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Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Zillow economists use an economic model known as the Zillow Market Heat Index to gauge the competitiveness of housing markets across the country. This model looks at key indicatorsincluding home price changes, inventory levels, and days on marketto generate a score showing whether a market favors sellers or buyers. Higher scores point to hotter, seller-friendly metro housing markets. Lower scores signal cooler markets where buyers hold more negotiating power. According to Zillow: Score of 70 or above = strong sellers market Score from 55 to 69 = sellers market Score from 45 to 54 = neutral market Score from 28 to 44 = buyers market Score of 27 or below = strong buyers market Nationally, Zillow rates the U.S. housing market at 48 in its October 2025 reading, published last week. That said, Zillows reading varies significantly across the country. window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}); Among the 250 largest metro-area housing markets, these 20 are the HOTTEST marketswhere sellers have the most power: Rochester, NY 120 Syracuse, NY 80 Hartford, CT 76 Bridgeport, CT 70 Racine, WI 67 San Francisco, CA 66 New York, NY 65 Albany, NY 65 Lancaster, PA 65 Manchester, NH 64 San Jose, CA 63 Poughkeepsie, NY 63 Anchorage, AK 63 Springfield, MA 62 Norwich, CT 62 Providence, RI 60 Kingston, NY 60 Richmond, VA 59 Buffalo, NY 59 New Haven, CT 59 Among the 250 largest metro-area housing markets, these 20 are the COLDEST marketswhere buyers have the most power: Florence, SC 8 Jackson, TN 10 Gulfport, MS 14 Lafayette, IN 18 Longview, TX 19 Charleston, WV 20 Macon, GA 20 Terre Haute, IN 22 Brownsville, TX 25 Evansville, IN 25 Asheville, NC 26 Fayetteville, AR 27 Daphne, AL 28 Beaumont, TX 29 Hickory, NC 29 Lubbock, TX 30 Naples, FL 31 Saginaw, MI 32 Bowling Green, KY 32 Lincoln, NE 33 Does ResiClub agree with Zillows assessment? Directionally, I believe Zillow has correctly identified some regional housing markets where buyers have gained the most powerparticularly around the Gulfas well as markets where sellers have maintained (relatively speaking) somewhat of a grip, including portions of the Northeast and Midwest. Based on my personal housing analysis, I consider much of Florida (particularly southwest Florida) and chunks of Texas (particularly areas with a lot of new single-family home construction) the weakest/softest chunk of the U.S. housing market. Not too far behind are pockets of Colorado, Georgia, and Arizona markets where theres built-up unsold spec inventory. What did this Zillow analysis look like back in spring 2021 during the pandemic housing boom? Below is Zillows October 2021 reading, published in November 2021:
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E-Commerce
Tennis is experiencing a resurgence, with almost 26 million people playing in the U.S. alone. That number has been on an upward trajectory five years in a row. While the sports renewed cultural relevance can be attributed to multiple factors, brands across fashion, entertainment, and even sports leagues like Major League Baseball are capitalizing on the trend through unconventional opportunities. On December 8, LoanDepot Park, home of baseballs Miami Marlins, will undergo a temporary redesign to host the Unified Events Miami Invitational, a one-night, first-of-its-kind exhibition featuring top tennis stars Carlos Alcaraz, Joo Fonseca, Amanda Anisimova, and Jessica Pegula in a city with a strong appetite for elite tennis. Brazilian tennis player Joo Fonseca [Photo: Courtesy of Miami Marlins] While they have the Miami Open, there is such a fervor for tennis in the Miami market, especially for those players, says Molly Pendleton, SVP of MLS, Touring, and Unified Events. To tap into the markets enthusiasm, Pendleton and her team originally planned to host the event in a traditional arena, a common choice for these exhibition matches. However, due to scheduling conflicts and the time needed to set up the courts, Unified Events decided not to take that route. Since both United Events and the Marlins work with sports and culture company IMG, the partners explored creative ways to bring tennis to a baseball stadium. They selected LoanDepot Park because it offered optimal sigh tlines and a high-quality fan experience. I was skeptical until I saw the renderings of what it could look like and what the fan experience would be, says Pendleton. [I] got on board with the idea [that] this could be a really unique experience for fans and the players. Anthony Favata, Vice President of Operations & Events for the Marlins, and his team created CAD renderings to visualize the transformation, which sealed the deal. We have an extremely versatile building, says Favata. Tennis was always on the road map. A Stadium