Category: Business Insider

• Home prices are the most buoyant they've been in two years, according to Redfin.
• Housing prices in the top 50 US cities have climbed higher or been flat for the first time since 2022.
• That speaks to demand continuing to outpace housing supply, Redfin said. 

Home prices have stopped falling in America's biggest metropolitan areas for the first time in two years, according to Redfin.

Home prices rose or stayed flat in 50 of the most populated US metro areas in April, the real estate listings site said in a report this week. That's the first time that's happened in all 50 cities since July 2022, when mortgage rates and home prices were shooting up in tandem as buyers scrambled to get into the market. 

The largest increase occurred in Anaheim, California, where prices jumped 20% year-over-year in April. Prices rose 15% in Detroit, and 14% in San Jose, California, the firm added. 

High borrowing costs and scarce inventory have continued to keep housing costs buoyant. The 30-year fixed mortgage rate just rose for a fifth week straight, notching 7.22% as of Friday, according to Freddie Mac data. Yet demand has remained pretty strong. Redfin's Homebuyer Demand index, a gauge of touring activity and other services using Redfin agents, rose 3% the last month, the firm said.

Supply, meanwhile, hasn't improved much. While new listings have surged 15% compared to last year's levels, inventory remains "well below" typical levels in April, Redfin noted.

The four-week moving average median sales price of a home clocked in at $383,188, Redfin estimated — less than $100 away from its all-time high.

Real estate experts have warned housing costs could remain high for the near-future, as interest rates don't look poised to come down anytime soon. The Fed has said it needs more confidence inflation is returning to its 2% price target before it mulls rate cuts — which means borrowing costs in the economy will likely remain elevated for the time being.

"Even though housing costs shouldn't climb much more, they will remain elevated for the foreseeable future, which could push more buyers away," Chen Zhao, Redfin's economic research lead said in a statement. "But for serious house hunters who can afford today's mortgage rates and find a home they love, jumping on it now isn't a bad idea, given the fact that inventory is low and costs aren't dropping anytime soon."

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• Trump Media's auditor, BF Borgers, committed fraud in 1,500 filings, the SEC said.
• The firm and its owner will pay $14 million in penalties and have been banned from accounting. 
• "Trump Media looks forward to working with new auditing partners," a spokesperson said.

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday charged accounting firm BF Borgers and its owner, Benjamin Borgers, with "massive fraud."

Borgers handled auditing for former President Donald Trump's media company, Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), during which Borgers spelled his own name 14 different ways in filings.

"Trump Media looks forward to working with new auditing partners in accordance with today's SEC order," a TMTG spokesperson told Business Insider.

The SEC said the fraud impacted "more than 1,500 SEC filings from January 2021 through June 2023," and included filings for more than 500 public companies.

The SEC says it reached a settlement with the firm. BF Borgers will pay a $12 million civil penalty and Borgers himself will pay $2 million.

Both have been permanently suspended from practicing accounting with public companies, the SEC said.

"Borgers and his sham audit mill have been permanently shut down," Gurbir S. Grewal, the director of the SEC's division of enforcement, said in a statement. He said that the fraud had put investors and markets at risk.

The firm changed dates on work papers to suggest labor it hadn't actually done, according to the SEC, and also documented meetings that never occurred.

Bloomberg reported in April that the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) had identified multiple deficiencies in every audit it had received from Borgers over the past two years.

In November, the firm was also removed from the peer-review program of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA).

BF Borgers did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Trump Media is the company behind Truth Social, Donald Trump's Twitter clone that launched after he was booted off social media platforms following the January 6 riot.

Despite losing money and being cagey about how its user base compares to its social media rivals, Trump Media is now valued at over $6.3 billion.

The meme stock's value has soared and plummeted since it went public, with investors trying to make quick cash selling shares off when they jump and Trump's fans boosting the price to cut out short positions.

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Hoka was founded a little over a decade ago and is already worth more than $1 billion. We explore the shoe's design and what makes the brand stand out from its competitors.

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• Apple's Vision Pro headset was the buzziest gadget when it was released, but the excitement has fizzled.
• Apple lowered its sales projections as the $3,500 headset isn't flying off shelves.
• It still looks cool, but I'm just not sure what you do with it? Please, tell me!

I don't mean this at all in a shady way, but please, tell me: if you have an Apple Vision Pro and you're happy with it and use it a bunch — what are you using it for?

