Denmark and Greenland are seeking a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio after the Trump administration doubled down on its intention to take over the strategic Arctic island, a Danish territory.Tensions escalated after the White House said Tuesday that the “U.S. military is always an option.” President Donald Trump has argued that the U.S. needs to control the world’s largest island to ensure its own security in the face of rising threats from China and Russia in the Arctic.Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned earlier this week that a U.S. takeover would amount to the end of the NATO military alliance.“The Nordics do not lightly make statements like this,” Maria Martisiute, a defense analyst at the European Policy Centre think tank, told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “But it is Trump, whose very bombastic language bordering on direct threats and intimidation, is threatening the fact to another ally by saying ‘I will control or annex the territory.'”The leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom joined Frederiksen in a statement Tuesday reaffirming that the mineral-rich island “belongs to its people.”Their statement defended the sovereignty of Greenland, which is a self-governing territory of Denmark and thus part of NATO.This weekend’s U.S. military action in Venezuela has heightened fears across Europe, and Trump and his advisers in recent days have reiterated the U.S. leader’s desire to take over the island, which guards the Arctic and North Atlantic approaches to North America.“It’s so strategic right now,” Trump told reporters Sunday.Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lkke Rasmussen and his Greenlandic counterpart, Vivian Motzfeldt, have requested the meeting with Rubio in the near future, according to a statement posted Tuesday to Greenland’s government website.Previous requests for a sit-down were not successful, the statement said.French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said he spoke by phone Tuesday with Rubio, who dismissed the idea of a Venezuela-style operation in Greenland.“In the United States, there is massive support for the country belonging to NATO a membership that, from one day to the next, would be compromised by any form of aggressiveness toward another member of NATO,” Barrot told France Inter radio Wednesday.Asked if he has a plan in case Trump does claim Greenland, Barrot said he won’t engage in “fiction diplomacy.”While most U.S. Republicans have supported Trump’s statement, Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Thom Tillis, the Democratic and Republican co-chairs of the bipartisan Senate NATO Observer Group, blasted Trump’s rhetoric in a statement Tuesday.“When Denmark and Greenland make it clear that Greenland is not for sale, the United States must honor its treaty obligations and respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark,” the statement said. “Any suggestion that our nation would subject a fellow NATO ally to coercion or external pressure undermines the very principles of self-determination that our Alliance exists to defend.”
Associated Press journalists Geir Moulson in Berlin and Mark Carlson in Brussels contributed to this report.
Stefanie Dazio, Associated Press
Warner Bros. again rejected Paramount’s latest takeover bid and told shareholders Wednesday to stick with a rival offer from Netflix.Warner’s leadership has repeatedly rebuffed Skydance-owned Paramount’s overturesand urged shareholders just weeks ago to back its the sale of its streaming and studio business to Netflix for $72 billion. Paramount, meanwhile, has sweetened its $77.9 billion offer for the entire company and gone straight to shareholders with a hostile bid.Warner Bros. Discovery said Wednesday that its board determined Paramount’s offer is not in the best interests of the company or its shareholders. It again recommended shareholders support the Netflix deal.Late last month Paramount announced an “irrevocable personal guarantee” from Oracle founder Larry Ellisonwho is the father of Paramount CEO David Ellisonto back $40.4 billion in equity financing for the company’s offer. Paramount also increased its promised payout to shareholders to $5.8 billion if the deal is blocked by regulators, matching what Netflix already put on the table.The battle for Warner and the value of each offer grows complicated because Netflix and Paramount want different things. Netflix’s proposed acquisition includes only Warner’s studio and streaming business, including its legacy TV and movie production arms and platforms like HBO Max. But Paramount wants the entire companywhich, beyond studio and streaming, includes networks like CNN and Discovery.If Netflix is successful, Warner’s news and cable operations would be spun off into their own company, under a previously-announced separation.A merger with either company will attract tremendous antitrust scrutiny. Due to its size and potential impact, it will almost certainly trigger a review by the U.S. Justice Department, which could sue to block the transaction or request changes. Other countries and regulators overseas may also challenge the merger.