Built for Adaptation [Photo: Courtesy of Miami Marlins] Historically, LoanDepot Park, formerly known as Marlins Park, was built to accommodate a variety of events. After opening in 2012, it hosted an international soccer game, and over the years, expanded to other entertainment, including concerts. Now, with recent investments in its infrastructure, the organization is reimagining the stadiums design to expand its non-baseball slate. For the Marlins operations team, months of site visits, engineering assessments, and software modeling informed how they will compress the stadiums 130,000-square-foot footprint with 37,442 seats into an 8,700-square-foot environment with 12,000 seats for a quality viewing experience. Its very important that you have that intimacy and the premium feel of being as close to the court as you can get, Favata explained. One thing that [was] created for us is the need to remove the pitchers mound. Design Challenges and Transformations Unlike a tennis court, the typical dimensions of a baseball field is not rectangular but rather a snow-coned shape. To achieve the level of intimacy spectators want during a tennis match, the Marlins will place the court in front of home plate. Based on their CAD visualization, the team decided that the court will run diagonally from first base to third base. [Photo: Courtesy of Miami Marlins] One of the most complex design challenges in creating an intimate environment is the full removal of the pitchers mound, an undertaking requiring roughly eight hours by a dedicated five-person crew. We’ll remove [the] clay, and we’ll make sure it’s flat so that our flooring can come on top of that mound and then we can come on top of it with the cork, explains Favata. This step ensures the installed court sits at the ideal distance from spectator seats so fans have up close and clear views of play. Previously, LoanDepot Park featured a natural grass field. However, the stadium later transitioned to a turf surface. Leveraging the stadiums in-house flooring system has proven beneficial, allowing adaptability of its turf surface for various events. A team of up to 20 people will lay down a thick, plastic event decking or protective flooring called Terraplas directly on top of the clay comprising the pitchers mound. To further avoid impacting the clay underneath, the team will place a cork-rubber blend called Regupol Aktiv atop the Terraplas, followed by another layer of wood. Finally, additional workers will lay down the professional hard court, which will be transported overnight from the Charlotte Invitational happening just before the exhibition match in Miami. [Photo: Courtesy of Miami Marlins] The Marlins operations team will get a head start on the mound removal for another event occurring two days prior to the match. However, the majority of the conversion will happen overnight, involving about 37 people across multiple vendors working from roughly 10 p.m. on December 7 into the morning hours of December 8. Enhancing the intimacy created by removing the pitchers mound will be the addition of roughly 600 temporary seats. The team will also recline the foul ball netting. While the main event will occur infield, the Marlins plan to restrict access to the outfield. As Favatas team reconfigures the field into a tennis court, ensuring player safety is critical. Although it’s an exhibition, we want to make sure that the court is at the highest level of play, Favata said. Some of the best in the world are going to be performing. We want to make sure it’s safe for them. Creating a Premium Tennis Environment Beyond the technical build, the team will deliver a complete tennis environment with premium courtside seating, hospitality, and signature cocktails (Miami Ace and Sunset Invitational) inspired by the U.S. Opens Honey Deuce. Partner brand activations include Segafredos specialty desserts and coffee, Geicos tennis bracelet activation, and Penguin Tennis Apparels pop-up retail shop to create an immersive experience. [Photo: Courtesy of Miami Marlins] Depending on its success, Unified Events anticipates this invitational being an annual event in Miami. Its already nearing capacity with about 9,500 seats sold, with tickets starting at $40. In the meantime, the Miami Marlins are preparing for other events in the new year, like the Winter Classic in partnership with the National Hockey League. We’re very much involved in trying to continue to put this venue at the forefront of the concert and live entertainment business [with] some of those sports that you don’t typically consider in a baseball diamond that are cool, that are splashy, that are global, Favata said. [We want to] draw an attendee base to the facility that may not already be familiar with the venue in hopes that we give them a great experience and they return for Marlins baseball.
