News Snapshot:
Housing markets around the world are slowing down drastically, underscoring a sector that’s highly sensitive to interest-rate increases. Pending and new home sales both fell in the US in July to multi-year lows, while the slump in Australia is raising the risk of a recession. Home values in London are flat or falling in almost half of the city’s boroughs, and the property downturn in China is testing whether the central bank can stick to its stimulus-lite strategy. Elsewhere, key measures of US growth diverged in the first half of the year and inflation-adjusted spending rose at a sluggish pace...