Associated Press
The stock prices of RAM and NAND manufacturers surged yesterday, with Micron Technology (Nasdaq: MU) up 10%, Sandisk Corporation (Nasdaq: SNDK) up 27%, Western Digital Corporation (Nasdaq: WDC) up 16%, and Seagate Technology Holdings (Nasdaq: STX) up 14%.
The driving factor behind this recent stock surge is a shortage of RAM, or random-access memory. The shortage expected to last throughout 2026, and it could mean that youll pay much more for personal computers and smartphones this year.
Heres what you need to know about the RAM shortage of 2026.
Why is there a RAM shortage in 2026?
The RAM shortage in 2026 can essentially be blamed on one thing: artificial intelligence. Major tech giants like Google and Amazon, as well as other so-called hyperscalers, are rushing to build as many AI data centers as possible.
These data centers are packed with servers, and those servers run all the powerful AI services that are quickly becoming ubiquitous.
Data center servers are made of various componentsstorage, CPUs, GPUs, and, critically, RAMthat are needed for them to be able to carry out their AI tasks.
RAM is the short-term storage that digital devices use to quickly perform tasks. RAM, also colloquially known as memory chips, holds onto data for the short term. It differs from other forms of computer storage, like NAND chips, which are the flash storage used in SSDs, that are designed to hold data for the long term.
The more RAM your smartphone or computer has, the faster it runs and the more quickly it carries out tasks.
Manufacturers are racing to keep up with AI demand
The problem now, which is driving the RAM shortage, is that RAM manufacturers have limited production capacity, so they must decide which types of RAM to produce.
The servers used in AI data centers use a more advanced type of RAM than the RAM found in smartphones and personal computersand right now, that RAM is in high demand from tech giants in need of data centers.
Big Tech companies are willing to pay a premium to get their hands on as much RAM as possible for their AI data centers, which means RAM manufacturers are prioritizing the production of the RAM that AI companies require over the RAM that consumer electronics companies acquire.
This prioritization is leading to a shortage of the traditional RAM that is used in laptops and smartphones.
The shortage could mean pricier smartphones in 2026
A shortage of any component often drives up its price, meaning consumer tech companies are now paying more for the traditional RAM that their devices require.
In a TrendForce analysis published on Monday, the market intelligence firm reported that conventional DRAM contract pricesthe kind of RAM used in consumer electronicshave increased between 55% and 60% quarter over quarter.
This price increase is due to the RAM shortage, and will likely mean that youll pay more for a new smartphone or laptop this year.
Smartphone and computer manufacturers will typically not choose to absorb the costs of pricier components, instead passing them on to consumers to avoid a negative impact on their bottom lines.
As for how much more consumers can expect to pay for their devices this year, the Financial Times reported this week that prices could rise by up to 20%.
However, some industry analysts are expecting personal device price rises of less than 20%, notes the FT. That’s because consumer device companies could conceivably find ways to cut costs elsewhere, which they may be keen to do to avoid sinking sales of their devices during a period when most consumers already feel cash-strapped.
RAM maker stock prices soar
Given that the price of RAM chips is rising and demand from deep-pocketed Big Tech companies shows no signs of abating, its little surprise that the stock prices of memory makers are on an upward trajectory as of late.
Yesterday, the share prices of four of the largest DRAM and NAND flash memory makers surged on the Nasdaq, with Micron, Seagate, Western Digital, and SanDisk all up by double digits.
That sharp rise in memory maker stocks came after Mondays report from TrendForce as well as after comments from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
At CES 2026 this week, Huang said that the memory storage market was a “completely unserved market today and one that will likely be the largest storage market in the world, basically holding the working memory of the world’s AIs, according to Business Insider.
Thanks primarily to this market demand, DRAM and NAND memory makers have seen their stock prices surge over the past six months.
As of yesterdays close, Microns stock price was up more than 44% in the past six months, Seagates was up 121%, Western Digitals was up 231%, and Sandisk’s was up a staggering 653%.
Chat platform Discord filed confidentially for an initial public offering in the United States, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The U.S. IPO market regained momentum in 2025 after nearly three years of sluggish activity, but hopes for a stronger rebound were tempered by tariff-driven volatility, a prolonged government shutdown and a late-year selloff in artificial intelligence stocks.