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E-Commerce
This years busiest shopping day was a boon for live-shopping apps. Even at a time of inflation and economic uncertainty, Americans were ready to spend come Black Friday. U.S. online spending was up 9.1% from last year, according to data from Adobe Analytics. While holiday spending has typically been dominated by traditional e-commerce, live-shopping platforms TikTok Shop and Whatnot also reported record-breaking sales during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. On Black Friday, the livestream marketplace Whatnot reported more than $75 million in single-day live sales, tripling last years total. On average, shoppers bought 40 items per second. One small business in the sports card category sold more than $1 million in a single show. The highest-priced item sold on Black Friday was a sports card box for $80,000. “The way people shop is changing, and live is leading it, Armand Wilson, VP of categories an expansion, told Fast Company. People want more than a transaction. They want to connect with sellers, see the product live, and be part of the moment. These record-breaking sales come as livestream content on the platform has reached 20 million minutes per week. Whatnot also reported a fourfold increase in first-time buyers this year compared with last years Black Friday event. Whatnot isnt the only platform finding success with livestream shopping over the holidays. According to TikTok, its live-shopping feature also delivered a record-breaking performance this year. Brands and content creators held more than 760,000 livestreams on the platform, generating 1.6 billion-plus views throughout the Black Friday period. These efforts paid dividends, with this years livestream sellers experiencing 84% more sales growth than last years, according to the company. Pop Mart, maker of the viral Labubu toys, had one of the most popular livestreams during TikToks Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale. The Skullpanda x Wednesday Plush came out as the top-selling item. From household name brands like Crocs and Kim Kardashians Skims to small businesses and content creators, live shopping is gaining traction across the U.S. Live shopping is where brand love starts. Its a dynamic, interactive experience that deepens how our users connect with brands on TikTok, Patrick Nommensen, head of strategic initiatives for TikTok Shop in the Americas, told Fast Company. While it still represents a small percentage of the e-commerce market, consumer trend forecaster WGSN has found that conversion rates for live shopping are 10 times higher than those for traditional e-commerce. That immediate, real-time engagementintroducing audiences to new products, demonstrating their value, and facilitating direct interactionis what builds trust, strengthens community, and turns interest into long-term loyalty, Nommensen said. Nearly half (46%) of U.S. consumers have now purchased through a livestream event and would do so again, according to data from market research firm Mintel. If this years Black Friday sales are anything to go by, that number is only going to go up.
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E-Commerce
Which terms best represent 2025? Every year, editors for publications ranging from the Oxford English Dictionary to the Macquarie Dictionary of Australian English select a word of the year. Sometimes these terms are thematically related, particularly in the wake of world-altering events. Pandemic, lockdown, and coronavirus, for example, were among the words chosen in 2020. At other times, they are a potpourri of various cultural trends, as with 2022s goblin mode, permacrisis, and gaslighting. This years slate largely centers on digital life. But rather than reflecting the unbridled optimism about the internet of the early aughtswhen words like w00t, blog, tweet, and even face with tears of joy emoji () were chosenthis years selections reflect a growing unease over how the internet has become a hotbed of artifice, manipulation, and fake relationships. When seeing isnt believing A committee representing the Macquarie Dictionary of Australian English settled on AI slop for their word of the year. Macquarie defines the term, which was popularized in 2024 by British programmer Simon Willison and tech journalist Casey Newton, as low-quality content created by generative AI, often containing errors, and not requested by the user. AI slop, which can range from a saccharine image of a young girl clinging to her little dog to career advice on LinkedIn, often goes viral, as gullible social media users share these computer-generated videos, text, and graphics with others. Images have been manipulated or altered since the dawn of photography. The technique was then improved, with an assist from AI, to create deepfakes, which allows existing images to be turned into video clips in surreal ways. Yes, you can now watch Hitler teaming up with Stalin to sing a 1970s hit by the Buggles. What makes AI slop different is that images or video can be created out of whole cloth by providing a chatbot with just a promptno matter how bizarre the request or ensuing output. Meet my new friend, ChatGPT The editors of the Cambridge Dictionary chose parasocial. They define this as involving or relating to a connection that someone feels between themselves and a famous person they do not know, a character in a book, film, TV series . . . or an artificial intelligence. These asymmetric relationships, according to the dictionarys chief editor, are the result of the publics fascination with celebrities and their lifestyles, and this interest continues to reach new heights. As an example, Cambridges announcement cited the engagement of singer Taylor Swift and football player Travis Kelce, which led to a spike in online searches for the meaning of the term. Many Swifties reacted with unbridled joy, as if their best friend or sibling had just decided to tie the knot. But the term isnt a new one: It was coined by sociologists in 1956 to describe the illusion of having a face-to-face relationship with a performer. However, parasocial relationships can take a bizarre or even ominous turn when the object of ones affections is a chatbot. People are developing true feelings for these AI systems, whether they see them as a trusted friend or even a romantic partner. Young people, in particular, are now turning to generative AI for therapy. Taking the bait The Oxford Dictionarys word of the year is rage bait, which the editors define as online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically posted in order to increase traffic to or engagement with a particular