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TheStreet aims to feature only the best products and services. If you buy something via one of our links, we may earn a commission.Why we love this dealWhen a heatwave moves in, the last thing you want to be dealing with is a lack of airflow. The outdoors is one thing but when conditions inside feel sticky and sweaty, it’s easy to get overwhelmed, frustrated, and of course, overheated. We love a hot sunny day when we’re planning to hit the beach or the pool, but a 24/7 stream of consistent heat gets in the way of everyday errands and activities — and don’t even get us started about how it affects your sleep. Built-in air conditioning systems can easily create a cooler environment by dropping the temperature down a few degrees, but not everyone has access to that technology, or others simply don’t want to deal with the extra monetary costs of doing so. Thankfully, the alternative of investing in standalone devices like the Patiosunny Portable Air Conditioner or a window unit can deliver all the cooling benefits of central air for a much more affordable cost.Not only can a standalone air conditioner save you money since it’s cheaper than running central AC, but the Patiosunny model can save you even more money thanks to Walmart’s latest Flash deal. The $410 is now on sale for 47% off for a limited time — saving you almost $200. Even better? It doesn’t just function as an air conditioner. The 4-in-1 device has a few extra features that make it well worth your money. Patiosunny Portable Air Conditioner, $217 (was $410) at Walmart

Courtesy of Walmart

Shop at WalmartWhy do shoppers love it?Although its specific measurements aren’t listed, this air conditioner has a slim, compact designed to enhance its portability. Don’t let its smaller size fool you because with its 10,000 British Thermal Unit (BTU) cooling power, it has amazing capabilities. Air conditioners typically require 20 BTUs per square foot of space you want them to cover and cool. With a 10,000 cooling power, this unit can cool down mid-sized rooms like home offices, living rooms, family rooms, as well as larger bedrooms, ranging anywhere between 350 to 450 square feet. This model also comes in 8,000, 12,000, and 14,000 BTU.The 4-in-1 design combines cooling, dehumidifying, and fan features along with a sleep mode so that you can stay cool and dry 24/7. With an adjustable temperature range between 61 degrees Fahrenheit and 90 degrees Fahrenheit, you can customize the device to suit your comforts and needs. It can cool the air when it’s hot, suck extra moisture out of the air when it’s humid, and circulate air when it feels stagnant and still.The air conditioner runs at less than 52 decibels for quiet use day and night. There’s an LED control panel as well as a remote control that gives you access to timers, temperature adjustment, speed adjustment, and more. You can use the remote from up to 26.5 feet away to temperature lock, switch modes, set times, and power on and off. You’re able to set customizable fan speeds and even a 24-hour timer should you so desire. Related: Walmart’s massive summer sale includes window AC units starting at $139Thanks to the unit’s 360-degree universal wheels and built-in handle, you can easily move the air conditioner from room to room, bringing it to wherever you need it most. Details to knowDimensions: Unlisted. Coverage area: 450 square feet. Features: This 4-in-1 device combines cooling, dehumidifying, fan, and sleep modes.  You can customize fan speeds, set timers, adjust temperatures and temperature lock, and do so much more. Temperature range: 61 degrees Fahrenheit to 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Shoppers really like this model and find it to be a great portable AC unit. It works very well and they are impressed with its power. It comes with a window installation kit for easy DIY setup, but you don’t need to install or set up anything if you plan to use it as a standalone portable device. Shop more deals DuraComfort 3-in-1 AC Unit, $175 (was $310) at WalmartCostway Wifi Enabled Mini Split Air Conditioner and Heater, $865 (was $1,519) at WalmartKtaxon Energy Star Inverter Window Air Conditioner, $285 (was $494) at WalmartAs much as we love the summer heat, we prefer it to stay outdoors. Thanks to Walmart’s great deal on the Patiosunny Portable Air Conditioner, you can rest easy knowing that day or night, you’ll keep cool no matter how much the temperature cranks up outside.