Deliberations are ongoing and the company could decide not to proceed with a listing, the report said.
A Discord spokesperson told Bloomberg “the company’s focus remains on delivering the best possible experience for users and building a strong, sustainable business.”
Discord did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Discord, which was founded in 2015, offers voice, video and text chatting capabilities aimed at gamers and streamers. It had more than 200 million monthly active users, according to a December statement on its website.
Prakhar Srivastava and Nathan Gomes, Reuters
I recently argued that return-to-office mandates arent really about productivity; theyre about control. Ironically, my article published smack-dab in the middle of a September inflection point of increasing office time requirements, a phenomenon Owl Labs dubbed hybrid creep.
And now, perhaps shockingly, Ive started a new job with a team that (gasp!) has an office. When I wrote my argument against RTO, I had no inkling that I would soon be back in an office (part-time) myself. I am now basically in a live experiment. So far, its changed how I feel about the idea of going into an office. It hasnt changed my view on RTO.
A lab for truly flexible work
My new team has a completely flexible work-location approach. There is an office, and we can come in if we want to. But theres no requirement or badge-swiping.
Those of us who are local also collaborate daily with colleagues in drastically different time zonesEurope, Middle East, Africa (EMEA) and Asia Pacific (APAC). So our overall team is distributed enough that in-person work cant be our organizing religion. That makes my current situation a fascinating window into what happens when people are free to optimize their work model to their life needs, versus an imposed framework of what a workday is mandated to look like.
When in-person time is voluntary, rhythms emerge instead of rules
Im seeing that when location is genuinely a choice, people start building rituals.
Theres a weekly team meeting for which many people choose to be in the office. There are social opportunities like an annual holiday party and happy hours. And the office itself is an uplifting, interactive place where dogs are allowed, theres a bar in the kitchen area, and people play music throughout the day.
A few teammates come in more often simply because thats what works best for them. If someone is visiting from another location, the office fills up as people come in to see them.
In-office time also doesnt have to be a full day. Many of us have early calls with EMEA, so we take those from home, head into the office midmorning, and leave before rush hour to finish up from home again. A main team meeting is midday, on purpose, to make that flow possible.
A morning Slack thats more than a status report
Another ritual I love is a deceptively simple morning Slack each person sends sharing where theyll be that day and whether theyll be offline at any point.
On the surface, it sounds like basic coordination. In reality, it feels like a daily good morning and a window into each others lives.
The messages arent just Ill be online 9-to-5, WFH. Theyre things like We had a loss in our family, so Ill be taking the day off;My puppy was sick last night, so Im working from home; andHeaded to a workout midday and will be back online by 2.
These tiny updates are powerful because they keep us connected and normalize being a human with a life outside work. They also give us opportunities to respond and help cover for each other.
How Im using the office now
Im going into the office about two days a week, with my Tibetan terrier Basil trotting alongside me, eager to greet everyone when we walk in. My colleague keeps a laser pointer at his desk; Basil goes wild chasing the dot when we need a laugh break.
Im trying to schedule one-on-ones for days when others are in, so theyre in-person catch-ups, not just agenda boxes checked off. We get the power of group thinking around a table, friendly greetings, and the ability to take a walking meeting instead of more staring at a screen.
All of this feels like support, not surveillance. No one is proving they exist by punching a proverbial time clock. We go in by choice, which gives me gratitude for the option versus dreading going to an office.
So, has this changed my view on RTO?
Absolutely not. If anything, its reinforced my original point that dictating office time is a sign of poor leadership. The benefits Im witnessing wouldnt exist in the same way if they were forced rather than organic. The difference isnt office versus remote. The difference is a culture of empowerment versus a culture of control.
In a control culture, leaders start with mandates such as how many days people must come in, and then try to retrofit culture. Any sense of flexibility is granted like a favor.
In an empowerment culture, leaders start with trust and clarity: Heres what we need to achieve, heres how well communicate, here are your options of where you can work. Then they let people design their own patterns inside that useful guidance.
In the first model, the office is a compliance tool. In the second, the office is a resource people leverage when it helps.
