Finance
Homebuilder confidence falls to lowest level in five months amid tariff concerns, high mortgage rates
Homebuilders are feeling less optimistic about the housing market as they navigate concerns over tariffs, elevated mortgage rates, and high housing costs.
The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index was 42 in February, a five-point drop from January and the lowest level in five months. Economists were expecting a reading of 46, per Bloomberg data.
A reading under 50 indicates that more builders view conditions as poor than good.
“While builders hold out hope for pro-development policies, particularly for regulatory reform, policy uncertainty, and cost factors created a reset for 2025 expectations in the most recent HMI,” NAHB Chairman Carl Harris, a custom home builder from Wichita, Kansas, wrote in a statement.
One of the major cost concerns stems from President Trump’s executive order imposing 25% tariffs on all imported steel and aluminum products, set to take effect in March. According to the National Association of Home Builders, this could raise residential construction costs.
This tariff move comes after Trump announced a month pause on other tariffs for Canadian and Mexican goods.
“With 32% of appliances and 30% of softwood lumber coming from international trade, uncertainty over the scale and scope of tariffs has builders further concerned about costs,” NAHB chief economist Robert Dietz wrote in a statement.
At the same time, builders continue to grapple with elevated mortgage rates. Data from Freddie Mac shows that the 30-year fixed mortgage rate is hovering around 7%, further dampening demand.
The NAHB survey found 26% of builders cut home prices in February, down from 30% in January and the lowest share since May 2024. Meanwhile, 59% of builders used sales incentives in February, a slight decrease from 61% in January.
NAHB’s chief economist Robert Dietz said he expects “incentive use may also be weakening as a sales strategy as elevated interest rates reduce the pool of eligible home buyers.”
Indeed, in the survey, the gauge measuring sales outlook over the next six months plunged 13 points to 46 and hit its lowest level since December 2023. The prospective buyer traffic gauge posted a three point decline to 29. The NAHB index of current sales conditions dropped four points to 46.
Dani Romero is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on X @daniromerotv.
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Finance
Arra Finance To Acquire Crescent Auto Finance, Rapidly Scaling Its Subprime Auto Finance Platform
Deal to quadruple auto finance origination capacity and reduce credit application response time to a matter of seconds
IRVING, Texas, June 11, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Arra Finance, LLC (“Arra” or the “Company”), a subprime indirect auto finance company, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the auto financing division of Crescent Bank (“Crescent”), a New Orleans-based FDIC insured bank with approximately $1 billion in assets that has provided nationwide indirect auto lending since 1991. The deal accelerates the rapid expansion of Arra’s platform, enhancing its technology stack and analytics capacity well ahead of growth expectations. Crescent will retain its branch and online retail banking platforms, as well as its commercial lending program, and Arra will become the servicer for Crescent’s $815 million originated auto loan portfolio. The transaction is expected to close in 3Q 2025. Financial terms were not disclosed.
As a well-established operator in the subprime auto financing space, Crescent has originated upwards of $5.3 billion in auto loans nationwide over its 30-year history and $652 million in the last two years. This acquisition brings Crescent’s e-contracting, internal loan servicing and accelerated auto-decision capabilities to the Arra platform, alongside advanced analytics and additional fraud protection tools in underwriting and funding.
With financial backing from Obra Capital (“Obra”), Arra now has the operational bandwidth and capital structure necessary to provide a comprehensive suite of financing solutions to auto dealers across the country. Arra expects to rapidly scale delivery of customer financing solutions to dealers by leveraging Crescent’s existing operations, with a significantly increased auto finance origination capacity, larger dealer base and the ability to respond to credit applications within seconds of submission.
As part of the acquisition, Arra will welcome approximately 180 new employees from Crescent, expanding Arra’s best-in-class team by a factor of six. This includes 24 new sales team members, who will support the deployment of Arra’s capital base and provide a consistent touchpoint for new and existing dealer customers alike. The new additions will continue to be primarily based in Carrollton, Texas, supporting a seamless operational integration while opening new pathways for opportunity, as enabled by Arra’s access to asset-backed financing solutions.
“With today’s announcement, we have rapidly advanced Arra’s growth trajectory, substantially improving our ability to be the premier financing partner for franchise and select independent dealers,” said Kenn Wardle, Chief Executive Officer of Arra Finance. “After only six months in market, we are on track to outpace our growth targets by a number of years, and we have developed the platform capabilities necessary to deliver responses to credit applications in a matter of seconds. I look forward to welcoming our new team members as we bring our combined offerings to market and continue to streamline the car buying experience for dealers and consumers across the country.”
00:00:06 Speaker A
All right. Time now for to watch Wednesday, June 11th. We’ll start off on the earnings front here. We’re going to be getting some big names tomorrow. That will include Oracle, Chewy, and Victoria’s Secret. Oracle, by the way, announced some results for the fourth quarter after the market close. And it was expecting Oracle’s cloud unit to grow faster than expected, possibly more than 54% this quarter based on results from other names in the space, such as Microsoft and Google.
00:00:38 Speaker B
And taking a look at the economy, we’ll get fresh inflation data coming out in the morning with the Consumer Price Index, that’s CPI. Economists forecast total CPI will hold steady at 0.2%, while core CPI could tick up to 0.3% on a month over month basis. On a year over year basis, total and core CPI expected to rise to 2.5 and 2.8%, respectively.
00:01:08 Speaker A
And moving over to housing, weekly mortgage rate application data, that’s coming out in the morning. Last week’s number, decreasing 3.9% from the week prior, marking the third consecutive week of declines.
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