Tailored Brands, the owner of Men’s Wearhouse, is preparing to return to public markets six years after bankruptcy, but its pitch to investors goes beyond a simple stock listing.The menswear retailer is also making an aggressive bet on physical stores.Tailored Brands, which also owns Jos. A. Bank, Moores, and K&G Fashion Superstore, sees room for hundreds of new physical stores over the next decade as it makes its latest pitch to investors.This is a striking reversal for a company that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy during the pandemic and ultimately shuttered more than 400 stores.The expansion comes as retailers across the U.S. continue to rethink their physical footprints and traditional department stores lose ground.And in Tailored Brands’ view, it creates an opening for specialty retailers like them to offer services difficult to replicate online.Men’s Wearhouse owner files for IPOTailored Brands publicly filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for an initial public offering and plans to list its shares on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “MENW.”The company has not yet determined how many shares it will offer or the expected price range.Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Jefferies are serving as lead bookrunning managers for the proposed offering, according to the company.More Retail:Coca-Cola quietly hints at reinventing previously failed flavorBath & Body Works quietly gains a competitive advantageDollar General brings back old pricesTailored Brands plans to use proceeds from the offering in part to repay debt, with the remainder available for general corporate purposes, including working capital, operating expenses, and capital expenditures.Silver Point Capital, which acquired a significant stake following Tailored Brands’ bankruptcy, is expected to remain the company’s controlling shareholder after the IPO.But the planned listing also marks a dramatic change from where the retailer stood in 2020.As the COVID-19 pandemic hit, many offices closed, disrupting weddings and other events.Consequently, demand for suits and formalwear collapsed.At the time, Tailored Brands warned it could close as many as 500 stores before finally filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in August 2020. The company ultimately shuttered more than 400 locations during that period.Now, after its relatively quick exit from bankruptcy in December 2020, Tailored Brands operates more than 1,000 stores across North America and is also preparing to expand again.