A growing body of research on RTOs exists
Were far enough past pandemic-forced flexible work to start seeing how different work-location models perform and their impacts. For example, a large study done at Baylor University tracked the LinkedIn histories of workers at S&P 500 firms and found that when companies imposed RTO mandates, turnover jumped by about 14% and hiring took longer. Even more concerning, turnover was more likely among top talent and those important to diversity (especially women, whose turnover rate was three times that of men).
A separate two-year study of more than 800,000 employees by Great Place to Work found that productivity stayed stable or improved after moving to remote work; what mattered most was leadership quality and trust, not where people sat.
I expect that in the long term, companies that dont empower their team members with flexible work location will experience enough brain drain that it will be difficult to remain competitive. There must be a better way, and I believe Im experiencing a version of it.
What leaders can draw inspiration from
You may not be able to copy our exact setup, but you can borrow from these themes:
Replace mandates with rituals. Instead of dictating fixed in-office days, anchor around events such as weekly team meetings designed for collaboration, planning on-sites, and celebratory events that people actually want to attend.
Design for life needs. If you want in-person time, schedule office-based meetings to avoid peak commutes and respect caregiving schedules.
Start micro-updates. A daily or weekly Where Ill be check-in across the team takes only a minute for each person and creates a real sense of presence and care.
Foster inclusion. The office should be a place where everyone feels invited. Ensure that people who are typically remote feel this too. They get invites to all major happenings like holiday parties, a CEO visit, etc. And when someone from another office or region visits, others know so they feel invited to come in.
Make the office earn its gravity. If your office isnt a place people want to be (no dogs, decent spaces to collaborate, or sense of warmth), fix that before you fixate on policies.
Many keep asking, How do we get people back to the office? Thats the wrong question.
The better questions asked by true leaders are How do we give people the autonomy to choose the best place to do their best work while making the office one of those places? and How do we foster a culture that invites people in?
My current experience is proof that when you take these approaches, the in-office magic happens, no mandate required.
On the edge of Boulder, Colorado, a remarkable convergence of mutually beneficial collaboration is underway, and it could reshape how housing gets built, who builds it, and who is able to afford it.
This is all happening inside BoulderMOD, a new modular housing factory built by the city of Boulder for use by the local Habitat for Humanity affiliate and powered by the labor of apprentice modular home builders from area public high schools.
The students come to the factory several hours a day for hands-on education in advanced home building, working on actual modular homes that are now being installed in a section of Boulder devastated by flooding. At full capacity, the factory could produce up to 50 homes per year.
[Photo: courtesy City of Boulder]
BoulderMOD is a joint venture between the Boulder Valley School District, Flatirons Habitat for Humanity, and the city of Boulder, and each of the three partners is tallying very tangible returns. The school district gets to offer an advanced trade-based curriculum that prepares its students for careers they can start immediately. Flatirons Habitat for Humanity gets to streamline and multiply its housing production capabilities, and the city gets to chip away at a deeply ingrained housing affordability crisis.
[Photo: courtesy City of Boulder]
“It’s game-changing,” says Dan McColley, executive director of Flatirons Habitat for Humanity. “It is a complete reinvention of the way we are serving families and meeting the needs of our community.”
This innovative partnership has its roots in tragedy. In 2013, devastating floods washed through the Boulder valley. One of the hardest-hit areas was the Ponderosa Mobile Home Park, a 68-unit community of permanently placed mobile homes, and though no lives were lost, many of the homes were heavily damaged.
In a city where the median home price currently hovers around $1 million, Ponderosa was a rare place of affordability, and seemed on the verge of being lost completely. The city stepped in and, working with the community, annexed the mobile home park in 2017 and upgraded its infrastructure to prevent future flooding. It partnered with Habitat for Humanity to help rebuild housing for any resident who wanted to stay, and committed to preserving the community’s affordability in perpetuity.
Getting that done was going to require an unconventional approach. “At the time, the Flatirons Habitat affiliate was building maybe three or four homes a year and looking at replacing 70-ish mobile homes,” says McColley. “It was going to take us a long time if we used our traditional model.”
