DR Horton expects incentives, lower home prices in 2026
Officials from one of the nation’s largest homebuilders said Tuesday that the company anticipates prices for its properties will continue to fall next year.
Texas-based D.R. Horton attributed the expected decline in prices to building smaller homes and incentives offered to buyers, officials said during the fourth-quarter earnings call.
"New-home demand is still being impacted by ongoing affordability constraints and cautious consumer sentiment, and we expect our sales incentives to remain elevated in fiscal 2026, the extent to which will depend on market conditions throughout the year," Executive Chairman David Auld said on the call.
D.R. Horton described its homes as getting “modestly” smaller in the past 12 months.
Amazon, UPS announce layoffs
Amazon announced Tuesday that it's slashing 14,000 corporate jobs to help "reduce bureaucracy."
Beth Galetti, the senior vice president of people at the online retailer, said in an employee memo that employees will have 90 days to transfer to a different role within the company. The memo did not specify when the layoffs would begin.
Galetti's memo also suggested that artificial intelligence played a role in why employment changes are happening at Amazon. CEO Andy Jassy noted in June that AI will replace the work some employees are doing.
"We’re convinced that we need to be organized more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and business," Galetti wrote in the memo.
United Parcel Service reported in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Tuesday on its third-quarter earnings that it had reduced its operational workforce by about 34,000 positions and closed daily operations at 93 leased and owned buildings during the first nine months of 2025. UPS said it was looking to identify more buildings to close and that it had realized cost savings of about $2.2 billion as of Sept. 30. The shipping company also reported roughly 14,000 additional job cuts, primarily within its management.
Consumer confidence slips
A group of economists at Wells Fargo and the Conference Board said on Tuesday that their measure of U.S. consumer confidence has declined for the third consecutive month.
Consumer confidence came in at 94.6 out of 200 in October, down from 95.6 in September, the economists said. The score continues to slip partially because Americans have a poor outlook on their probability of landing a job, they said.
Wells Fargo and the Conference Board drew the score from a monthly survey sent to American consumers.
"As work is harder to come by, consumers are unsurprisingly downbeat about income prospects," the economists said, noting that "17.9% of consumers anticipate higher incomes six months from now, down from 18.2% last month, and 12.5% expect incomes to decrease, up from 11.7%. Worries about jobs and income gains support our case for a moderation in consumer spending in the months ahead."