Men’s Wearhouse owner to file for IPO.Brett_Hondow / Getty Images

Tailored Brands plans more than 500 additional storesTailored Brands expects to open about 20 stores in fiscal 2026 and more than 35 in fiscal 2027, before ramping up to more than 50 openings annually in the near term, according to its IPO filing.Over the longer term, the retailer says it sees potential for more than 500 additional locations across 100-plus markets.That plan stands out in a retail environment, where closures still exceed openings overall, even though the pace of closures is improving and openings are risingCNBC reported that Coresight Research expects U.S. retailers to:Close about 7,900 stores in 2026, down 4.5% year over year.Open about 5,500 stores, up 4.4%.This makes the projected store closures the lowest in three years.More importantly, Tailored Brands believes some of that disruption could work in its favor.In its IPO filing, the retailer pointed specifically to the retreat of department stores, which historically held a major position in suits, dress clothing, and other apparel categories.The company, citing U.S. Census Bureau data, said the number of department stores fell by more than 40% between 2018 and 2023.Tailored Brands argues that as department stores disappear, spending is shifting toward specialty retailers.“We believe our focus on menswear, our high-touch service and our offering with unparalleled expert advice and fit solutions position us favorably to continue capturing share from department stores and competing effectively against e-commerce and off-price retailers,” reads the SEC filing.Its own stores are also largely insulated from the struggles of enclosed malls.More than 90% of Tailored Brands’ locations were outside malls at the end of fiscal 2025, and the company said its entire store fleet was profitable on a four-wall basis.Now, the company is using customer data, trade-area demographics, results from its existing stores, and competitor information to identify markets for expansion.Weddings and rentals remain keyTailored Brands is also betting that stores still matter for purchases that require more service than a typical apparel transaction.Suits and formalwear often require measurements, alterations, and styling, while weddings can bring entire groups of customers into stores for fittings and rentals.That rental business gives Tailored Brands a particularly strong position.The company said in its SEC filing that it is the leader in the U.S. men’s apparel rental market, capturing roughly half of the market annually since 2018 and nearly 60% more recently.Rentals are also a high-margin part of the business. Tailored Brands reported rental selling margins of 85.5% in fiscal 2025.But Tailored Brands is no longer relying solely on traditional suits.Since its restructuring, the company has modernized its assortment, expanded its casual and flexible clothing offerings, and increased its reliance on products sold under its own brands.Private brands accounted for roughly 88% of its assortment by the end of fiscal 2025.Those changes are important as workplace dress codes have become more casual, and fewer consumers need traditional business suits every day.Instead, Tailored Brands increasingly depends on a mix of weddings, celebrations, job interviews, professional events, and other occasions to bring shoppers into its stores.That creates another challenge revealed in its IPO filing: getting those customers to come back.Nearly 70% of Tailored Brands’ customers are classified as new or reactivated shoppers, and the company attracted roughly 6 million new and reactivated customers in fiscal 2025.Customers averaged only 1.6 visits per year.Tailored Brands sees converting even part of that large group into repeat shoppers as a major growth opportunity.Tailored Brands posts higher sales ahead of IPOThe retailer is returning to Wall Street with a significantly different financial profile than when it entered bankruptcy.Tailored Brands generated about $2.5 billion in net sales and $217 million in net income in fiscal 2025.Its gross margin reached 48.2%, and the company said its menswear market share increased by about 70 basis points between fiscal 2021 and fiscal 2025.The latest quarter showed continued sales growth.Revenue increased 5.8% to $681.8 million for the three months ended May 2, compared with $644.4 million a year earlier.Net income, however, declined to $44.9 million from $50.7 million during the same period a year earlier.The planned IPO will therefore serve more than one purpose.It gives Tailored Brands access to public equity markets as it prepares for a major expansion, while also allowing the company to direct some proceeds toward debt reduction.Retail IPO market remains difficultTailored Brands is also trying to return to Wall Street during an unusual period for consumer companies.The broader U.S. IPO market has surged in 2026, but retail has largely been left behind.Only five U.S. consumer and retail IPOs had priced so far this year as of July 22, the lowest year-to-date number in a decade, according to LSEG data cited by Reuters.That could soon change.Jersey Mike’s and fashion retailer Reformation have both moved forward with IPO plans and together are seeking to raise more than all U.S. consumer and retail IPOs completed so far this year.Reuters identified Tailored Brands as one of the retailers waiting in the IPO pipeline that could benefit if those offerings perform well.For Tailored Brands, however, the bigger test goes beyond whether investors are ready for another retail stock.Six years ago, the company was closing hundreds of stores as demand collapsed.Now it is asking investors to back the opposite strategy.A return to public markets, hundreds of additional stores, and a bet that the decline of traditional department stores has left room for a specialty menswear retailer to grow.Related: 75-year-old giant auto parts company files Chapter 15 protection

Finding a real estate property below market value has grown harder as more buyers chase the same shrinking pool of listings, which has pushed a growing share of investors and everyday homebuyers to look for deals well before they ever reach a public site.For investors, that search often ends at a wholesaler, an operator who ties up a property under contract and then sells the right to buy it for a fee. The appeal is a faster route than the open market, though it can arrive with similarly inflated asking prices, figures that don’t pencil, and the same address landing in hundreds of competing inboxes at once.On Wednesday’s episode of the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast, a listener wrote in stuck on that decision, unsure whether to keep leaning on wholesalers or start hunting deals on his own.”When I look at a deal from a wholesaler, I pretend anything they say isn’t there,” said Henry Washington, an active flipper who’s done hundreds of deals and co-hosts the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast.Why a bad real estate deal is usually on the buyerWashington’s starting point is that wholesalers are a legitimate way to source property, not a category to avoid. Bad operators work in the business, but bad agents and bad contractors do too, and investors keep hiring from both groups without fairly assigning responsibility for deals gone wrong. To Washington, the distinction that matters is less about whether a wholesaler can be trusted and more about how much weight their claims deserve.His framing puts the responsibility for a poor purchase squarely back on the buyer, which is a reality check for those who have disproportionately removed their share of ownership from the process. “If you bought a bad deal from a wholesaler, chances are that’s your fault and not their fault,” Washington said.This logic rests on where the risk actually sits in this type of real estate transaction. A wholesaler’s sheet usually leads with an estimated after-repair value and a repair budget, the two figures that decide whether a purchase pencils. Taking either one on faith is how a buyer ends up overpaying, since both come from the seller’s side and tend to be tuned to make the property look ready to sell.”The only thing that matters on a wholesaler sheet when they send me a property is the address so I can do my own due diligence,” Washington said.More homebuying and housing market:Zillow sees change in housing market, home valuesNew home-selling strategy poses threat to buyersGoldman Sachs issues major prediction for U.S. housing marketEverything after the address becomes the buyer’s job. Pull the comparable sales, build a repair estimate from the ground up, and settle on a price that’s irrespective of the number printed at the top of the flyer. While this conversation was for investors, the core principles apply to everyday homebuyers as well. Wholesale deals are not the only ones where an appropriate level of due diligence is necessary. Even in more straightforward real estate transactions, the seller’s side can paint a much prettier picture than what a buyer is actually inheriting.As for Washington, his habit in wholesale deals is to land on a number and send that offer no matter how far under the asking figure it falls. A wholesaler is free to pass, and many will, but a buyer never absorbs a loss on a price they set themselves. 

