Weekly News (May 6, 2025)

Mortgage Interest Rates Review

United Mortgage Nation  5/6/2025

                  Federal Fund Rate: 4.25 -4.50%        Prime Rate: 7.25 – 7.50%

Asian Population Grew Twice in 25 Years

미국내 아시안 인구 25년새 2배, 250만    

WSJ   5/5/25(Mon)

• Asian population in U.S. hit the record, 250M which grew twice in 25 years, which is 7.4% in U.S. total population which it was 4.2% in 2000, according to Pew Research Center’s recent report announced on 5/1/25.

• Korean population among them reaches to 2M, which takes 8%. Chinese are 5.5M and 22%. Indians are 21%, Philippines are 19%, Vietnams are 9%, and Japanese are 7%.
• But foreign-born Asians are declined from 63% in 2000 to 54% in 2023.
• Asian population in California is 7.1M which is the biggest. Asians in New York and Texas are about 2M each which is the 2nd place. Asians in New Jersey is about 1M and Asians in Washington is about 990K.
• The median age of Asians(34.7) is lower than the median in U.S.(38).

Home Builders Are Piling on Discounts

주택 건축회사들 가격 낮춤이 점점 더    

WSJ   5/2/25(Fri)

• Would a $5,000-off voucher entice you into buying a new home? Builder Taylor Morrison launched an email campaign this spring sending this offer to prospective house hunters. The discount is meant to offset President Trump’s tariffs, which are expected to push up prices for new homes soon.
• The spring buying season, when builders make close to 40% of their annual sales, is halfway over. Based on earnings released by listed builders, demand has been disappointing. America’s biggest builder, D.R. Horton, said revenue fell 15% in its latest quarter compared with a year ago, while PulteGroup ’s sales dropped 2%.
• Affordability is already so stretched that builders have been offering sweeteners including mortgage-rate buydowns, price cuts and design upgrades to get deals over the line. The number of completed but unsold new homes sitting on their lots has reached the highest levels since 2009.

Average Home-builder Incentive

WSJ 5/2/25

Home Prices Decline in the South but Rise Elsewhere

주택가격, 남부지역 감소 다른지역은 상승   

WSJ   5/6/25(Tue)

• The spring home-buying season is off to a slow start, but not everywhere. Buyers are still competing against each other for homes in the Northeast and Midwest, where new supply has been limited and attractive listings can draw crowds.
• Home prices in parts of the South have been flat or falling. Even with prices starting to come down, however, buyers are still struggling to afford purchases in places such as Texas and Florida, after prices skyrocketed during the pandemic era housing boom. Home builders built aggressively in those areas , and now many are sitting on unsold homes after mortgage rates doubled from their lows and relocations to these states slowed down.
• Overall, the U.S. housing market is far less active than it was a few years ago. Just over four million existing homes were sold last year, down about one-third from the more than six million homes that sold in 2021.

Tesla’s Sale and Share price

WSJ 5/6/(Tue)

Some Manufacturers in U.S. Get a Boost From Trump’s Tariff’s

플로리다 콘도 소유주들 유지비 상승으로 고생     

WSJ   5/5/25(Mon)

• Some small and midsize U.S. manufacturers are seeing an uptick in orders from companies looking to avoid paying new tariffs, stoking hope that the levies might boost their businesses over the longer- term.
• President Trump’s tariffs have disrupted global trade and the American economy. Yet those same new rules are making these manufacturers’ goods more price competitive with imports for the first time in years, they say.
• Donny Chaplin, president of Grand River Rubber & Plastics in Ashtabula, Ohio, said he has seen a rush of new inquiries and orders.
• SafeSource restarted two production lines to accommodate new orders, bringing the number of lines in service to eight. Each of the 425-footlong lines churns out about 22,000 gloves an hour, or nearly 118 million a month in continuous production. Higher volumes help Safe Source drive down its production costs.

U.S. GDP declined in 1st Qt to -0.3%

미국 -0.3% 쇼크, 트럼프 관세 역풍    

Korea Daily   5/1/25(Thu)

• The Department of Commerce reported that U.S. GDP has declined 0.3% in the 1st Qt compared to the previous one(2.4%), 4th Qt 2024 , which is lower than the market expectation(+0.4%).
• The main reason is the increased import which increased 41.3% which export increased only 1.8%. The difference between import and export will affect GDP negatively. Most importers has increased the orders in order to avoid future hike from the tariffs.
• Some experts say that GDP growth will be recovered when U.S. import becomes normal in 2nd Qt.

U.S. GDP Quarterly Change

WSJ   5/1/25

Tesla Board Opened Search for a CEO to Succeed Musk

              테슬라 이사회, 머스크 승계자 찾기에 문 활짝

WSJ    5/2/25(Fri)

• About a month ago, with Tesla’s stock sinking and some investors irritated about Elon Musk’s White House focus, Tesla’s board got serious about looking for Musk’s successor.
• Board members reached out to several executive search firms to work on a formal process for finding Tesla’s next chief executive, according to people familiar with the discussions.
• Tesla has been on a losing streak in the months since Musk, its visionary chief executive, began spending much of his time helping President Trump slash federal spending. Last week, after the company said its first-quarter profit had plunged 71%, Musk told investors he would soon pivot back to his job at Tesla.
• “Starting next month,” he said on a conference call about earnings, “I’ll be allocating far more of my time to Tesla.”

UPS to Slash Jobs, Shrink Operations

UPS사 20,000 감원 계획    

WSJ   4/30/25(Wed)

• United Parcel Service said it is cutting 20,000 operational positions this year, moving to slash expenses after breaking ways with Amazon.com , its biggest customer.
• UPS, which has nearly 490,000 employees, has been looking to shrink its operations since deciding in January to reduce the quantity of packages it delivers for Amazon.
• The e-commerce giant accounted for about 12% of UPS’s revenue. UPS also expects to close 73 leased and owned buildings this year. Last year, it closed 11 buildings and cut 12,000 jobs, mainly managerial roles. Sean O’Brien, the Teamsters president, said UPS is obligated to create 30,000 Teamsters jobs under the current contract. He said the union won’t object if UPS downsizes management but “UPS will be in for a hell of a fight” if it moves to eliminate Teamsters jobs.

UPS employee count

WSJ  4/30/25