The hype and anticipation surrounding the Vision Pro were off the charts. This was a whole new kind of product, and even skeptics were curious about what this new kind of face computer would be like. It had been kept tightly under wraps — we weren't even really sure what the features would look like, or what they would be, or how it would work. When people finally got to try it out for themselves, it was an event — you could make an appointment at your local Apple store just to test it out.

There were viral videos of people wearing them in public, or while driving a Cybertruck (don't do that).

I got to try it out a little when my colleague Jordan Hart was testing the Vision Pro for her review. It was undeniably very cool.

But Jordan found what it seems a lot of other people discovered after a while: Although it was really cool, she wasn't sure what to do with it on a regular basis, and after a week, didn't really find herself wanting to reach for it.

Apple has reportedly lowered its projections for the number of units it will sell this year to about 400,000. That's not a great sign.

Reports on social media started trickling in about people returning their Vision Pros, saying that even though it was neat, it just wasn't worth the $3,500 or more price tag for a device that felt like it needed improvement. The Verge reports that over on eBay, used Vision Pros are going for far less than sticker price.

It sounds like a lot of people are hoping there will be a next-generation version that will be much cheaper and do even more. I, personally, would not drop that much cash on a funsies device — even though I think it's cool!

I generally like to think that I have a handle on how people are using personal tech, but in this case, I don't actually know anyone in my life who has bought one of these and is a regular user. (I do have a friend who bought a Vision Pro and returned it).

But clearly, there are still plenty of people who use theirs regularly and are happy with it. Perhaps that's you? I genuinely am curious about what Vision Pro lovers are doing with theirs.

Tell me what you do — gaming? Working? Watching movies? Do you use it for traveling, like on an airplane? Or mainly at home? Video chatting? After it's been a few months, how have you adapted to it?

Seriously, tell me: knotopoulos@businessinsider.com, or drop a comment on social.

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• South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is facing more concerns about her book.
• The Republican team's admits that Noem's claim she met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is inaccurate.
• Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley's team is strongly disputing Noem's account.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is facing concerns about her forthcoming book beyond her bizarre anecdote that she killed the family's 14-month-old dog because it was too aggressive.

Politico reported that in the book, "No Going Back: The Truth on What's Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward," Noem claims to have met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un when she served in Congress.

Noem's spokesperson admitted to the publication that the governor's claim was wrong.

"We've been made aware that the publisher will be addressing conflated world leaders' names in the book before it is released," Noem spokesperson Ian Fury told the publication. A Noem representative did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

The South Dakota governor has seen her political standing crater in recent months just as she needed to showcase her skills if she wanted to become former President Donald Trump's running mate. Noem's book tour offered a perfect opportunity to put a capstone on her veepstakes shadow campaign. Instead, it is nearing disaster territory.

Noem has for days defended her decision decades ago to kill a 14-month-old dog named Cricket. She has defended disclosing the previously unknown story as a way of illustrating how she'll make tough decisions. In response, even fellow Republicans and Trump allies have tried to distance themselves from her.

"I've always been a strong advocate of a woman as VP, because I think you have some strong women — although maybe Kristi Noem is maybe a little too based," former White House strategist Steve Bannon told Donald Trump Jr. on Trump's "Triggered" show.

The Kim mixup isn't even the only new concern about the book. Politico reported that Noem recounts a conversation with former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley. In Noem's view, Haley was subtly threatening her during a 2021 conversation about the governor's political career.

"Hi, Governor, this is Ambassador Nikki Haley, and I just wanted to introduce myself and have a conversation," Noem wrote of the talk. "I just wanted to let you know that I follow you quite a bit. I have heard quite a bit about you, and you are doing a good job there in South Dakota. I was thinking that maybe you might like a mentor, and maybe I could be someone who could do that for you."

Noem adds that Haley then promised to keep her aware of she heard any bad things about the governor.

""Let me be clear,' she added. 'I've heard many good things about you. But when I do hear bad things, I will make sure that you know. I've enjoyed talking to you. We will visit soon. Goodbye.' Click."

After the conversation, Noem claims she called an aide.

"'I think I was just threatened by Nikki Haley?'" Noem wrote of what she said.

Haley's camp strongly disputes Noem's characterization. A spokesperson for Haley, who challenged Trump for the 2024 GOP primary, also claimed that Noem got the year of the conversation wrong. It was a year earlier, in 2020.

"Nikki has long called and written notes supporting other women when they go through challenging times," Haley spokesperson Chaney Denton told Politico. "She called Governor Noem in 2020 to encourage her when she was criticized for keeping her state open during Covid. How she would twist that into a threat is just plain weird."

