Laurel Wamsley
speaker
60 appearances
12 recordings
3 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard May 2025
Laurel Wamsley’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Many had hoped that home sales would rebound during what's supposed to be the busy spring season. But instead, last month's existing home sales were the slowest April in 16 years. Still, the median existing sales price continued to climb to $414,000, an all time high for the month of April. Adding to the affordability challenges are high interest rates, which show no signs of falling.
Inventory is up more than 20 percent over a year ago. Many Americans want to buy a home but can't afford to. Some had hoped to buy a home this spring, but have been stymied by possible job loss, mortgage rates, and market volatility. Laurel Wamsley, NPR News, Washington.
For a long time, buying and selling a home was pretty straightforward. The seller paid a commission to both the buyer's and seller's agent, totaling 5% to 6% of the sales price. For Jim Hsiao, a homebuyer in Georgia, it was just too much money going to the realtors. When you try to negotiate, you're basically just told, nope, that's our rate.
But following the realtor's settlement, agents must now tell their prospective clients that their rates are fully negotiable. So Hsiao found an agent who agreed to a flat fee to help him buy a new home. And he got $14,000 back to put toward the closing. Despite the new rules, commissions for buyers' agents overall have barely budged.
Hsiao says consumers just need the confidence to ask for options beyond the status quo. Laurel Wamsley, NPR News.
Apple News Today · Top Trump officials leaked war plans to a journalist by mistake · 25 Mar 2025
podcast
I mean, it's hard as a company to know how much Things are going to cost you if these tariffs are going into place and they're going away or it's completely unclear at what level they're going to be. You know, all of that uncertainty can just make things more expensive and drive up costs for U.S. consumers.
Say you're weighing buying a washing machine that's built and manufactured in the United States or one that's built and manufactured in China. If with these tariffs in effect, that should raise the cost of the Chinese washing machine. But, you know, the U.S. manufacturer of the washing machine might also raise their prices, you know, because now they can't.
The other washing machine is more expensive.
So if there is a big ticket item that you've been eyeing and the price is something you can currently pay but wouldn't want to see a big price hike on, you know, maybe go ahead and get it sooner than later.
it's quite troubling because the Bureau is the country's consumer finance watchdog, and it's an enforcement agency. I've talked with several CFPB staff and former staff in recent days, and they named a few big concerns. One is that a new stop work order from its new acting director halts the agency's supervision work.
They said the agency has hundreds and hundreds of employees who go across the country, who go into companies and make sure they're following important consumer protections. As Julie Margetta Morgan, who was CFPB's associate director of research and monitoring until she left the agency last month, put it, They're shutting down literally the cops on the beat.
They make sure your student loan company is actually processing your payments and that mortgage companies follow the rules put in place after the Great Recession. And there's a second big concern, which is that all of this is happening under Elon Musk, who is the CEO of Tesla and has talked about wanting his ex-company to be a whole commerce and payments platform.
And now it looks like he has access to all of CFPB's records, including company's proprietary information. That'd be a huge competitive advantage to someone like Musk. And of course, there are worries that that sensitive information will be mishandled.
Yeah, it's been a tumultuous few days. On Friday, staff from Elon Musk's government efficiency team were seen at CFPB headquarters, and they've gained access to those key internal systems. Then over the weekend, Trump tapped Russell Vogt as the new acting director.
Vogt was an architect of the conservative policy agenda, Project 2025, and he sent an all-staff email ordering a halt to virtually all of their work. Shortly thereafter, Vogt posted on X that he would not be drawing the agency's next round of funding from the Federal Reserve. And then just yesterday, an email was sent to all staff and contractors saying that CFPB's D.C.
headquarters would be closed for the week and that they have to work remotely.
Totally. It appears to be the same playbook. I mean, both are independent agencies that this current administration appears to be trying to dismantle. Republicans have targeted the Consumer Protection Agency for years, though. They've often accused its regulators of overreach. And then on Friday, Musk tweeted CFPB RIP.
Well, staffers are just bracing themselves for whatever comes next. One told me that they went to the D.C. headquarters yesterday just to grab some personal items before the building closed for the week, and they weren't allowed in. And, you know, at USAID, the vast majority of staff were put on administrative leave before a federal judge put a hold on that.
And last night, CFPB's union filed a lawsuit against Vote, the agency's new head. In terms of that funding being slashed at CFPB, we actually saw the same thing happen during Trump's first term. But then later on, they went back to taking the money. And the thing is that if this whole thing is being done for government efficiency, CFPB isn't really where you'd start.
It has a relatively small budget. And since its launch in 2011, it's delivered more than $20 billion back to Americans.
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