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Business

Existing home sales plummet in Feb. as inventory reaches record low

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The housing market slowed in February, more than anticipated.

Existing home sales plummeted 6.6% to a seasonally adjusted 6.22 million in February from a month earlier, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). January existing home sales were revised slightly down to 6.66 million from 6.69 million. The decline far outpaced the expected decrease of 2.8%, according to Bloomberg consensus estimates.

“Despite the drop in home sales for February – which I would attribute to historically-low inventory – the market is still outperforming pre-pandemic levels,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist.

Despite the drop, the NAR noted that sales were up 9.1% last month from February 2020, which was before the COVID-19 pandemic swept through the U.S. Also, existing home sales is already ahead of the total number of sales 5.6 million units, for the entire year of 2020, Yun said.

“The path forward looks promising. After gradually retreating to begin the year, signs of buyer activity — especially the level of mortgage applications — have rebounded in recent weeks, suggesting many home shoppers are getting a jump on what promises to be a busy spring season,” said Zillow Economist Matthew Speakman in a press statement after the results. “What’s more, improvements in the economy and continued distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine should encourage more homeowners to place their homes on the market.”

The number of homes for sale, otherwise known as inventory, fell to a record low of 1.03 million units, the same as in January, according to revised data. That was down 29.5% from one year ago — the largest annual decline on record. Typically you see an increase in inventory from January and February but that did not occur this year, according to Yun.

The median existing-home price in February was $313,000, up 15.8% from February 2020, as prices rose in every region. February’s national price jump marks 108 straight months of year-over-year gains.

“It’s quite a dramatic drop that’s the reason why price is rising, demand is very strong and is reflected in days on the market,” Yun said during a press conference announcing the results. “We need more supply to tame the price growth.”

Properties typically remained on the market for 20 days in February, down from 21 days in January and from 36 days in February 2020 — the swiftest pace since NAR started tracking how many days units stay on the market. Seventy-four percent of the homes sold in February 2021 were on the market for less than a month. A year ago there was 3.1 months supply of inventory, currently there’s a two-month supply of inventory at the current sales pace.

“Demand is not disappearing, it is a lack of supply,” said Yun.

Even with this decline in home sales, sales are “still be well above the pre-pandemic run rate,” Credit Suisse wrote in a note prior to the results. “Existing home sales have recently outperformed negative signals in the pending home sales data, which have declined 5.7% since August 2020, but we expect the two series to converge. Home builder sentiment, reflecting the housing market outlook from the supply side, has also declined slightly in recent months.”

Yun warned that “in upcoming months demand may retreat” as mortgage rates increase. The February results do not reflect the already rising rates, since all the sales represent deals that were signed in January before rates started inching up. Earlier this month, interest rates for a 30-year fixed mortgage topped 3% for the first time since July Yun predicts that the 30-year fixed mortgage rate will hit 3.5% by December, which is “why we need more supply.”

Amanda Fung is an editor at Yahoo Finance.

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Technology

Nvidia says it won’t nerf the Ethereum mining performance of existing GPUs

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This morning, Nvidia announced that it would artificially reduce the performance of its upcoming $329 GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card when it comes to one specific task: Ethereum cryptocurrency mining. As weird as that news might sound, it was music to the ears of some gamers — who have been trying and failing to get their hands on graphics cards for months due to the great GPU shortage, and blaming miners for part of that.

You might be wondering: what does this mean for other GPUs? Nvidia isn’t talking about its plans for future graphics card just yet, but the company tells The Verge (in no uncertain terms) that it won’t nerf existing GPUs. “We are not limiting the performance of GPUs already sold,” says a spokesperson.

I was also a bit skeptical that the company’s new batch of Cryptocurrency Mining Processor (CMP) cards, marketed as an alternative for those miners, would mean that gamers might actually be able to buy an RTX 3060 as a result. If Nvidia’s diverting its already limited production capacity of GPUs towards CMPs, doesn’t that mean fewer gaming GPUs to begin with? There’s a global semiconductor shortage going on, you know.

Nvidia’s new Cryptocurrency Mining Processor (CMP).
Image: Nvidia

But Nvidia strongly suggests the new CMPs won’t impact the ability to produce GeForce gaming cards at all. “The chips used for CMP could not meet the specifications of GeForce and don’t impact overall GeForce capacity or availability,” replied a spokesperson by email.

While Nvidia wouldn’t confirm that it’s talking about binning — the process by which chipmakers like Intel, AMD, Nvidia and others take chips that aren’t 100 percent operational due to occasional manufacturing defects, and sell them as slower or less feature-filled parts instead — the statement certainly sounds something like that.