[Photo: courtesy City of Boulder]
New skills, new homes
In 2019, the city approached the school district about following through on those commitments. Factory-built modular housing was identified as the most efficient way of rebuilding damaged homes. The city had funding for the rebuilding effort in its affordable housing fund, and a willing builder in the Habitat for Humanity. But it didn’t have the factory. So city officials reached out to representatives at the Boulder Valley School District, which had recently opened a trade-focused campus called Apex that offers career pathways to high school students. One of its programs was centered on construction. The city asked the district if that program could expand in a new direction.
“[The city] had this aspirational vision of what would happen if they were able to partner with the school district, build a facility, and then in a meaningful way take moves to help with the affordable housing issues in our community,” says Rob Anderson, superintendent of the Boulder Valley School District.
After five years of planning, that facility came online. The city built the $13 million BoulderMOD facility using funds from its affordable housing program, with some state and federal grants and private foundation money. Construction of the facility was finished in late 2024, and the space was then outfitted with about $1 million worth of construction tools and equipment.
[Photo: John Risi/courtesy City of Boulder]
Flatirons Habitat for Humanity staffed the facility, and the school district created a curriculum to support the production process. Production started in February 2025, with around 30 high school juniors and seniors in the factory every week, working on every stage of construction, from framing, electrical, and plumbing to drywall and roofing. The first two duplexes were placed on the Ponderosa site in November and December.
“It felt like the right thing to do for our community, for our kids. But man, it’s exceeded expectations,” Anderson says.
The Habitat projects are also helping support the community in other ways, including tapping into local suppliers for energy-efficient building materials. For example, Alpen, a high-performance window manufacturer located near Boulder, is providing all the windows for the Ponderosa homes.
McColley says the pace of construction will increase as the teams refine their processes and as the students gain more hands-on experience. The duplexes being built for the Ponderosa project are particularly conducive, as they use a single and relatively simple design for each three-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bathroom unit.
“At full production, the house will take about eight weeks to move from one end of the factory to the other, and then we’ll have about four, maybe five weeks of site work to do before the family can move in,” says McColley. “We’ll be cutting our construction timeframe from 9 to 12 months to about 12 weeks.”
[Photo: Linda Sanders/courtesy City of Boulder]
It’s so fast that it’s tweaking one of the standard elements of the Habitat for Humanity building process, which requires homebuyers to contribute to the cost of their home via 200 hours of sweat equity during construction. Homes built at BoulderMOD will progress so quickly that a homebuyer’s sweat equity will likely extend into someone else’s home.
McColley says building the 70 or so homes for the Ponderosa project will occupy BoulderMOD for the next few years, but his organization is already looking at using it for other Habitat for Humanity housing projects across the Boulder region. Every home built there will be sold as an affordable housing unit, and McColley expects about 90% of its production to be modular from this point on.
“Everything about what we do is different because we’re doing it this way. We’re building houses faster and we’re giving them out to families much more quickly in a much higher volume than we’ve done before,” McColley says. “So we’re tackling the affordable housing crisis in the near term through a different production process, but we’re also tackling it in the long term by training a new generation of construction professionals.”
The school district is already planning to expand the size of BoulderMOD to accommodate more students, even those not explicitly using it as a career path. “I see kids who plan on attending competitive four-year colleges and universities not even interested in construction signing up for this,” Anderson says.
Whether or not it turns into a job, the students at BoulderMOD are doing more than just learning construction skills. “They are learning how to build. They’re not working on bird houses or dog houses to learn their construction techniques. They’re working on people’s houses, and that’s something that is not lost on them,” McColley says. “They understand at a level that I frankly did not expect the community impact that they are having by building these homes.”
At a time when it seems like everything’s getting more expensive, Ikea keeps making cheaper and cheaper USB-C chargers.
Its newestthe 20-watt, single-port Sjösssells for $3.99. Youd pay more than four times that for Apple’s 20-watt, single-port USB-C charger, priced at $19. Charging cables for both are sold separately.
[Photo: Ikea]
Ikea has moved more aggressively into home electronics since last year. The company released a revamped range of smart home products in fall 2025 and opened pilot in-store pop-up shops in select U.S. Best Buy locations, meaning the brand now shares kiosk space with tech giants like Apple, Microsoft, and Meta. Its strategy: selling products that are designed to be simple, stylish, and, above all, affordable.
