2025-03-21
12 分钟President Trump signs an executive order seeking to abolish the Education Department.
Plus why Florida lawmakers are considering getting rid of Property taxes Home values have.
Gone up so significantly around the country that people are seeing their property tax bills go up alongside that.
And so there's been a real movement to do something about that in a. Number of states and home sales were up last month.
What's behind the rise?
It's Thursday, March 20th.
I'm Alex Osola for the Wall Street Journal.
This is the PM edition of what's News,
the top headlines and business stories that move the world today.
New data out today from the national association of RealTors shows
that U.S. existing home sales rose 4.2% in February from the prior month.
That was far better than economists expected and was the first month over month increase in two months.
Nicole Friedman, who covers the US Housing market for the Journal,
explains the rise despite the fact that mortgage rates haven't changed much.
A few years ago when rates shot up from 3% to higher than 6%, that really,
really shocked the market and buyers couldn't let go of what they could have afforded with 3% rates compared to what they could afford with rates at 6 or 7%.
It was such a dramatic increase that really spooked people.
But now it's been a couple of years and rates have been hovering in this 6 to 7% range.
And so a lot more buyers have just realized this is the reality right now.
And because they have their own life situations,