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The questions to ask in wholesale dealsThe second risk in wholesale deals is tougher because it has nothing to do with underwriting. Laying out some of the logistics and complexities of these deals, Washington talked through a process where a wholesaler is supposed to control a property, holding it under contract before selling anyone the right to buy it. However, this is not always how it plays out. As a hypothetical, a wholesaler could take a property already under contract at $100,000, walk it to a buyer at $105,000, and keep the $5,000 gap as a middleman with no real stake in the outcome.Washington’s protection against this is a short list of questions asked before any money changes hands.“I would always make sure you ask the question of the wholesaler, ‘Hey, are you in direct contract with the seller?’” Washington said.He also tells buyers to test a claimed record instead of accepting it, asking how many deals the operator has closed and which title company handled them, then calling that company directly to confirm the sales were real and closed without trouble. Then, a final safeguard lives in the paperwork.”Never sign an assignment contract without seeing the original contract,” Washington added.Again, these are wholesale-specific safeguards, but the same buyer behavior can benefit anyone looking to purchase real estate. Being willing to ask questions, and walk away if the answers aren’t right, is the type of discipline that can save anyone from getting burned when buying property.Key takeaways for investors and homebuyers vetting dealsTreat the wholesaler’s sheet as an address and little else: Washington said the only line worth trusting is the property address, and every value and repair figure should come from the buyer’s own comps and budget, with an offer set independently even when it lands well under the asking price.A deal that goes bad is usually the buyer’s own doing: Washington said accepting a wholesaler’s stated after-repair value or repair costs without checking them, rather than underwriting from scratch, is what turns an off-market purchase into a loss. This same principle applies to all real estate deals.Confirm the wholesaler actually controls the property: Washington said buyers should confirm the wholesaler is contracted directly with the seller, a guard against deals that get marketed but were never locked down.Demand the original contract before signing an assignment: Washington added that a buyer should never sign an assignment without first seeing the original agreement.Being willing to walk away is critical: Homebuyers who can sense when a lack of transparency or consistency on the sellers’ side spells trouble can save a bad deal by walking away.Related: Homeowners face selling decision after housing market shift