[Photo: Ikea]
Ikea already sells a 65-watt charger for $25 and a 30-watt charger for $8; its newest and smallest model is also its cheapest. Priced not to break the bank if you leave one behind in the hotel room and need a replacement, Ikea’s charger comes in just one colorway: white and light mint green, but each includes colored stickers to personalize.
Not content to sell us only Billy bookcases, Ikea’s push into home tech ranges from smart lights and wireless speakers to kitchen appliances and now ultra-cheap chargers. Everyone’s favorite Swedish furniture company has quietly become something of a tech company on the side.
Fast Company is now accepting applications for our annual Best Workplaces for Innovators awards.
This marks the eighth year we will be recognizing companies and organizations around the world that most effectively empower employees at all levels to improve processes, create new products, or invent whole new ways of doing business.
In addition to honoring the worlds overall Best Workplaces for Innovators, we will recognize companies in 19 categories, including a brand-new category, Skilled Labor, singling out companies that depend heavily on talented employees with the kinds of increasingly coveted technical expertise acquired through votech training and trade schools.
New Best Workplaces for Innovators categories
In addition to Skilled Labor, other new categories this year include:
Cybersecurity and Enterprise Software
Industrial and Manufacturing
Technology and Science
Advertising, Marketing, and PR
Biotech, Healthcare, and Life Sciences
Financial Services and Fintech
To select winners, the editors of Fast Company carefully review and score every application. An outside panel of industry experts then assesses the finalists to help determine the top 10, while the editors compile category winners based on application scores.
At a time of intense competition for talent, when elite prospects are receiving unprecedented compensation packages, companies with robust innovation cultures have a real edge, says Brendan Vaughan, editor-in-chief of Fast Company. Best Workplaces for Innovators allows our editors to identify organizations that most successfully encourage all their employees to be creative, to experiment, to invent.
Recognition in the fall issue
Companies selected as Best Workplaces for Innovators will appear in the fall 2026 issue of Fast Company magazine and on fastcompany.com in September. For more information and details, see the FAQs.
Last years Best Workplaces for Innovators issue honored nearly 200 diverse organizations from around the world, including Motorola Solutions (No. 1), Mattel (No. 7), Genentech (No. 25), and the only two companies that have made the cut every single yearSiemens (No. 10) and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (No. 50).
What differentiates Fast Companys Best Workplaces for Innovators awards from other best places to work lists is that its the only major business magazine recognition program that emphasizes innovation as the primary workplace perk.
Any organization that can demonstrate a serious and sustained commitment to building a culture of innovation that yields tangible results is eligible to applypublic, private, or nonprofit. For more information or to apply, visit fastcompany.com/apply/bwi.
For more than a decade, Fast Company has been recognizing outstanding achievement with its awards programs. Our Most Innovative Companies list celebrates organizations that are transforming industries and shaping society through paradigm-shifting products, insights, or services. Innovation by Design focuses on individuals and firms that are addressing some of the worlds most intractable challenges through design solutions. World Changing Ideas highlights emerging initiatives that aim to enhance life for all of us. Brands That Matter and Next Big Thing in Tech shine a light on the worlds most relevant brands and highlight the most potent emerging developments in technology.
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In todays article, were sharing the full results from the Q4 2025 Zoodealio-ResiClub Real Estate Agent Survey. To conduct our real estate agent survey, ResiClub partnered with Zoodealio, a cash-offer platform, and iBuyer-management software designed for real estate agents.
Among the 204 agents who took the survey, half (51%) have been real estate agents for 15 years or longer.
The survey was fielded from November 17 to December 29, 2025. Respondents included real estate agents spanning all regions of the U.S., giving us a ground-level view of buyer urgency, seller motivation, leverage shifts, commission structures, and expectations for the next 12 months.
Heres what the results revealed.
Buyer urgency cools and leverage continues to shift away from sellers
Nationally, a majority (55%) of agents say buyer urgency is lower than it was 12 months ago. The pullback is most pronounced in the Southwest, where no agents reported seeing buyer urgency pick up, and 65% reported seeing lower urgency.
This slowdown is underlined by a continued downturn of buyer demand, with 52% of U.S. agents reporting lower homebuyer demand relative to 12 months ago.
