country. This model looks at key indicators—including home price changes, inventory levels, and days on market—to generate a score showing whether a market favors sellers or buyers. Higher scores point to hotter, seller-friendly metro housing markets. Lower scores signal cooler markets where buyers hold more negotiating power. According to Zillow: Score of 70 or above = strong sellers market Score…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Here’s the annual U.S. household income needed to finance the purchase of the typical valued U.S. home: January 2020: $51,646 January 2021: $51,740 January 2022: $62,669 January 2023: $86,184 January 2024: $92,006 January 2025: $92,538 That’s a +79% shift in just 5 years. Methodology: This Zillow calculation is conservative and assumes a 20% down payment and the homebuyer spends less than 30.0% of their monthly income on the total monthly payment. This is a financed purchase, of course. For typical home value, Zillow economist…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. In 2005, the median U.S. homeowner lived and owned their primary home for 6.5 years. In 2024, the median U.S. homeowner lived and owned their primary home for 11.8 years. That’s according to Redfin’s latest analysis. That means the typical U.S. home today has been owned by the same person for nearly twice as long as in 2005—resulting in less turnover in the housing market. That affects the entire ecosystem. For some millennials and Gen Xers, it could mean staying longer in their starter homes as they struggle to find a move-up property in their desir…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. When assessing home price momentum, it’s important to monitor active listings and months of supply. If active listings start to rapidly increase as homes remain on the market for longer periods, it may indicate pricing softness or weakness. Conversely, a rapid decline in active listings could suggest a market that is heating up. Generally speaking, local housing markets where active inventory has returned to pre-pandemic levels have experienced softer home price growth (or outright price declines) over the past 30 months. Conversely, local housing ma…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Most of America’s largest homebuilders have publicly stated that the peak 2025 housing market saw softer-than-expected conditions, particularly in many parts of the Sun Belt. This softer housing market environment caused unsold inventory to tick up. Indeed, since the pandemic housing boom fizzled out, the number of unsold completed U.S. new single-family homes has been rising: August 2016 —> 61,000 August 2017 —> 63,000 August 2018 —> 69,000 August 2019 —> 79,000 August 2020 —> 52,000 August 2021 —> 34,000 Aug…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. When assessing home price momentum, ResiClub believes it’s important to monitor active listings and months of supply. If active listings start to rapidly increase as homes remain on the market for longer periods, it may indicate pricing softness or weakness. Conversely, a rapid decline in active listings beyond seasonality could suggest a market that is heating up. Since the national Pandemic Housing Boom fizzled out in 2022, the national power dynamic has slowly been shifting directionally from sellers to buyers. Of course, across the country that s…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. When assessing home price momentum, ResiClub believes it’s important to monitor active listings and months of supply. If active listings start to rapidly increase as homes remain on the market for longer periods, it may indicate pricing softness or weakness. Conversely, a rapid decline in active listings beyond seasonality could suggest a market that is heating up. Since the national Pandemic Housing Boom fizzled out in 2022, the national power dynamic has slowly been shifting directionally from sellers to buyers. Of course, across the country that s…

In Texas, parts of Houston are sinking at a rate faster than 10 millimeters—or about two-fifths of an inch—per year. Parts of Dallas and Fort Worth are sinking more than 5 millimeters per year. While that may sound small, it adds up: Every few millimeters that a city sinks can cause cracks in roads or tilt building foundations, and make that region more vulnerable to extreme flooding. And those Texas cities aren’t alone: Twenty-five other major cities—from New York and San Francisco to Boston and Oklahoma City—are also sinking, according to a new study, putting more than 34 million people at risk. Cities can sink for a few reasons. Buildings are heavy, and so so…

Sinking morale. Low productivity. Lots of gossip. Quiet quitting. Sloppy work. Cynicism. Talent leaving. These are all examples of “culture rot”: the slow, subtle unraveling of what made a good company good. “You can feel it before you can name it,” Tara Kermiet, a corporate burnout strategist, explained in a recent TikTok post. “It’s less about one big event, and more about the daily drift that no one claims responsibility for.” Instead of some big scandal or massive profit loss, culture rot is the gradual, subtle decay of a team’s culture. It’s fueled by bad, unaccountable leaders, and is characterized as a slow straying from original core company values. Your …

In the world of the long-running kids show Cyberchase, Motherboard, a sort of digital queen and literal technocrat, is the beneficent but impaired leader of all of cyberspace. She is—we are to understand—a legitimate ruler, yet faces constant attacks from the odious Hacker, a green-skinned android who dresses like a vampire and whose only goal is to sow chaos and eventually take control of Motherboard’s realm, which we might describe as something akin to a metaverse, or ever-expanding digital world. Luckily, a trio of human kids named Inez, Mattie, and Jackie—a squad—visit cyberspace frequently, where they embark on missions to help protect the ever-embattled Motherbo…

People who most frequently encounter everyday discrimination—those subtle snubs and slights of everyday life—are more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression. What’s more, that finding remains true no matter the person’s race, gender, age, education, income, weight, language, immigration status or where they live. These are the key takeaways from our recent study, published in JAMA Network Open. Everyday discrimination refers to the routine ways people are treated unfairly because of characteristics such as skin color, perceived background or general appearance. Generally, it means disrespectful treatment: waiting longer than others for help at a stor…