I have covered each of the following four stocks separately over the past few weeks:Micron’s historic earnings. Intel’s painful turnaround. AMD’s server CPU advantage heading into August 4. Applied Materials’ wafer equipment supercycle. On July 21, Jim Cramer put them all in the same basket with a single post on X (formerly Twitter).OK, if you have to, let’s go with Micron, AMAT and Intel/AMD for the ones I like the best….for this part of the food chain.The phrase “this part of the food chain” is also a key framing. Cramer is not picking the companies spending the money but picking the ones getting paid. Big Tech hyperscalers, including Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft, are on track to invest a combined $725 billion in AI infrastructure in 2026 alone, according to Forbes reporting. Every dollar of that spending flows downstream to hardware suppliers, chip manufacturers, and the equipment companies that enable chip production. That is the food chain Cramer is referencing, and he is betting on the suppliers.As of midday July 22, according to Yahoo Finance: Micron traded near $974, Applied Materials near $558, Intel near $104, and AMD near $556.Also Read: Jim Cramer’s Recent StoriesMicron — the memory shortage that will not resolve for yearsYahoo Finance reports that Micron (MU) is up 241.46% year-to-date and ranks third on the S&P 500’s year-to-date performance table, according to Slickcharts. I sat through Cramer’s June 30 interview with CEO Sanjay Mehrotra and came away with one phrase that stuck: “tightness continues beyond 2027.”The supply shortage is structural, not cyclical. AI data centers are projected to consume 70% of all memory chip production in 2026, according to The Motley Fool data, leaving smartphones, laptops, and cars competing for the remaining 30%. More Jim Cramer:Jim Cramer’s cryptic comments on key AI supplier turn headsJim Cramer says investors are getting the Mag 7 all wrongJim Cramer recommends buying these 5 stocksHBM3E and HBM4 are 100% sold out through calendar year 2027, with order books extending into 2028. Hyperscalers have committed $22 billion in advance cash deposits to secure supply, according to TheStreet.DRAM prices rose by a percentage in the mid-60s sequentially in Micron’s fiscal Q2 alone. NAND prices jumped 70% in the same period as Micron’s first Idaho fab delivers wafers by mid-2027, with production ramping in 2028. Micron is also investing more than $250 billion through 2035 in U.S. manufacturing capacity.Applied Materials — the equipment company behind every advanced chipApplied Materials (AMAT) ranks 10th on the S&P 500 year-to-date table at 117%, according to Slickcharts. The company does not make chips. It makes the machines that make chips, which means every dollar of new fab capacity built by Micron, Intel, TSMC, or Samsung requires AMAT equipment.I covered Citi’s wafer fabrication equipment market estimates in a prior report. The bull case numbers are striking: $145 billion in WFE spending in 2026, growing to $200 billion in 2027 and $250 billion in 2028. Related: Why Citi is still backing Applied Materials after the rallyFor AMAT specifically, Citi modeled 30% revenue growth in calendar 2027 and 22% in 2028, including 35% and 25% growth from its Silicon segment.The semiconductor industry as a whole is reporting 131% year-over-year earnings growth and 75% revenue growth in Q2 2026, according to FactSet’s July 17 earnings insight. If semiconductors were excluded from the Information Technology sector, the sector’s blended earnings growth rate would fall from 63.4% to 25.7%. AMAT captures the equipment spend, behind that entire growth story.

If semiconductors were excluded from the Q2 2026 Information Technology sector, the sector’s blended earnings growth rate would fall from 63.4% to 25.7%.Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Intel — the geopolitical play and the 18A turnaroundIntel (INTC) ranks 6th year-to-date at over 180%, according to Slickcharts. I covered the latest layoff announcement on July 21, framing it as painful but necessary medicine. Q2 earnings arrive July 23.Cramer’s Intel thesis rests on the foundry business and the geopolitical urgency of domestic chip manufacturing. Intel is the largest beneficiary of the U.S. CHIPS Act with $8.5 billion in direct subsidies. Related: Intel makes another painful move in one of its key businessesIntel Foundry revenues grew 16% to $5.42 billion in the most recent quarter, according to Intel’s Q1F26. Intel invests billions annually in R&D to perfect the 18A process node.CEO Lip-Bu Tan confirmed in May that 18A yields are improving at approximately 7% per month, the best-practice benchmark, according to his Mad Money interview. Foundry customer commitments are expected to become “more concrete” in the second half of 2026, per CFO David Zinsner’s prior commentary.AMD — the server CPU advantage Goldman is betting onAMD (AMD) ranks 7th year-to-date at 159%, according to Slickcharts. I covered Goldman Sachs’ earnings preview on July 9 in detail, and the thesis is specific: the server CPU story is what wins August 4, not the GPU headline.AMD guided 70% year-over-year growth in server CPU revenues for Q2. Goldman’s 2027 EPS estimate sits 13% above Street consensus, driven by a structural view that agentic AI is expanding CPU demand in ways the market has not yet fully priced, according to the same report.Related: Goldman Sachs sees AMD entering earnings with 1 powerful advantageThe follow-on Verano 2nm CPU platform arrives in 2027 with a focus on AI performance per dollar per watt. AMD increased its server CPU total addressable market estimate to $120 billion by 2030, according to Lisa Su’s Q1 earnings call commentary, which I highlighted in my previous report.Bitget reports that UBS projects HBM demand to reach 33.1 billion gigabits globally in 2026, a 90% year-over-year increase, jumping another 77% in 2027. The supply gap means available production will meet only about 60% of total market demand, according to analyst estimates. That imbalance benefits every company in Cramer’s food chain simultaneously — the memory makers, the equipment suppliers, and the chip designers.His four picks are actually not a coincidence. They are the companies positioned directly in the path of the most powerful capital expenditure cycle in semiconductor history. Take notes.Related: Jim Cramer shares strong verdict on IBM stock for investors