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• Ukraine is likely to lose the key eastern town of Chasiv Yar to Russia, a top intelligence official said.
• Chasiv Yar's loss could open the gates to further exhaustive, long-lasting battles.
• Russia is pushing for a big win ahead of its Victory Day military celebration.

Ukraine likely faces the approaching loss of a key eastern town to Russia, one of the country's top intelligence officials said.

"Not today or tomorrow, of course, but all depending on our reserves and supplies," Major-General Vadym Skibitsky, the deputy head of military intelligence, told The Economist.

Much of the town in question, Chasiv Yar, is little more than rubble after more than a year of bombardment.

But its natural hilltop position has helped it serve as a staging ground for Ukrainian skirmishes on the Russian advance, helping block Russia's path to the last free cities of the Donetsk region.

Chasiv Yar sits just to the west of Bakhmut, the doomed city that was pounded to nothing over almost a year of brutal siege until it finally fell in May 2023.

Bakhmut was considered of minimal strategic value.

By contrast, Chasiv Yar's high ground and proximity to important cities means huge potential gains for Russia.

The town, formerly of about 13,000 people, is the "key" that will "open the gate for exhaustive and long-lasting battles," military analyst Serhiy Hrabsky recently told The New York Times.

Its capture would put in reach of Russian forces the headquarters of Ukraine's eastern command, Kramatorsk, and the key supply hub of Kostiantynivka — both of which contain large civilian populations, the outlet reported.

As of last week, Russia had around 20,000-25,000 soldiers clustered around the assault on Chasiv Yar, the paper reported.

Russia needs a win in time for a national holiday

A year after the fall of Bakhmut, capturing all of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions is still likely Russian President Vladimir Putin's most immediate goal, Skibitsky told The Economist.

And the line is buckling.

While Chasiv Yar holds, Russia has carved a salient about 25 miles to the southwest in the village of Ocheretyne.

Russia is throwing "everything" at trying to widen the breach there, Skibitsky said.

That's in addition to the loss of Avdiivka in February, a few miles further south of Chasiv Yar, which has allowed Russian forces to creep further west.

Pressure is likely to build to boiling point in the coming days, Skibitsky said.

Putin is probably seeking a victory he can trumpet on May 9, Russia's all-important Victory Day military celebration.

For last year's event, Ukrainian forces strained every nerve to hold onto Bakhmut through that date, while Russia redoubled its "human wave" and artillery attacks, soldiers there told Business Insider.

Soldiers in Chasiv Yar may well face the same onslaught in the coming days. If they hold on, another key date is Putin's planned visit to Beijing a week later, The Economist reported.

"Our problem is very simple: we have no weapons," Skibitsky said.

The Pentagon said some of its aid could arrive in Ukraine "within days" of the recent aid bill. But, The Economist reported, in reality much of it could take weeks to reach the front line.

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• Mark Zuckerberg is California's richest billionaire, with a net worth of $177 billion, per Forbes.
• The Meta CEO's wealth has grown notably this year as the company's stock has continued to rise.
• Zuckerberg owns multiple properties in California, per Architectural Digest.

Mark Zuckerberg is now the richest billionaire in California, with a net worth of $177 billion, a new Forbes report said.

The report, which maps out the richest billionaire in each state for 2024, said the Meta CEO overtook Google cofounder Larry Page as the Golden State's richest person.

Zuckerberg has a roughly 13% stake in Meta, which has helped see his fortune surge over the past year as the stock continued its gains from 2023, rising by around 23% so far this year.

The stock was buoyed in 2023 by the company's big cost cutting measures such as mass layoffs and also by its investments in AI and the metaverse.

Zuckerberg's net worth placed him behind Texas' richest person, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who took the title in Florida.

The 54 billionaires researched by Forbes for the report were together worth $1.6 trillion, $100 billion more than in 2023, the outlet said.

It added that 47 states were home to at least one billionaire.

Zuckerberg has built an extensive property portfolio in California.

Architectural Digest reported in 2022 that the tech billionaire had 10 homes across the state, including in San Francisco, Palo Alto, and Lake Tahoe.

He also has a number of other properties on Kauai, Hawaii, per Architectural Digest.

While he had a base salary of just $1 in 2023, the Meta boss also took home a huge $24.4 million in "other compensation" for the year.

Representatives for Zuckerberg did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, which was made outside normal working hours.

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• Lukas Walton is the grandson of Sam Walton, the American businessman who created the Walmart empire.
• After his father died in a plane crash in 2015, Lukas reportedly inherited a third of his fortune.
• The Bloomberg Billionaires Index lists Lukas as the world's 59th-richest person as of May 2024.