But it could also be that they’re different altogether. The shot you see above of Nvidia’s CMP looks nothing like the layout of Nvidia’s GA102 used in the Ampere-based RTX 3080 and 3090, or the GA104 used in the RTX 3070 and RTX 3060 Ti. It doesn’t look much like Nvidia’s previous-gen Turing desktop chips, either. Perhaps the CMP is simply a GPU design that hasn’t publicly been revealed.

If so, it’s vaguely possible that Nvidia has a stockpile of older chips it’s putting to use. The company’s bringing back the GTX 1050 Ti from 2016, after all, and it’s doubtful that Nvidia switched over one of the RTX 30-series factories just to make that happen. But without knowing what the CMP actually is, your guess is as good as ours.

Lastly, you might be wondering: why only nerf Ethereum mining, when other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin have also seen incredible gains? Here’s Nvidia’s full answer:

Ethereum has the highest global mining yield for any GPU-mineable coin at the moment and thus is likely the main demand driver for GPUs in mining. Other algorithms do not contribute significantly to GPU demand and this cannot change quickly due to network effects within a given cryptocurrency. The rate limiter applies to anything that uses Dagger Hashimoto or Ethash-like algorithms.

We’re looking forward to seeing whether Nvidia can make the $329 GeForce RTX 3060 any easier to buy than previous GPUs when it launches February 25th at 12PM ET. After months of around-the-clock hunting, I finally managed to nab a 3060 Ti a couple weeks back — here’s hoping you won’t need to go that far.



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Technology

Hitman 3’s DLC May Be a ‘Reimagining’ of Existing Locations

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While Hitman 3 has officially launched with the aim to end the World of Assassination Trilogy, IO Interactive is planning on developing DLC that reimagines existing locations.Speaking to TheGamer, Hitman 3 executive producer Forest Swartout Large explained that, even though the studio is developing a new James Bond game, it is “continuously working on Hitman so we are already looking to the future.”

IO Interactive has multiple teams, and at least one will continue to support Hitman 3 with post-launch patches and DLC. However, Large warns that it most likely won’t include new levels like Hitman 2’s New York bank level or Haven Island. Instead, the team is looking to use “existing locations and reimagining them, twisting them.”“We are definitely going to be doing some DLC, but we haven’t defined what that is,” Large said. “I think for now we are not looking at new maps like the bank and the island. We’re more looking at using existing locations and reimagining them, twisting them. And this time around, we can use the whole trilogy. We can look back at Hitman 2016 maps, Hitman 2 maps – we have all the locations.”

In our Hitman 3 review, we said “Rich, rewarding, and highly replayable, Hitman 3 is a superb installment of IO’s idiosyncratic but much-loved stealth series. The fundamentals haven’t changed since 2016 but its collection of outstanding maps makes for a refined, reliable, and robust curtain-closer to the current Hitman trilogy.”

Hitman 3 has already made back its costs in one week, so its no surprise that IO Interactive will want to continue to support it.

Every IGN Hitman Review

For more on Hitman 3, check out our look at why this game proves IO Interactive is ready for the 007 license, how to get Hitman and Hitman 2 levels into Hitman 3, and our best tips and tricks to help you become the ultimate assassin.

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.



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Health

Durham County announces pause on vaccine scheduling due to limited supply; existing appointments will be honored :: WRAL.com

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By Kevin Kuzminski, WRAL multiplatform producer

The Durham County Department of Public Health announced Thursday it will temporarily close its vaccine appointment scheduling due to a limited COVID-19 vaccine supply, effective immediately.

The public health department will also not add new vaccination dates to its online booking site until a later date to be determined.

At this time, no currently scheduled vaccine appointments will be canceled or postponed, though some appointments beginning Monday, Feb. 1 will be moved from the Durham health department location to the Southern High School location. Individuals whose appointments must be moved to Southern High School will be contacted by phone or email.

“We are very thankful that we do not have to cancel any currently standing appointments, but as secretary Cohen explained to the public in her news conference earlier this week, the unfortunate reality is that demand is far outpacing supply,” health director Rod Jenkins said. “Durham County has a baseline allocation of 600 first doses for the next three weeks, and we are uncertain when our allocation will increase. It is best to halt scheduling until we are confident we will be able to fulfill additional appointments.”

Although the public health department expects to be able to honor appointments already scheduled, the public is encouraged to stay tuned to accurate sources of information and communications from our team, as vaccine supply is subject to change.

“We hope that by the end of February we will be able to reopen our scheduling process and see increased supply, but that is uncertain at this time. We will continue to provide more information as it is received,”Jenkins said.

Individuals in vaccination phases 1 and 2 may still sign up for the COVID-19 vaccine waitlist at tinyurl.com/DCoVaccineWaitlist in English or tinyurl.com/DCoListaVacunas in Spanish to receive a call if vaccine doses become available due to appointment cancellations or no-shows.

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