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Weakness in the housing market, a brewing trade war with our closest neighbors, and a look at 20 years of Yelp.

Stick around from American public media.

This is Marketplace.

Thank you. This is Marketplace. In Baltimore, I'm Amy Scott in for Kai Rizdahl.

It's Tuesday, November 26th.

Good to have you along.

We'll start with some housing news.

First, home prices nationally kept growing in September, though more slowly than the month before. That's from the S&P CoreLogic Case Schiller Home Price Index, which rose 3.9% from a year before. Number two, from the U.S. Census Bureau, sales of new homes fell sharply in October.

Some of that weakness was expected, as parts of the South are still recovering from

Hurricanes Helene and Milton.

But as Marketplaces Justin Ho reports, other issues are weighing on the market for new homes

and the companies that build them.

A big challenge that home builders are dealing with is the amount of available labor.

Donushka Nanyakara, with the National Association of Home Builders, says the industry has more than

250,000 open positions it's trying to fill.

We have an aging labor force.

We need young people to go into trade schools. We need to attract

women to come into the trades. Nanyakara says that shortage pushes up construction costs.

Construction materials, including electrical transformers, are also in short supply.

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