By Prashant Gopal, Bloomberg News

With the average mortgage rate near 6%, U.S. homebuyers are looking at the most affordable monthly payments in a year. But San Antonio real estate agent Tavyn Weyman knows how to get them lower — much lower.

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The trick is simple: buy new.

In markets across the U.S., homebuilders sitting on unsold inventory are subsidizing mortgage rates so heavily they sometimes match the record lows last seen during the Covid-19 pandemic. That’s in addition to perks like free appliances, finished basements and zero closing costs.

Weyman said a large private builder just gave one client a 3.49% fixed rate on a $414,000 home on the west side of town. The sales agent even bumped up Weyman’s commission to cover the cost of breaking the buyer’s lease and threw in another $2,000 to make the first month effectively free.

“You want to pay $2,000 a month on a brand new 4-bedroom home and have a 2% rate, I can find that now — as crazy as that sounds,” Weyman said. “It’s all negotiable.”

A single mother relocating from Florida is interested in a 3.99% fixed rate offered by D.R. Horton Inc., the biggest U.S. builder by stock market value. But it’s the introductory rate of less than 1% for the first year that really caught her eye, Weyman said.

These aren’t the perks of a healthy housing market. They’re the tactics of an industry trying to get the attention of buyers as tariffs, a government shutdown and artificial intelligence add to feelings of job insecurity.

Year-to-date job cuts have exceeded 1 million, the most since the pandemic, according outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Last month alone firms announced 153,000 cuts, the most for any October since 2003.

The anxiety is taking the wind out of a prophesied jump in homebuyer demand as mortgage rates decline.

“We would have expected to see a little bigger bump out of the reduction in mortgage rates that we’ve seen,” D.R. Horton Chief Executive Officer Paul Romanowski said on a call with analysts last month. “It truly is choppy.”

Other builders have shared disappointing feedback from the market. Century Communities Inc. in an earnings call said demand is especially weak from entry-level buyers. PulteGroup Inc. said first-time buyer orders plunged 14% in the latest quarter compared with a year earlier.

“Lower interest rates are a positive for housing demand, but rates don’t operate in a vacuum,” Ryan Marshall, chief executive officer of PulteGroup, said in an earnings call last month. “There is a clear offset if rates are coming down because the economy is slowing and people are worried about their jobs.”

A big obstacle for new sales agents is that renting is now much cheaper than buying. Rents are starting to dip, and landlords are reporting retention rates that are near record highs.

Meanwhile, resale listings are no longer in short supply, giving buyers plenty of other options. Still, few are biting. Pending sales stalled in September, still barely above record lows.

“The existing market is a much more formidable competitor to the homebuilders than it has been for a long time,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “There’s a lot of angst about job security, given there is no hiring. And artificial intelligence is coming on.”

For the first time, the price for a typical new home in July and August was cheaper than that of an existing home, according to a John Burns Research & Consulting analysis of Census and National Association of Realtors data. The average premium since 1973 was 16%. The analysis doesn’t include incentives.

Production builders spent an average of 7.5% of sales prices on incentives in the three months ended August, up from 4.8% in May 2024, according to the company’s builder surveys.

“There is an opportunity to buy new homes at really low rates,” said Eric Finnigan, vice president at John Burns. “The big surprise is why sales are still so soft.”

But not all rate buydowns are created equal. Some permanently lower borrowing costs for a full 30-year term, while others keep rates low only temporarily. Those deals can work well for households expecting rising income or a future refinancing — but they carry real risk for borrowers who aren’t prepared for the jump in monthly payments once the promotional period ends.

Lennar Corp. is in the midst of a nationwide “Inventory Close-Out Sale,” offering rates of 3.75% in Denver and up to $70,000 in price reductions in Charleston, South Carolina. Lennar spent 14% per home on incentives as a share of revenue this year, up from 10% in 2024.

