Sales of existing US homes pulled back more than expected in March, logging their biggest drop since late-2022 according to industry data released Thursday, as high mortgage rates weighed on affordability for homebuyers.Existing home sales slid 5.9 percent last month from February to an annual rate of 4.02 million, seasonally adjusted, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) said.This was significantly below a 4.2 million rate expected in a Briefing.com consensus estimate, and marked the biggest month-to-month drop since November 2022, the association said on a call.”Home buying and selling remained sluggish in March due to the affordability challenges associated with high mortgage rates,” said NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun in a statement.The popular 30-year fixed-rate mortgage hovered around 6.7 percent as of mid-March, similar to levels for the same period last year.Yun warned that residential housing mobility is “at historical lows,” signaling the “troublesome possibility of less economic mobility for society.”- ‘Subdued’ -“The big picture still is one of a very subdued housing market,” said Oliver Allen, senior US economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.The market is “frozen by the gulf” between the typical rates on new mortgages, which are nearly seven percent right now, and rates on existing mortgages, which averaged 4.3 percent in the fourth quarter.With mortgage rates elevated in recent times, current homeowners have been reluctant to enter the property market — after having locked in lower rates previously.”The tariff shock is unlikely to alter this dynamic dramatically and has so far worsened it at the margin,” Allen said, referring to sweeping new tariffs US President Donald Trump imposed this year.But he warned: “A hit to housing demand from the economic slowdown likely to follow the tariffs will add to the downward pressure on price growth.”Robert Frick, corporate economist at the Navy Federal Credit Union, added: “Prices for home furnishing will likely rise soon due to tariffs, and rising anxiety among consumers over inflation and jobs may magnify the instinct to hunker down already being felt by many families.”From a year ago, existing home sales fell 2.4 percent, the NAR said.The median price of previously-owned homes in March was up 2.7 percent from a year ago at $403,700 — and all four US regions logged price hikes.Inventory jumped by 8.1 percent from February as of end-March, the NAR said, but Yun told reporters that the volume of units appears to still be “lagging.”

After years spent working in sweatshops in California, Francisco Tzul got a job at a trendy lingerie brand that prides itself on ethical business practices and a “Made in America” approach.But the 60-year-old immigrant from Guatemala now fears being laid off over President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on US trading partners.Trump acknowledges his tariffs will cause Americans some pain initially, but believes that in the long run they will help bring industrial production back to the United States.But for the Cantiq brand, which makes lingerie in Los Angeles from fabrics often sourced from Asia, the additional tariffs mean higher production costs and potential layoffs.The tariffs “will harm the economy, not only for the owners, but the workers as well,” Tzul, who has been employed at Cantiq for five years, told AFP on a recent afternoon.- ‘Everybody’s going to get hurt’Chelsea Hughes, 35, founded Cantiq 10 years ago as an “ethical” company that would employ people from her local community, pay them proper wages and maintain decent working conditions.But with Trump’s tariffs, she said, all that could go out the window.”Now they’re just going to make it even more difficult for me to keep jobs for people that are here, and keep all of my production here,” Hughes told AFP from her boutique in the trendy Echo Park neighborhood. Marketed as lingerie for all body types and styles, the brand’ most popular item is a racy $35 brief that can be worn by women and men alike. It’s made out of three different fabrics: two sourced from China, and one from Taiwan.With imports from China now subject to an additional 145 percent tariff, Hughes estimates that the price tag on the briefs may jump to $42, making it unaffordable to many customers.”I think it doesn’t matter big or small, I think everybody’s going to get hurt by this, it’s just a question of how hard,” she sighed.- ‘Reduce my workforce’ -Buying fabric in the United States would be prohibitively expensive, Hughes said.”We have an amazing variety of incredible garment workers, don’t get me wrong, but when it comes to producing stretch fabrics like lace, like mesh, no one does it here as cost effective as they do overseas.”And it’s not just her profits — her commitment to supporting local employment is also being called into question with the tariffs.”My whole point was that I wanted to… create jobs in an ethical way, and now they’re making it impossible for me to do that,” Hughes said. “I need programs that support me financially, otherwise I’ll have to reduce my workforce, which is contrary to what they say they want to do.”In Cantiq’s sewing workshop located behind the boutique, Tzul has nothing left but to hope that the tariffs would eventually be rescinded or reduced.Tzul said he came to the United States from Guatemala two decades ago because his government, like in many others across Latin America, ruined local economies with their policies.”That’s one of the reasons that millions of us had to leave our countries, because the decisions that governments made, instead of helping the people, they just destroy the economies,” he said.”And we don’t want that to happen in America,” he said.