CompaniesBIO

Sales of existing homes fell 7.7% in November compared with October, according to the National Association of Realtors. The seasonally adjusted annualized pace was 4.09 million units. That is weaker than the 4.17 million units housing analysts had predicted, and it was a much deeper fall than usual monthly declines. Sales were down 35.4% year over year, marking the tenth straight month of declines. That was the weakest pace since November 2010, with the exception of May 2020, when sales fell sharply, albeit briefly, during the early days of the Covid pandemic. In November 2010, the nation was mired in the great recession as well as a foreclosure crisis. These counts are based on closings, so the contracts were likely signed in September and October, when mortgage rates last peaked before coming down slightly last month. Rates are now about one percentage point lower than they were at the end of October, but still a little more than twice what they were at the start of this year. Housin...

This will likely end up as the biggest Black Friday ever online. Overall online sales for the day after Thanksgiving are expected to top $9 billion , according to Adobe, which tracks sales on retailers’ websites. That would be a record . Through 6 p.m. ET, shoppers spent $7.28 billion at websites. That number could balloon to as much as $9.2 billion before the day is done, Adobe said. The record -breaking spending comes on the heels of a strong day of Thanksgiving shopping in which consumers shelled out an all-time high of $5.29 billion online , up 2.9% year-over-year. Typically, shoppers spend about $2 billion to $3 billion online in a day, according to Adobe.  Black Friday shoppers at the Opry Mills Mall in Nashville, Tennessee, on Nov. 25. Seth Herald / AFP via Getty Images The company said shoppers were picking up Apple products such as watches and AirPods, smart speakers and televisions, espresso machines and gaming consoles, as well as toys from Funko, Hatchimals and Squi...