The strategy of undercutting the resale market seems to be working, at least according to Weyman. The agent in San Antonio said seven of the eight homes he sold this year were newly built.

“New home buyers are expecting a lot of things so you’ve got to get them more,” Weyman said. “I always advertise that I’m never going to make a client pay for closing costs, especially now.”

—With assistance from Julia Fanzeres.

(Updates with October job cuts in eighth paragraph.)

©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

A driver was going more than 100 mph on Interstate 94 before he turned off his headlights, exited in St. Paul and struck another vehicle, killing the other driver, according to a criminal vehicular homicide charge filed Thursday.

The man who died, 31-year-old Benjamin Michael Villano of St. Paul, was a professional baker.

A trooper was stopped on Pascal Street by eastbound I-94, running speed radar, when he saw a Tesla traveling 84 mph in a 55-mph zone shortly before 2 a.m. Wednesday.

The trooper drove after the vehicle and had not activated his squad’s emergency lights or siren as he tried to catch up to the Tesla, which had increased its speed to more than 100 mph, according to the criminal complaint. The driver turned off his headlights as he approached the Dale Street exit.

The trooper, who lost sight of the Tesla as it went to the top of the exit ramp, saw sparks and smoke coming from the intersection, the complaint said. He found the driver had crashed into a Toyota RAV4 at Dale Street and Rondo Avenue.

It appeared the Tesla struck the Toyota’s front passenger door, pushing the Toyota across several lanes of traffic and into a retaining wall. The trooper couldn’t access the Toyota’s driver, Villano, to render aid. The St. Paul Fire Department responded and medics pronounced him dead.

The Tesla’s driver was identified as 22-year-old Musab Ibrahim Kosar, of Fridley, and the passenger was a 19-year-old from St. Paul. Both were injured, said they had no memory of the crash and were taken to the hospital, according to the complaint.

The passenger was diagnosed with fractures and a dislocated hip. Kosar had similar injuries and a large cut to his forehead.

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When the passenger was notified the Toyota’s driver had died, she “became very emotional,” according to the complaint. She said “she had asked Kosar to stop speeding that evening. (She) said they had broken up earlier in the day and were discussing their relationship after going to get food.”

Kosar is accused of operating a vehicle in a “grossly negligent manner.” He remained hospitalized when the complaint was filed Thursday. An attorney wasn’t listed for him in the court file.

Villano worked at the Bread Lab for Rose Street Patisserie in St. Paul and Patisserie 46 in Minneapolis. He previously worked at Wee Claddagh at Selby Avenue and Dale Street in St. Paul, baking for that location and Claddagh Coffee on West Seventh Street.

The victim of a 2014 kidnapping and attempted rape in Maplewood heard an admission in court Thursday from her attacker, who eluded investigators until a DNA match last year.

The woman, now 36, sat in a Ramsey County courtroom with her parents as Gregory Alan Trepanier, 56, admitted that he got inside her car as she was leaving a bar, pointed a gun at her and told her to drive to a spot where he intended to sexually assault her.

Trepanier, of Maplewood, was arrested and charged in March 2024 with kidnapping and attempted first-degree criminal sexual conduct in connection with the incident in the early morning hours of Nov. 23, 2014.

He pleaded guilty to kidnapping Thursday as part of a deal he reached with the prosecution, which agreed to dismiss the attempted sexual assault charge.

The state also agreed to not pursue charges against Trepanier in two other alleged kidnappings that involved a gun and threats of sexual assault on Feb. 23, 2014. The alleged incidents occurred in North St. Paul and Maplewood.

Gregory Alan Trepanier (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

Trepanier remains jailed ahead of sentencing, which is scheduled for Jan. 16.

Under the plea deal, he faces a prison term at the “high end” of state sentencing guidelines, which will be determined through his prior criminal history. It includes stalking and indecent exposure convictions in 2019 stemming from two incidents on one day in August 2018 in White Bear Lake and Vadnais Heights.