As buyer demand softens and inventory continues to build, 54% of U.S. agents now say sellers outnumber buyers, with 64% of agents in the Southeast noting the trend, reinforcing that buyers are gaining negotiating power as they move less urgently.
Moreover, the overwhelming majority of agents across all regions (82%) agree that the leverage continues to shift toward homebuyers in their local housing markets.
As buyer urgency fades, seller urgency is rising. Nationally, 45% of agents say seller urgency is higher than it was 12 months ago, led by the West (51%), Southwest (48%), and Southeast (46%). In these regions, fewer sellers appear willing to wait for conditions to improve.
By contrast, the Northeast looks more stable: 55% of agents there say seller urgency is about the same as a year ago.
Agents expectations for 2026
In Q4 2025, 39% of agents surveyed expected home prices in their local market to increase over the next 12 months, up from 28% in Q3. The shift is driven by a rise in expectations for prices to stay flat or see slight appreciation, with only 2% of agents anticipating price increases of 5% or more.
Mortgage-rate expectations have dipped lower over the past quarter. Earlier in 2025, many agents were still bracing for a higher-rate outcome by the end of the year. As the year progressed, that view softened: Throughout Q4, most agents reported their expectations shifted toward a mid-6% end point, with far fewer expecting rates to remain in the 7% range.
Overall confidence is weak, but agents see growth coming from existing homeowners
Some 60% of real estate agents surveyed describe their business outlook for the next 12 months as optimistic, led by those in the Southeast (67%).
Where do agents think the pie can grow the most in 2026? They say more homeowners are looking to downsize.
Roughly 43% say downsizers will be the fastest-growing client segment, followed by move-up buyers (20%). First-time buyers trail well behind (15%), reflecting ongoing affordability constraints.
Agent commissions are holding upbut theyre still mad at NAR
Sentiment toward the National Association of Realtors remains weak: 57% of agents describe their view as somewhat unfavorable (26%) or very unfavorable (31%), while only 13% express a somewhat favorable (10%) or very favorable opinion (3%) of the organization.
Agent compensation structures remain largely similar to the way they were prior to the March 2024 NAR settlement: 88% of sell-side deals and 82% of buy-side deals still use fixed-percentage commissions, mostly in the 2% to 3% range. Alternative structures are more common on the buy side but remain a minority.
Meanwhile, about 10% of U.S. agents say they have discussed iBuyer cash-offer options with clients very often in the past year. These conversations are most common between agents and clients in the Southwest and the Southeast.
Big picture
The Zoodealio-ResiClub Real Estate Agent Survey results from Q4 2025 show a market moving in the same direction, but with more clarity than in Q3. Buyer urgency has cooled further, seller urgency has picked up, and the majority of agents say sellers outnumber buyers, reinforcing the ongoing shift in negotiating power toward buyers.
At the same time, expectations around home prices have firmed modestly, with fewer agents anticipating declines and more expecting flat to slight growth in the next 12 months. As in Q3, agents expect activity to be driven primarily by existing homeownersparticularly downsizers and move-up buyers. Meanwhile, post-settlement agent sentiment toward NAR remains poor, and commission structures remain largely unchanged.
The Swiss company Punkt has released its latest handset, the MC03, a cellphone that merges minimalist hardware design with a matching UX experience that promises total privacy protection against greedy corporations who want to track you and own your data for their own benefit. This thing got me at “DeGoogled From the Core,” which is one of the phone’s declared core selling points.
According to founder Petter Neby, “Punkt is about using technology to help us adopt intelligent habits for less distracted lives.” In 2015, Punkt launched its first phone, the MP01, as a secure device that supported only text and calls. No apps. No tracking. Punkt later released the MP02an even simpler phone that had a small screen and physical buttonsand the MC02, a secure phone with basic encrypted apps like email and calendar.
The new MC03 acknowledges that while people might appreciate this obsession with monastic simplicity, security, and privacy, there is clearly a need for some extra features from time to time, like ordering food, getting a cab ride, or wasting time on Instagram.
