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Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. This week, Zillow economists published their updated 12-month forecast, projecting that U.S. home pricesas measured by the Zillow Home Value Indexwill rise 0.4% between July 2025 and July 2026. Heading into 2025, Zillows 12-month forecast for U.S. home prices was +2.6%. However, many housing markets across the country softened faster than expected, prompting Zillow to issue several downward revisions. By April 2025, Zillow had cut its 12-month national home price outlook to -1.7%. However, in recent months, Zillow has stopped issuing downward revisionsand this revised 12-month outlook of +0.4% actually represents an upward adjustment. Home value appreciation is nearly flat at the national average, rising just +0.2% over the past year. Lower rates and low price growth have slightly improved affordability; monthly mortgage costs are down $19 over the past year, but the typical payment is still nearly $1,000 per month higher than before the pandemic, wrote Zillow economists this week. Zillow added that: Affordability and access is gradually improving where builders have been able to keep up with demand, showing why building more homes is so critical. Metros where price corrections are steepest are among those with the largest increase in inventory compared to before the pandemic. All of these metros except Miami rank among the top 10 for home building permits from 2020 to 2024. When demand for homes surged, builders were able to respond fastest in areas with fewer land-use restrictions. That gave buyers more options and sellers more homes to move into, freeing up existing supply. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}})}(); Among the 300 largest U.S. metro area housing markets, Zillow expects the biggest home price increase between July 2025 and July 2026 to occur in these 15 areas: Atlantic City, NJ 4.3% Torrington, CT 4.1% Saginaw, MI 3.8% Kingston, NY 3.8% Pottsville, PA 3.8% Rockford, IL 3.6% Concord, NH 3.6% Knoxville, TN 3.4% New Haven, CT 3.4% Norwich, CT 3.4% Hartford, CT 3.2% Fayetteville, AR 3.1% Hilton Head Island, SC 3.0% Vineland, NJ 3.0% Barnstable Town, MA 2.9% Among the 300 largest U.S. metro area housing markets, Zillow expects the biggest home price decline between July 2025 and July 2026 to occur in these 15 areas: Houma, LA -8.6% Lake Charles, LA -8.2% Alexandria, LA -6.6% Lafayette, LA -6.2% New Orleans, LA -5.8% Shreveport, LA -5.7% Beaumont, TX -5.3% San Francisco, CA -4.1% Corpus Christi, TX -3.8% Santa Rosa, CA -3.7% Monroe, LA -3.7% Odessa, TX -3.7% Austin, TX -3.5% Chico, CA -3.4% Texarkana, TX -3.3% Below is what the current year-over-year rate of home price growth looks like for single-family and condo home prices. The Sun Belt, in particular Southwest Florida, is currently the epicenter of housing market weakness right now. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}})}();
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E-Commerce
They are the hurricanes of legend, the bowling balls that cross the entire Atlantic Ocean, menaced ships of yore and make the long, curved lines on the hurricane charts.Cape Verde storms, named for the group of islands about 450 miles (725 kilometers) off the west coast of Africa, typically form from clusters of thunderstorms that move off the continent and into the Atlantic.With thousands of miles of ocean water above the 80-degree Fahrenheit (27-degree Celsius) temperature needed to fuel hurricanes, Cape Verde storms are some of the most dangerous that threaten North America. About 85% of all major hurricanes Category 3 and higher start out there, according to the National Hurricane Center.“They are the media stars and certainly get a lot of attention because you can track them for a long time,” said Jeff Masters, a meteorologist for Yale Climate Connections.But they also are a rare threat. Less than one out of every 10 of the storms crash into the U.S. The rest either fall apart or are curved out to sea by the north and east steering winds that normally prevail over the Atlantic. Now is the time to turn to the east Conditions need to be just right for Cape Verde storms to form and grow, keeping them mostly confined to August and September.Hurricane Erin is a Cape Verde storm. The National Hurricane Center is watching two more clusters of storms to the east of Erin that could develop into tropical storms.But the atmosphere is too complex to know how strong those storms can be if they develop or whether any of them will threaten the U.S. Forecasters begin to lose confidence in their ability to predict the future of any specific storms more than a week out. It takes at least 10 days for a potential hurricane to cross the Atlantic Ocean. Warm weather and light winds help Cape Verde storms grow Cape Verde storms start over Africa where the hot dry air in the Sahara and the hot humid air over the Gulf of Guinea clash and create clusters of thunderstorms that move off the continent.The warm water is the first ingredient. Hurricanes also thrive with light winds above them that won’t blow the thunderstorms away from the center.