DNA collected from inside her car

According to the criminal complaint, the woman, then 25, reported about 2:30 a.m. that she had been kidnapped in the parking lot of the Dog House Bar on Woodlynn Avenue, east of White Bear Avenue and south of Interstate 694.

She told police she went to the bar with friends, and got into her car alone after it closed. When she began backing out of her parking spot, a man wearing a black ski mask with a red stripe, black hooded sweatshirt and blue sweatpants opened her passenger side door and got inside her car.

He pointed a gun at her and told her to drive to a parking lot of a senior-living facility where he said he was going to rape her. He put a gun on his lap and threatened to hurt her if she didn’t comply with his demands. He ordered her to remove her pants, and he removed his own.

He touched himself, and then suddenly said, “Oh (expletive)” and apologized several times, the complaint read. He got out of her vehicle and left on foot.

Detectives were able to gather DNA evidence from inside the car.

At the time, the BCA was unable to connect the DNA evidence to a suspect. However, BCA scientists found a match after running the sample through their database as they routinely do because new DNA profiles are often added to the database. In February 2024, the DNA returned a match to Trepanier, whose DNA had been submitted in a separate case.

That led to a search warrant for another DNA sample from Trepanier. The BCA concluded the match would not occur “more than once among unrelated individuals in the world population.”

Hoping for an arrest

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Trepanier denied being involved in the kidnapping and attempted assault.

The complaint said that for decades Trepanier has lived at a home about a half-mile from the senior living facility where he ordered the woman to park.

In court Thursday, Trepanier, under questioning by his attorney Sarah Prentice-Mott, said he got into the woman’s car with a gun “to commit another sexual felony.”

Prentice-Mott asked him for clarification, whether his intent was to commit first-degree criminal sexual conduct. He affirmed.

Afterward, outside the courtroom, the victim’s parents said she has stayed strong over the years, while hoping for an arrest.

“To see him again is another story,” her mother said, adding her daughter cried at times during the court hearing.

By JOSH BOAK and SONIA PÉREZ D.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration said Thursday that it had reached trade frameworks with Argentina, Ecuador, El Salvador and Guatemala.

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The frameworks are about increasing the ability of U.S. firms to sell industrial and agricultural products in these countries, according to a senior administration official who insisted on anonymity as a condition for briefing reporters on a call about the agreements.

The White House also released statements on the frameworks, which have yet to be finalized and are expected to be signed within roughly two weeks. It’s all part of a broader effort by President Donald Trump to rewrite the rules of global commerce through the use of broad tariffs.

President Javier Milei of Argentina hailed his country’s first bilateral trade framework with the U.S. in nearly a decade as “tremendous news.”

“As you can see, we are strongly committed to making Argentina great again,” he said.

The frameworks touch on an array of subjects, including efforts to reduce nontariff barriers and cut tariffs to 0% on American-made goods as well as commitments to not impose digital services taxes on U.S. companies. There would also be tariff relief on select products from these countries. For example, import licenses in these countries would be eliminated and streamlined, while nations would agree to resolve issues on intellectual property rights.

Under the tariffs previously announced at the end of July by Trump, goods imported from Argentina, El Salvador and Guatemala are taxed at 10%, as the U.S. runs a trade surplus with each of those countries. Products from Ecuador, with which America runs a trade deficit, are taxed at 15%.

Guatemala President Bernardo Arévalo called the framework “good news” and said his country would be in a position to attract new investments.

He said that 70% of the products Guatemala exports to the U.S. will face zero tariffs under the framework, as exclusions are granted for goods the U.S. is unable to make. All other goods would still be subject to the 10% tariff.

The U.S. senior administration official said that tariffs in these nations could be reduced on coffee, cocoa and bananas.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trump have each suggested that the tariffs are being relaxed as affordability issues are a key concern for U.S. voters.

Pérez D. reported from Guatemala City, Guatemala. AP writer Isabel DeBre contributed to this report from Santiago, Chile.