Strategy textbooks taught us that sustainable competitive advantage that commanded premium prices was best protected by powerful barriers to entry. Build a moat, create switching costs, leverage access to high costs of entry, own distribution channels, and it would be difficult for startups to compete for your markets. But the forces of disruption operate by different rules, systematically destroying the very foundations of pricing power by making the previously difficult and expensive suddenly easy and cheap. The basis of competition changes, from excellence along well understood dimensions of merit to “good enough.” The ‘good enough’ revolution in pricing I have …

Aaliyah Arnold, the 21-year-old founder of BossUp Cosmetics, goes live on TikTok a few times a week. Each livestream will last anywhere from 4 to 12 hours. Thousands tune in to watch her pack mystery boxes for customers, give away products, and teach makeup tutorials. “I mix in music, jokes, giveaways, and real product demos so people feel like they’re hanging out with me while shopping,” Arnold tells Fast Company. Livestreaming now makes up 60% of her company’s total sales. Her biggest livestream to date hit $170,000 in sales, with more than 1 million viewers tuning in. Arnold is one of many solopreneurs on platforms like TikTok leaning into “live selling” to ge…

Lore isn’t just for games like The Elder Scrolls or films like The Lord of the Rings—online, it has evolved into something entirely new. The Old English word made the shortlist for Oxford University Presss’ 2024 Word of the Year (though it ultimately lost to brain rot). Oxford defines lore as “a body of (supposed) facts, background information, and anecdotes relating to someone or something, regarded as knowledge or required for full understanding or informed discussion of the subject in question.” Historically, the term has been tied to teaching and knowledge-sharing, with roots stretching back nearly a thousand years. Today, however, lore has evolved into intern…

In a world of hustle culture and stressors of all kinds, joy can seem both illusive and impossible. But despite barriers, you can create the conditions for happiness. Well-being and joy are critical issues today, with 69% to 77% of Americans feeling stressed about factors like the economy, current events, violence, and lack of connections, according to the American Psychiatric Association. In addition, a global mental health study of 17,000 people across 16 countries by Ipsos/AXA found that 64% face stress, 43% are suffering from depression, and only 25% of people are flourishing. But strategies for “micro joy” can be a solution to the struggles and a way to build…

As Sesame Street’s 56th season gets underway, Elmo, Big Bird, and the Sesame organization are navigating a volatile chapter in the show’s history—marked by government funding cuts, evolving new media habits, and AI’s impact on education. Sherrie Westin, CEO of Sesame Workshop, discusses balancing risk-taking with brand trust, partnering with Netflix, and why emotional well-being and kindness are the skills that matter most in today’s world. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by former Fast Company editor-in-chief Robert Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with t…

It’s official: 2025 was the year of slop. Merriam-Webster just announced in a post that its “human editors” have chosen “slop” as the 2025 Word of the Year. The dictionary’s official definition of the word is “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence,” a far cry from its original meaning. When the term was first coined in the 1700s, slop meant “soft mud,” before slowly morphing into a synonym for “rubbish.” Today, it’s the perfect four-letter word for the state of the internet. “In 2025, amid all the talk about AI threats, slop set a tone that’s less fearful, more mocking,” the dictionary’s post re…

In American culture, importance and attention are often misaligned. This disconnect is one of the greatest challenges we in the STEM world face. Too often, society’s most essential stories are drowned out by the drama of the moment—pushed aside by the next headline or fleeting scroll. Today’s media environment is a relentless battle for attention, which is why, when a cultural moment aligns with science, we must seize it. Elevate it. Share it. Right now, we have just such a moment: the discovery of a new exoplanet reminiscent of Luke Skywalker’s home world, the upcoming launch of Andor Season 2, and the arrival of May 4th—also known as National Star Wars Day (a de…

The name Village Roadshow might not ring a bell with every moviegoer, but the company’s logo almost certainly will. Its shimmering, nested “V” of metallic ribbons that taper inward like a cinematic illusion played before dozens of movies that collectively spawned 34 No. 1 opening weekends, 19 Academy Awards, and $19 billion in worldwide box office gross. The veteran production house behind seismic hits like The Matrix, Ocean’s 11, and Mad Max: Fury Road has been delivering hits for decades, mostly through coproductions with Warner Bros. But last week, following a years-long decline in box office performance, the company filed for bankruptcy. How did a highly pedig…

Though many companies are still in the early days of AI adoption, one thing is clear: Many of our interactions—between employees and even organizations—are already being carried out entirely by agentic technology. As this trend increases, the need for leaders to keep humanity at the core of their businesses is critical. That’s why this year’s annual meeting of the Fast Company Impact Council was centered on the theme of “Maintaining a Human Touch in a Digital World.” In May, 123 of the Impact Council’s 422 members gathered in New Canaan, Connecticut, at the 80-acre headquarters of humanitarian nonprofit Grace Farms. In panels and roundtables held across the organizati…