Home affordability gets worse as prices and mortgage rates rise
CNN
As both home prices and mortgage rates rise, buying a home is increasingly unaffordable for a growing number of Americans.
Home prices in the first quarter were up by at least 10% from a year ago in two-thirds of the counties tracked in a new report from real estate data firm ATTOM.
The decline in affordability has happened quickly. A median-priced, single-family home was less affordable than historical norms in nearly 80% of counties analyzed. That surged from just 38% of counties that were historically less affordable a year ago. The measure is now at its highest point since mid-2008, as home prices continued rising faster than wages in much of the country.
The CIA has sent the White House an unclassified email listing all new hires that have been with the agency for two years or less in an effort to comply with an executive order to downsize the federal workforce, according to three sources familiar with the matter – a deeply unorthodox move that could potentially expose the identities of those officers to foreign government hackers.
Trump administration officials are hurrying to catch up to the president’s audacious and improbable plan for the United States to take ownership of Gaza and redevelop it into a “Middle Eastern Riviera,” trying to wrap their heads around an idea that some hope might be so outlandish it forces other nations to step in with their own proposals for the Palestinian enclave.