[Photo: Punkt]
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
The Punkt MC03 UX design divides your phone experience into two environments: One is a distraction-free, fully protected private environment called the Vault; the other is called the Wild Web, and its where all the Android apps you want to install live.
The Vault is the phone’s main screen. Here youll find the core built-in apps and services, all designed with safety and privacy from the ground up, with encryption, no third-party tracking, no data profiling whatsoever. Stuff like mail, messaging, calendar, contacts, or your file cloud live here. They’re featured on a white-on-black home screen in Helvetica type that’s meant to recall the iconic design aesthetic of Dieter Rams for Braun (an influence that permeates all of Punkts products).
The Wild Web features a fully customizable “external” screen, where youll find your standard rows of icons (white over black square buttons) over a white background. Its clearly distinct from the Vault so it changes your mindset: Security is not guaranteed here, although each app lives in a privacy bubble.
According to the company, the phone runs each app in its own walled playground, with no access to other data or hardware on the device. Punkt says this ensures your data privacy and limits third-party tracking from app to app (although if you use the same Gmail credentials to log into each app, Google will be able to track you on the server side).
Ending you are the product
The secret sauce behind this phone is AphyOS, a custom operating system that severs the umbilical cord that typically tethers Android phones to Mountain View’s data-harvesting servers. While a standard Android device “calls home” to Google every 4.5 minutes to report your location and habits, AphyOS uses “hardened code.”
This OS core has been reinforced to block attacks and close security loopholesassisted by what the company calls a bank-grade Secure Element chip that keeps your data on the device. It cuts out the bloatware and hidden background services that drain your phones battery and your privacy, giving you what Neby calls “a modern, premium device without the need to compromise.”
All of this digital sovereignty comes with a price tag, but thats exactly the point that Punkt is trying to make: Do you want to pay with your private life or do you want to pay to keep your life private? The MC03 includes a 12-month subscription to AphyOS, after which you will have to pay roughly $10 per month to maintain it.
By paying for the operating system, you become the customer rather than the merchandise sold to advertisers. As Andy Yen, founder of partner company Proton, puts it: “People deserve choice. Choice over the phone they use, the software they rely on, and who they share their data with.”
The monthly subscription price is not to use the phone but to pay for the services. The subscription bundles 5 GB of cloud storage, email, messaging, and calendar into a single secure package. But the real power comes from its integration with Proton. The phone comes with Proton Mail, Drive, Calendar, VPN, Wallet, and Pass, effectively replacing the entire Google Workspace with an encrypted alternative.
For messaging, Punkt has preinstalled the cross-platform encrypted client Threema directly into the MC03s Vault, ensuring your chats have “rigorous data protection and rock-solid security” right out of the box, the company claims. It also includes a VPN called Digital Nomad, which protects your connection on sketchy public Wi-Fi networks. Unlike standard VPN apps, this one is integrated directly into the operating system for better performance and requires no extra setup or third-party subscription.
p>Finally, the phone forces you to confront the cost of your digital life with the Data and Carbon Ledger. Punkt says this dashboard doesn’t just let you manage app privacy permissions in real time; it actually tracks the energy consumption and carbon footprint of every app you use, pushing you to make smarter, more sustainable choices about how you use your device. The ledger also gives you “full transparent control over app data flow,” allowing you to see and restrict app-specific privacy permissions.
[Photo: Punkt]
Nice hardware too
The object itself is a solid piece of industrial art designed in Switzerland and manufactured in Germany. Solid, matte gunmetal finish. Simple. Nothing added for effect. Just a metal-and-glass slab with a 6.67-inch OLED screen with the usual high-end 120Hz refresh rate standard.
One of the best features, however, is its removable 5,200mAh battery, which, oh boyin an era where phones are sealed shut like tombs, allowing users to swap their own power source is a radical act of repairability that extends the device’s life indefinitely. I missed this from the old 90s candy phones, and now I want it.
The MC03 doesn’t skimp on the modern specs required for the Wild Web. It sports a 64-megapixel main camera that the company claims can capture sharp images in low light, backed by an ultrawide lens for landscapes and a macro lens for close-ups. Like most phones, its water and dust resistant, and supports wireless charging. Priced at $699, its shipping in Europe later this month and hitting North America in the spring.
