Weekly News (March 4, 2025)

Mortgage Interest Rates Review

United Mortgage Nation  3/04/2025

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

Are Homes Values About to Fall? It Depends

주택가격 내려갈까?  상황과 지역에 따라서     

   WSJ     3/4/25(Tue)

• The supply of houses for sale is recovering much faster in some parts of the country than in others.
• In January, U.S. existing-home inventories were 16% below levels seen this time five years ago, according to the NAR. But this lock-in effect is slowly loosening as more people decide they can’t delay moving any longer, so supply is increasing.
• In Texas, the number of properties for sale is 20% higher than it was before the pandemic, data from Realtor.com shows. Florida and Colorado are also above 2019 levels.
• At the other end of the spectrum, supply is crunched in parts of the Northeast and Midwest. In 15 states including New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the number of homes currently on the market is less than half what was normal before the pandemic.

Home Inventory

WSJ 34/25(Tue)

Home prices and Equity both increased – Foreclosure dropped sharply

  가격, 에퀴티 동반 상승 – 주택경매 급감

Korea Times   3/3/25(Mon)

• Because of strong housing price increase, the following equity increase, and stable employment market forecast, foreclosure properties will be the second to the lowest in history.
• Auction.com forecasted that this year’s foreclosure action sales would about 69,000 which is 8% decline from 75,000 in the previous year. This forecast came out from the simulation with condition of 4% house price increase and 3.8% unemployment rate.
• IMF and OECD have forecasted U.S. economy growth to be 2.8%.

North Korea Is Open. Who’s Going?

    북한 관광사업 시도. 누가 가나?

WSJ    3/4/25(Tue)

• The vacationers saw North Korean singing schoolchildren tout Kim as the “very best in the world” as a large screen showed animated missiles rain from the skies. Itineraries included demonstrations of traditional bean cake making, visits to a beer brewery and dining on cold buckwheat noodles, kimchi and even flaming snails.
• Before the pandemic, North Korea welcomed around 350,000 foreign travelers in 2019—some 90% of them Chinese, according to some independent estimates. A year ago, North Korea began accepting Russian tourist groups. But access didn’t widen until February.
• North Korea, for now, has only opened Rason(라진구역) to non-Russian travelers. That excludes Pyongyang, the capital city and the country’s most popular tourist destination.

The Western tourists visited statues of North Korea’s late leaders,

Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il

TSMC Plans to Invest $100 Billion More In U.S. Chip Factories

         TSMC 사, 미국공장에 $100B 투자 계획발표

WSJ  3/4/25(Tue)

• Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. plans to invest at least $100 billion more in chip manufacturing plants in the U.S. over the next several years under a plan announced Monday by the company and President Trump.
• TSMC plans to use the funds to add to its chip manufacturing in Arizona. It will construct three new chip plants, two chip-packaging plants and a research- and-development center, Chief Executive C.C. Wei said.
• Trump called building up the industry a matter of economic and national security, as well as evidence that his tariff threats were working. “If they did [the chips] in Taiwan to send them here they’ll have 25% or $30% or 50% or whatever the number may be” in tariffs, Trump said. “It’ll go only up. By doing it here, there’s no tariffs.”

Trump Tariff affects long customs process and delivery

투럼프 관세 후폭풍 – 통관,배송 줄줄이 지연     

Korea Times     3/4/25(Tue)

• According to CNN, Trump administration terminate the exemption of customs process for items under $800 for imported traffic from Mexico, China, and Canada.
• “De minimis exemption” has been adopted for the items under $800 since 1938 in order to save government’s administration resources.
• This order is targeting e-commerce businesses like Chinese Alibaba and Temu and many customers are ordering items from U.S. companies such as Amazon because of long delay of delivery and swamp of custom service calls.

Amazon Unveils Quantum Chip

 아마존, 퀀텀 칩 출시

WSJ    2/28/25(Fri)

• Amazon.com’scloud-computing business on Thursday unveiled its first quantum computing chip, which it says marks an important step in the development of useful, reliable quantum computers.
• The chip, dubbed Ocelot, can lower the costs of reducing quantum computing errors by as much as 90%, the Seattle-based tech giant said.
• The race to build a practical quantum computer has been heating up among startups and the world’s biggest tech companies.
• Alphabet’sGoogle in December said it developed a new chip, called Willow, that it said marks an advance in solving quantum’s error-correction issues.
• For Amazon, the launch of its first quantum chip is part of an effort to get businesses on board with quantum computing.