Finance
January home prices show steady annual gain, but month-to-month comparison tells another tale: Case-Shiller
Home prices hold steady, but more supply could help buyers. (iStock)
Home prices recorded another gain in January, but a month-to-month comparison showed values losing some ground, according to the latest S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices report.
Home prices are now 6% above their level this time last year, up from 5.6% last month. The 10-city composite increased by 7.4% annually, up from 7% the previous month. At the same time, the 20-city composite posted a rise of 6.6%, up from 6.2% the previous month.
Month-to-month, home prices struggled because of high mortgage rates and a lack of housing supply. While the 10-city composite registered no growth, the 20-city composite decreased by 0.1%—the indices measure home prices in major metros across the country.
“Homeowners most likely saw healthy gains in the last year, no matter what city you were in, or if it was in an expensive or inexpensive neighborhood,” S&P Dow Jones Indices Head of Commodities Brian Luke said. “No matter which way you slice it, the index performance closely resembled the broad market.”
“On a monthly basis, home prices continue to struggle in the face of elevated borrowing costs,” Luke continued. “Seventeen markets dropped over the last month, while Minneapolis has posted a 2.4% decline over the prior three months.”
One way to use your home’s equity is through a cash-out refinance to help you pay down debt or fund home improvement projects. Visit Credible to find your personalized interest rate without affecting your credit score.
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Spring home buying options improve
Spring buying will likely be tamed by still-too-high borrowing costs and limited housing inventory, two factors that have helped prop home prices up. However, improving for-sale options and the promise of an interest rate cut sometime in the summer mean relief is on the way.
At its latest meeting, the Federal Reserve said it would continue to monitor inflation and other economic indicators to determine when to lower rates. Market expectations are that the first rate cut will come in the summer, if not later in the year.
Meanwhile, housing inventory is improving. In February, housing starts climbed 5.9% year-over-year and home completions were 10.7% higher annually, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Census Bureau, signaling potentially more home options in coming months.
Overall, housing supply has improved, as the number of homes for sale increased by 14.8% compared to last year and grew for the fourth straight month, according to a report by Realtor.com.
“While elevated mortgage rates continued to freeze housing market activity over the winter, an unthawing is in sight, with improvements in for-sale inventory offering more opportunities for potential buyers across the country,” CoreLogic Chief Economist Selma Hepp said. “With spring’s arrival, home prices are likely to show a seasonal uptick, although the annual acceleration in gains will slow compared with the strong 2023 spring. Nevertheless, more inventory is a welcome development and suggests that some normalization in the U.S. housing market lies ahead.”
Homebuyers can find the best mortgage rate by shopping around and comparing your options. You can visit an online marketplace like Credible to compare rates, choose your loan term and get preapproved with multiple lenders at once.
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Biden’s initiatives help build supply
A new initiative recently launched by President Joe Biden to improve affordability and supply issues could help increase demand for housing in the current high-rate environment. Biden has called on Congress to invest more than $175 billion in affordable housing initiatives, according to a White House statement.
In his State of the Union address earlier this month, Biden called on Congress to create legislation giving a $10,000 tax credit to first-time homebuyers and those who sell their starter homes. This move would help middle-class Americans cope with higher borrowing costs while incentivizing existing homeowners to sell more homes.
“Home price growth will likely not surge going into the Spring home buying season, as home sales are fairly stagnant at this moment,” Max Slyusarchuk, CEO of A&D Mortgage said. “We do believe rates will begin to drop in the second half of the year, and that will help pick up home sales, which will be buoyed by stable home values.”
If you are looking to take advantage of the current mortgage rates by refinancing your mortgage loan or are ready to shop for the best rate on a new mortgage, consider visiting an online marketplace like Credible to compare rates and get preapproved with multiple lenders at once.
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Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba has invested heavily in its fast-growing international business as growth slows for its China-focused Taobao and Tmall business.
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images
BEIJING — Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba‘s international arm on Wednesday launched an updated version of its artificial intelligence-powered translation tool that, it says, is better than products offered by Google, DeepL and ChatGPT.
That’s based on an assessment of Alibaba International’s new model, Marco MT, by translation benchmark framework Flores, the Chinese company said.
Alibaba’s fast-growing international unit released the AI translation product as an update to one unveiled about a year ago, which it says already has 500,000 merchant users. Sellers based in one country can use the translation tool to create product pages in the language of the target market.
The new version is based only on large language models, allowing it to draw on contextual clues such as culture or industry-specific terms, Kaifu Zhang, vice president of Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group and head of the business’ artificial intelligence initiative, told CNBC in an interview Tuesday.
“The idea is that we want this AI tool to help the bottom line of the merchants, because if the merchants are doing well, the platform will be doing well,” he said.
Large language models power artificial intelligence applications such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which can also translate text. The models, trained on massive amounts of data, can generate humanlike responses to user prompts.
Alibaba’s translation tool is based on its own model called Qwen. The product supports 15 languages: Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish and Ukrainian.
Zhang said he expects “substantial demand” for the tool from Europe and the Americas. He also expects emerging markets to be a significant area of use.
When users of Alibaba.com — a site for suppliers to sell to businesses — are categorized by country, developing countries account for about half of the top 20 active AI tool users, Zhang said.
Chinese companies have increasingly looked abroad for growth opportunities, especially e-commerce merchants. PDD Holdings‘ Temu, fast fashion seller Shein and ByteDance’s TikTok are among the recent global market entrants. Many China-based merchants also sell on Amazon.com.
Contextual clues
Since Alibaba launched the first version of its AI translation tool last fall, the company said merchants have used it for more than 100 million product listings. Similar to other AI-based services, the basic pricing charges merchants by the amount of translated text.
Zhang declined to share how much the updated version would cost. He said it was included in some service bundles for merchants wanting simple exposure to overseas users.
His thinking is that contextual translation makes it much more likely that consumers decide to buy. He shared an example in which a colloquial Chinese description for a slipper would have turned off English-speaking consumers if it was only translated literally, without getting at the implied meaning.
“The updated translation engine is going to make Double 11 a better experience for consumers because of more authentic expression,” Zhang said, in reference to the Alibaba-led shopping festival that centers on Nov. 11 each year.
Alibaba’s international business includes platforms such as AliExpress and Lazada, which primarily targets Southeast Asia. The international unit reported sales growth of 32% to $4.03 billion in the quarter ended June from a year ago.
That’s in contrast to a 1% year-on-year drop in sales to $15.6 billion for Alibaba’s main Taobao and Tmall e-commerce business, which has focused on China.
The Taobao app is also popular with consumers in Singapore. In September, the app launched an AI-powered English version for users in the country.
Nomura analysts expect that Alibaba’s international revenue slowed slightly to 29% year-on-year growth in the quarter ended September, while operating losses narrowed, according to an Oct. 10 report. Alibaba has yet to announce when it will release quarterly earnings.
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