The Waltons are America's richest family but some of the Walmart heirs live pretty private lives.

Enter Lukas Walton, the 37-year-old grandson of Walmart and Sam's Club founder Sam Walton.

While his online presence is pretty limited, he's the richest person in the state of Illinois, runs an impact investing group called Builders Vision, and is chair of the Walton Family Foundation's environment program committee.

Here's what we know about him.

Lukas Walton is the grandson of Sam Walton, founder of Walmart and Sam's Club.

Lukas' father, John T. Walton, was Sam's second-oldest son. In 2005, John died while piloting an ultra-light, homemade aircraft that crashed shortly after takeoff.

Source: The New York Times, Business Insider, Bloomberg

Lukas grew up in National City in San Diego County.

Source: Intelligencer

When he was 3 years old, Lukas was diagnosed with a rare kidney cancer that spread to his lungs.

Source: Intelligencer

Within 5 months he had recovered, which his mother, Christy, attributed to a plant-based diet with produce sourced from her own garden.

Source: Intelligencer

Following John's death, Christy and Lukas moved to Jackson, Wyoming.

Source: Intelligencer, Forbes

John left about one-sixth of his fortune to his wife, Christy, one-third to his only son, Lukas, and the remaining half to charitable trusts.

Source: Bloomberg, Forbes

Lukas also inherited his father's 20% interest in Walton Enterprises, the family holding company that, together with a different family trust, owns around a 45% stake in Walmart.

Source: Business Insider, Bloomberg

Forbes lists Lukas as the 59th-richest American as of May 2024, but gave him a self-made score of one (out of 10), indicating that he inherited his fortune but is not actively increasing it.

Source: Forbes

Lukas attended Colorado College, where he created his own major focusing on environmentally sustainable business and later studied energy efficiency and hydrological and geothermal energy in Iceland.

Source: Forbes, Intelligencer, Walton Family Foundation

He has traveled extensively and has lived in places like Thailand and Mexico.

Source: Walton Family Foundation

Rob Walton, the eldest son of Sam Walton, believes that his family's "environmental focus really grew out of a family connection to the land."

Source: Walton Family Foundation

Sam and his wife, Helen, are said to have instilled a love for the environment in their children and grandchildren, with yearly outings to places like the Buffalo National River, Yellowstone, and the Grand Canyon.

Source: Walton Family Foundation

Lukas is involved with the Walton Family Foundation, the family's organization that awards grants toward education, environmental protection, and the family's home region of Northwest Arkansas and the Arkansas-Mississippi Delta.

Source: Walton Family Foundation

Lukas serves as the environment program committee chair and is also a board member of the organization. He is reported to have donated at least $150 million of his own fortune to the foundation.

Source: Walton Family Foundation, Forbes

Forbes reports that between 2014 and 2018, the Walton Family Foundation donated almost $1 billion to K-12 education programs and $441 million to environmental projects. More recently, the foundation awarded $566.5 million in grants in 2022, according to its website.

Source: Forbes, Walton Family Foundation

On the foundation's work, Lukas recalled that "one of the first grants that we did back in the day was help to develop a sustainable fisheries label. That to me, was a shooting star, was a golden emblem of what would be a successful marketplace development."

Source: Walton Family Foundation

In 2021, Lukas founded and publicly launched Builders Vision, an impact investing group working to tackle social and environmental problems. It's focused on "sustainable food and agriculture, healthy oceans, renewable energy and thriving communities," according to its website.

Source: Fast Company; Builders Vision

Lukas Walton is the richest person in Illinois, according to Forbes' 2024 list of the wealthiest people in every state. In July 2022, he and his wife, Samantha, sold their home in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood for $1.7 million, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Source: Forbes; Chicago Tribune

Lukas keeps a low public profile. He has no known social media profiles and other personal details are largely absent online.

Source: Business Insider

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• Ukrainian forces used drones to attack an airfield deep inside Russia last month. 
• Since then, Russia has removed its aircraft from the area and dispersed them elsewhere.
• Western intelligence says this will lead to more strain on Moscow's aircrews.

Russia has pulled dozens of aircraft away from the front lines in response to a massive Ukrainian drone attack on a military base deep behind enemy lines, according to new Western intelligence.

Ukrainian forces on April 27 fired dozens of attack drones at the Kushchyovskaya airfield, and at two oil refineries in southwest Russia, likely attempting to disrupt Moscow's highly destructive glide-bomb operations. The strikes marked Kyiv's latest long-range attacks targeting Moscow's military and energy facilities.