“They are the strongest because they have the most time to develop. The other storms can crash into land too early,” Masters said.)Researchers have spent the past several years studying the ocean and atmosphere in the far eastern Atlantic to get a better idea of why some storms form and some don’t.In recent years, scientists have realized that dry air and dust from the Sahara in Africa blown into the Atlantic from the east can lessen the high humidity hurricanes need and inhibit their development. The dust can travel all the way across the ocean and settle on cars and windows on the U.S. East Coast.“They travel about a mile above the surface, the winds are very strong, and the air is dry and hot. That’s a trifecta that suppresses hurricane activity,” Jason Dunion, a scientist at the University of Miami’s Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies told the university. 1 or 2 hurricanes a year are Cape Verde storms Some years may not see a Cape Verde storm at all. Some can see as many as four or five. But on average about one or two hurricanes a year are classified as Cape Verde storms, according to the National Hurricane Center.And they aren’t the only storms to hit the U.S. The Weather Channel analyzed hurricanes since 1995 and found only nine of the 60 that struck the U.S. were the ones that track all the way across the Atlantic. The storms you remember The list of famous Cape Verde hurricanes has a lot of overlap with the list of the most memorable, powerful and deadliest hurricanes.There is the 1900 Galveston Hurricane that killed about 8,000 people in Texas and the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane that killed 2,500 in Florida. In more recent times, hurricanes Donna in 1960 in Florida, Hugo in 1989 in South Carolina, Andrew in 1992 in Florida, Ivan in Grand Cayman, Alabama and Florida in 2004, Ike in Texas in 2008, Irma in Cuba, Puerto Rico and Florida in 2017 and Florence in North Carolina in 2018 were all Cape Verde storms. Jeffrey Collins, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
Beauty magazines have been lying to readers for decadesbut at least they used to start with actual humans. NewBeauty magazine’s Summer/Fall 2025 issue quietly crossed that line, publishing a multipage article dedicated to the beautification of female skin that featured perfect female models who weren’t real. Spotted by professional photographer Cassandra Klepac, she pointed out that each photo was labeled as AI and included the prompt used to generate them. With the advent of technology capable of synthesizing ultra-high-definition photos of realistic humans, this was bound to happen sooner rather than later. Knowing the hell that Vogue recently faced for featuring Guess advertisements with AI-generated modelssparking the rage of 2.7 million TikTok viewers and subscription cancellationsit is surprising that NewBeautys editors decided to do the same with actual editorial content, the supposedly “real” part of magazines. So why did the magazinewhich calls itself the beauty authority in its taglinedo this? “NewBeauty features both real people and patients, alongside AI-generated images,” executive editor Liz Ritter told me via email. “We maintain a strict policy of transparency by clearly labeling all AI content in detail in our captions, including the prompts used to create these images, so readers always know the difference.” Her nonanswer leaves us to only speculate on the reasons why. Talking about the Guess campaign, Sara Zifffounder of the Model Alliancesaid that it was “less about innovation and more about desperation and the need to cut costs.” Given the depressed status of the print media industry, I suspect that may have played a role in the case of NewBeauty. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Cass Klepac (@cassandra.klepac) Perfectly legal . . . However you may feel about the campaign, we know that NewBeauty didn’t do anything illegal. There are virtually no laws governing editorial use of AI-generated humans at this point, except to stop deceptive use in politics and in regards to the honor of individuals (something already covered by libel laws). Surprisingly, advertising is a little bit more regulated. The Federal Trade Commission can penalize deceptive advertising practices. New York’s groundbreaking AI disclosure law targets advertisements, requiring “conspicuous disclosure” when synthetic performers are used. But editorial? It exists in a regulatory wasteland, leaving it to the judgment of editors. Europe’s comprehensive AI Act mandates clear labeling of AI-generated content and carries maximum fines of 35 million ($40.7 million), but it focuses on transparency, not prohibition. You can fabricate entire humans for editorial useyou just have to mention it in the caption. NewBeauty did exactly that. . . . but dangerous anyway? We also know that, despite the fact there’s nothing illegal about it, this doesn’t mean it is right. Using artificial intelligence feels dangerous because it is so easy and so powerful. When it spreadsand it willmany professions will be affected. This includes not only the models, photographers, makeup artists, and all the people who make real photoshoots possible, but also the Photoshop artists who retouch what comes out of the digital camera into an image that quite often has very little to do with what the sensors capture. For the past few decades, Photoshop artists have erased wrinkles, refined arms, rebuilt waistlines, adjusted eyes, and turned anything that editors deemed imperfect into whatever fantasy beauty standard the industry set. Reality has been malleable, to be generous. Remember that time Rolling Stone heavily retouched Katy Perry because they didn’t think she was pretty enough? Or that Lena Dunham Vogue cover and photo feature, the one in which she was missing an arm? Duham said at the time those photos were intended as “fantasy.” Like everything else featured in glossy pages. Those were just two high-profile examples of a practice that happens regularly for any cover of any fashion, beauty, or celebrity print magazine. In this sense, acting surprised or offended by NewBeautys AI models feels hollow, albeit understandabledue to a fear of the damage that AI tools will bring to the industry. It’s been a ruse forever The hard reality is that photographers have used lighting and filtering tricks to make things look more beautiful than they are in real life since the advent of the medium. Then, the editorial and advertising industries have been breaking every taboo in digital manipulation since Photoshop was invented. Today, AI is democratizing the deception once againto the point where a single art director for some random magazine can actually create a high-resolution print spread full of beautiful people who dont exist, simply by using a short prompt and spending a couple of dollars. I get it. It’s tempting to tweak reality, sometimes rearranging it completely, to tell a compelling narrative. This summer I went to the Robert Capa museum in Budapesthighly recommendedand stared for a while at that famous Spanish Civil War photo of a Republican “miliciano” being shot. I considered its terrible beauty and the effect it had on the public in an era in which the specter of Nazism and fascism was rising in Europe. I also considered the fact that some experts believe that the photo may have been staged (while others vehemently disagree) and pondered on what is real and whats not, on the effects of perceived reality versus “real reality” versus manipulated reality. These are questions we constantly face as journalists. If Capa really staged that photo, perhaps it was the right thing to do at the time. Perhaps not. But I digress. I dont pretend to hold NewBeauty to the same fact-checking standards that governed news media back in the time of Capa. Beauty, fashion, cars, and luxury magazines are all part of that aspirational world in which reality easily gets bent to tell a fantasy. I would say that, by clearly labeling the AI images, NewBeauty is being way more honest than the editors of fashion and beauty magazines have been in years and decades past. Those magazines never labeled their photos, “THIS CELEB IS PHOTOSHOPPED! THIS AINT REAL, STEPHANIE! STOP DIETING! LOL!” Yet all covers and many interior shots were digitally altered and many times reconstructed beyond recognition, sometimes pathetically so. Indeed, the beauty industry was already constructed on visual lies, but in the age of AI, the powers that be wont stop here. Will it be problematic? Yes. Will it cause real economic and personal damage? Most definitely. But we will get more and more used to it until we stop questioning the practice at all. I hate to tell you I told you so, but I told you so. Its the destruction of reality as we know it.
Category:
E-Commerce
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