web page or social media content. This is only the latest word for forms of emotional manipulation that have plagued the online world since the days of dial-up internet. Related terms include trolling, sealioning, and trashposting. Unlike a hot takea hasty opinion on a topic that may be poorly reasoned or articulatedrage baiting is intended to be inflammatory. And it can be seen as both a cause and a result of political polarization. People who post rage bait have been shown to lack empathy and to regard other peoples emotions as something to be exploited or even monetized. Rage baiters, in short, reflect the dark side of the attention economy. Meaningless meaning Perhaps the most contentious word choice in 2025 was 6-7, chosen by Dictionary.com. In this case, the controversy has to do with the actual meaning of this bit of Gen Alpha slang. The editors of the website describe it as being meaningless, ubiquitous, and nonsensical. Although its definition may be slippery, the term itself can be found in the lyrics of the rapper Skrilla, who released the single Doot Doot (6 7) in early 2025. It was popularized by 17-year-old basketball standout Taylen Kinney. For his part, Skrilla claimed that he never put an actual meaning on it, and I still would not want to. 6-7 is sometimes accompanied by a gesture, as if one were comparing the weight of objects held in both hands. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently performed this hand motion during a school visit. The young students were delighted. Their teacher, however, informed Starmer that her charges werent allowed to use it at the school, which prompted a clumsy apology from the chastened prime minister. Throw your hands in the air? The common element that these words share may be an attitude best described as digital nihilism. As online misinformation, AI-generated text and images, fake news, and conspiracy theories abound, its increasingly difficult to know whom or what to believe or trust. Digital nihilism is, in essence, an acknowledgment of a lack of meaning and certainty in our online interactions. This years crop of words might best be summed up by a single emoji: the shrug (). Throwing ones hands up, in resignation or indifference, captures the anarchy that seems to characterize our digital lives. Roger J. Kreuz is an associate dean and Feinstone Interdisciplinary Research Professor at the University of Memphis. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
When people use hand gestures that visually represent what theyre saying, listeners see them as more clear, competent, and persuasive. Thats the key finding from my new research published in the Journal of Marketing Research, where I analyzed thousands of TED Talks and ran controlled experiments to examine how gestures shape communication. Talking with your hands Whether youre giving a presentation, pitching an idea or leading a meeting, you probably spend most of your prep time thinking about what youll say. But what about the ways youll move your hands? I grew up in Italy, where gesturing is practically a second language. Now that I live in the United States, Ive become acutely aware of how cultures differ in how, and how much, people move their hands when they talk. Still, across contexts and cultures, one thing is constant: People do talk with their hands. As someone who studies communication, Id noticed how some speakers seemed instantly clearer when they gestured. This made me wonder: Do gestures actually make communicators more effective? The short answer is yes, but only when the gestures visually represent the idea youre talking about. Researchers call these movements illustrators. For example: When talking about distance, you might spread your hands apart while saying something is farther away. When explaining how two concepts relate, you might bring your hands together while saying these ideas fit together. When describing how the market demand is going up and down, you could visually depict a wave shape with your hands. One video included in the study provides an example of a TED speaker onstage gesturing as he presents his talk. [Photo: YouTube/TED David Agus: A new strategy in the war against cancer] To study gestures at scale, my team and I analyzed 200,000 video segments from more than 2,000 TED Talks using AI tools that can detect and classify hand gestures frame by frame. We paired this with controlled experiments in which our study participants evaluated entrepreneurs pitching a product. The same pattern of results appeared in both settings. In the AI-analyzed TED Talk data, illustrative gestures predicted higher audience evaluations, reflected in more than 33 million online likes of the videos. And in our experiments, 1,600 participants rated speakers who used illustrative gestures as more clear, competent, and persuasive. How hands can help get your point across What I found is that these gestures give listeners a visual shortcut to your meaning. They make abstract ideas feel more concrete, helping listeners build a mental picture of what youre saying. This makes the message feel easier to processa phenomenon psychologists call processing fluency. And we found that when ideas feel easier to grasp, people tend to see the speaker as more competent and persuasive. But not all gestures help. Movements that dont match the messagelike random waving, fidgeting, or pointing to things in the spaceoffer no such benefit. In some cases, they can even distract. A practical takeaway: Focus on clarity over choreography. Think about where your hands naturally illustrate what youre sayingemphasizing size, direction, or emotionand let them move with purpose. Whats next Your hands arent just accessories to your words. They can be a powerful tool to make your ideas resonate. Im now investigating whether people can learn to gesture betteralmost like developing a nonverbal vocabulary. Early pilot tests are promising: Even a five-minute training session helps people become clearer and more effective through the use of appropriate hand gestures. While my research examined how individual gestures work together with spoken language, the next step is to understand what makes a communicator effective with their voice and, ultimately, across all the channels they use to communicatehow gestures combine with voice, facial expressions, and body movement. Im now exploring AI tools that track all these channels at once so I can identify the patterns, not just the isolated gestures, that make speakers more effective communicators. Giovanni Luca Cascio Rizzo is an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Southern California. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce