Real estate pros can't alter interest rates, but they can impact how much money people have in their pockets to buy, sell or lease. How? By using their voices and leveraging industry professionals to make change.

Kitchen remodels are generally expensive, but homeowners can find ways to scale back while still achieving their goals.

If you want to know whether your agents are filling up your company's pipeline enough, learn how to make projections based on appropriate data.

Influencers expand the reach and longevity of experiential marketing campaigns, but to attract the right influencers, events and experiences must be designed with them in mind, writes Ray Sheehan, founder of Old City Media. Sheehan offers tips for combining influencers and events, noting, "[Y]ou need to make it influencer-friendly, buzz-worthy, 'Instagrammable' and any other adjectives that describe events that are sure to go viral on social media."

Marketers can avoid a "short shrift" approach to 2024 planning and break out from repetitive strategy doldrums by taking five steps that start with mining 2023 data and insights to glean actionable lessons, writes Michael Baer, TechCXO fractional chief marketing officer. Other steps include purposefully identifying core objectives and "[baking] strategic rigor into your execution to ensure success."

The Global Wellness Institute is tracking growth in wellness real estate, which the group defines as "homes that are proactively designed and built to support the holistic health of their residents." Demand for these homes is up significantly in recent years.

Noelle-Kristine Spencer of TTR Sotheby's International Realty says home buyers are prioritizing pet comfort in home purchasing decisions. "Any kind of accouterments that the house can have that shows the importance of this animal in their lives is a plus," Spencer said, adding that while these items won't scuttle a deal, they "can move the needle."

Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun says AI won't reach sentience for decades and the world will see "dog-level" AI way ahead of human-level intelligence because of the limits of training on texts. "There's a lot of really basic things about the world that they just don't get through this kind of training," LeCun says.

While the Department of Veterans Affairs has taken steps to extend a home loan support program for veterans affected by COVID-19, many won't be able to resume affordable payments as they're already in existing loan modifications and are ineligible. As a result, some veterans are still facing foreclosure due to large lump payments or rising interest rates.

This year's deposit outflows from U.S. banks totaled $397 billion as of Nov. 22, dropping from a total of $17.736 trillion to $17.339 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve Economic Data system. The decline is largely attributed to depositors moving into money market funds, some of which are paying interest of more than 5%.