Britain's defense ministry said the attack on Kushchyovskaya has "likely contributed to approximately 40 aircraft of different types being removed from the area and dispersed to multiple airfields further from the front line" over the past week.

"The impact of this is unlikely to be immediately obvious or dramatic. However, Ukraine has already demonstrated the ability to strike much further into Russia than these dispersal locations," the UK wrote in a Friday intelligence update. It did not specify where these new locations were, though.

"Forcing such dispersal measures means that length of sorties will have to increase to maintain the same permanency over the battle space," the intelligence update continued. "This will in turn require more fuel, increasing cost, while also placing more strain on the aircrews."

Such results would be a win for Ukraine as it looks to alleviate the strain on its front line forces and its air-defense network, which has been under growing stress in recent months as it lacked critical interceptor munitions.

The late-April attack was not the first time Ukrainian deep strikes have forced Russia to relocate its vulnerable assets. Kyiv's fleet of exploding naval drones has wreaked havoc on Moscow's Black Sea Fleet, compelling it to disperse warships from its headquarters in the occupied Crimean peninsula to a port city along Russia's southwestern coast.

The Kushchyovskaya airfield is home to Russia's Su-34 and Su-35 fighter jets. It was not immediately clear if any aircraft were struck in the attack last weekend, but Britain's defense ministry, citing open-source video footage, said that a number of glide-bomb kits had been destroyed in a storage facility.

Glide bombs have flight control surfaces that allow them to soar toward a target rather than free fall and are a kind of standoff weapon, meaning Russian aircraft can release them at a distance beyond the range of Ukraine's air-defense systems.

These munitions are difficult to intercept because they have short flight times, small radar signatures, and non-ballistic trajectories. Destroying Moscow's warplanes before they can release the weapon or hitting them on the ground are really the only ways to defeat the threat.

Glide bombs have long been a headache for Ukraine, but Russia has increasingly relied on them this year to strike Kyiv's ground forces on the front lines and in positions in the rear to devastating effect. Experts have warned that these munitions could play a significant role in supporting Moscow's ground operations in the coming months.

Even before the Kushchyovskaya strike, Ukraine has tried going after Russia's airbases in an apparent bid to stomp out the glide-bomb threat. In April, for instance, Kyiv launched a large number of drones at the Morozovsk airbase, although the extent of the damage was ultimately unclear.

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• There are two weeks left for the public to comment on Biden's new student-debt relief plan.
• Once the public comment period ends, the administration will move toward final implementation.
• Still, legal challenges and the election pose threats to the debt cancellation.

The American people have just two weeks left to give President Joe Biden's administration input on its new student-loan forgiveness plan.

On April 17, the Education Department published its draft rules for a broader version of debt relief to the Federal Register. First unveiled in early April, the new plan is expected to benefit over 30 million borrowers through a range of provisions, including canceling unpaid interest for borrowers and providing debt relief to those who have made at least 20 years of payments.

This new plan is intended to replace Biden's first attempt at relief that the Supreme Court struck down last summer. In contrast to the first plan, this one requires the administration to undergo a process known as negotiated rulemaking, which entails a series of negotiations with stakeholders and an opportunity for the public to comment on the plans before final implementation.

The plan is now in the public comment period, and there are two weeks left for anyone who wishes to provide input on the administration's proposals. So far, according to the Federal Register, the plan has received 24,532 comments as of Friday morning.

The comments are available to be viewed publicly, and some of them were supportive of Biden's plan. One stated:

"The more student loan debt that can be forgiven the better. My mom's loans were forgiven last month, and it has changed her life. The period of time when my loans were paused allowed me to buy a home. My loans are currently in repayment, and if that burden could be lifted it would be life-changing for me."

Meanwhile, others were more critical:

"No if you borrow money you need to pay it back. why should people who are hard working pay for a lazy person school. student loans needs to be payed back by the borrower not by people who are working for a living."

Once the public comment period ends on May 17, the Education Department can choose to adjust its proposals based on the feedback it received or move ahead toward final implementation. In the coming months, the department also plans to unveil a separate proposal to get relief to borrowers experiencing financial hardship, which will also have a public comment period.

The department has said it plans to move as quickly as possible with the relief this fall, but not only does the presidential election bring uncertainty to the fate of the relief — it's highly likely legal challenges will once again attempt to block it from carrying out.

For example, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey wrote on X that he would see Biden in court after the release of new details for the debt relief, and he already filed a lawsuit to block the SAVE income-driven repayment plan, arguing it was an overreach of the administration's authority.

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