GE Vernova (GEV) raised its 2026 revenue and free-cash-flow forecasts on July 22, but a widening loss in its Wind business sent shares lower.The stock fell about 6.3% to $1,011 in midday trading July 22 after dropping as low as $964.16 earlier in the session. Its second-quarter revenue rose 22% to $11.1 billion, according to a company press release, and orders climbed 88% organically to $24.2 billion. Power and Electrification led the growth as utilities and data-center developers sought more gas turbines, transformers, switchgear, and grid equipment.Wind orders fell about 40% from a year earlier, Reuters reported, while the segment’s adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization loss widened to $275 million from $165 million.Data-center-related orders have exceeded $5 billion this year, more than double GE Vernova’s total for 2025. Those orders are filling the Power and Electrification backlog, while the larger Wind loss is limiting companywide margin improvement.Data-center demand is filling GE Vernova’s backlogAI data centers require a steady supply of electricity for servers, cooling systems, and networking equipment. Connecting those facilities to the grid may also require new substations, transformers, switchgear, and transmission equipment.More Oil & Gas:Drivers face an unpleasant surprise at the gas pumpU.S. blocks Strait of Hormuz: Here’s what’s next for oil pricesA big shift in the U.S. energy market is about to happenGE Vernova supplies equipment across the system. Its Power segment supplies gas turbines and related services, while Electrification provides grid hardware and software for moving and managing electricity.Power orders rose 135% during the second quarter, driven by demand for gas equipment and services, Reuters confirmed. Electrification revenue also increased by 68% as customers invested in grid capacity.The company’s backlog of gas-powered equipment and slot-reservation agreements grew from 100 gigawatts at the end of the first quarter to 116 gigawatts, the press release stated. Management now expects to have at least 125 gigawatts of gas equipment under contract by the end of 2026.We remain on track to deliver 20 GW of annual gas turbine output in the third quarter of 2026.GE Vernova plans to further increase annual gas-turbine production capacity to 24 gigawatts in 2028 and 30 gigawatts in 2030.Its total backlog reached $176 billion after rising by $13 billion during the quarter, the company indicated. Much of that work will be delivered over several years, giving the company a large base of contracted future business. It also requires GE Vernova to expand manufacturing capacity and deliver equipment on schedule.Wind losses spoiled the earnings reactionGE Vernova’s Wind orders fell about 40% from a year earlier as demand for onshore equipment weakened and costs tied to offshore projects increased.The segment’s EBITDA loss widened by $110 million to $275 million, according to Reuters. The deterioration reduced part of the earnings growth generated by Power and Electrification.Related: GE Vernova CEO sends rattling message on data centersCompanywide adjusted EBITDA rose to about $1.25 billion but fell short of analysts’ roughly $1.28 billion estimate, according to Reuters, citing LSEG.The company also left its 2026 adjusted EBITDA margin forecast unchanged at 12% to 14%, even as it raised its revenue and free-cash-flow forecasts.William Blair analyst Jed Dorsheimer told Reuters that investors may have expected another quarter in which GE Vernova exceeded EBITDA estimates and raised its margin forecast.The unchanged margin range and larger Wind loss could explain why the stock fell, despite order growth and a higher revenue outlook.Key numbers from GE Vernova’s quarter$24.2 billion: Second-quarter orders88%: Organic order growth$176 billion: Total backlogMore than $5 billion: Data-center-related orders year to date$45.5 billion to $46.5 billion: New 2026 revenue forecast$11.5 billion to $12.5 billion: New 2026 free-cash-flow forecast12% to 14%: Unchanged adjusted EBITDA margin forecast40%: Year-over-year decline in Wind orders$275 million: Wind segment EBITDA loss

GE Vernova’s adjusted EBITDA rose to about $1.25 billion but fell short of analysts’ roughly $1.28 billion estimate.fokkebok / Getty Images

GE Vernova must turn its backlog into margin gainsGE Vernova increased its 2026 revenue forecast to between $45.5 billion and $46.5 billion, up from $44.5 billion to $45.5 billion.It also raised its free-cash-flow outlook to $11.5 billion to $12.5 billion, up from $6.5 billion to $7.5 billion.The company generated $5.1 billion in free cash flow in the second quarter, more than it produced during all of 2025. The higher cash-flow outlook gives GE Vernova greater capacity to fund production expansion and execute its $176 billion backlog.Margin improvement will also require the company to prevent Wind losses from offsetting earnings growth in Power and Electrification.Investors will be watching three developments over the next several quarters: continued growth in data-center orders, progress converting the gas-equipment backlog into revenue, and a narrower Wind loss.GE Vernova’s margin expansion now depends on efficiently delivering that backlog while reducing the earnings drag from Wind.Related: 3M finds a surprising role in the AI data-center boom

A report out of South Korea on Tuesday, July 21, claimed SK Hynix was in talks to buy Intel’s unfinished Ohio semiconductor campus, according to Stocktwits.The claim traced back to Korea JoongAng Daily and described a deal that would give SK Hynix front-end memory production in the United States, years ahead of its own internal timeline.Now SK Hynix is dismissing it. In a filing with the Korea Exchange, the company said it “has not pursued or decided to acquire Intel’s Ohio site and Fab as reported in the article,” TipRanks reported.A company spokesperson went further, telling Benzinga simply that SK Hynix has no plans for an acquisition.Intel did not confirm or deny the talks directly. An Intel spokesperson told Benzinga the company does not comment on deal speculation but remains committed to Ohio and to speeding up the site’s readiness.The SK Hynix denial didn’t erase Intel’s rallyIntel (INTC) closed July 21 at $105.45, up 8.64% on the day.That gain held even as the acquisition story it was riding fell apart hours later. This matters because markets usually give back speculative pops once the trigger disappears.SK Hynix followed a similar pattern in Seoul. Shares opened up more than 9% on the original report, then trimmed to a 6.7% gain once the denial filing landed, TradingKey confirmed.A stock that gives back a third of its gain on a denial but still finishes up nearly 7% is not a stock that stopped believing the story.The one exception was SK Hynix’s own US-listed shares (SKHY), which slipped about 1.4% in the overnight session after the denial.That gap between how Seoul traded the news and how New York traded it says something about who was pricing in a real deal and who was just reacting to a headline.

SK Hynix denied plans to acquire Intel’s Ohio chip campus, but Intel and SK Hynix shares held onto sharp gains anyway.Bloomberg / Getty Images

Intel’s foundry losses made the rumor easy to believeThe reason the story had legs is Intel’s balance sheet. Intel Foundry has been bleeding cash, posting a $7 billion operating loss in 2023 and another $2.4 billion in the first quarter, according to TipRanks.A struggling foundry business sitting on a mostly idle 1,000 acre campus is exactly the kind of asset investors expect a cash-strapped company to consider selling.Related: SK Hynix makes jaw-dropping gains in wild Nasdaq trading debutIntel has pushed the Ohio site’s production timeline back to 2030 or 2031, citing challenging market conditions and the need to strictly manage its capital, Construction Dive reported.A campus that will not run chips for another four or five years is easier to imagine changing hands than one already generating revenue.SK Hynix doesn’t need this deal to keep growing in the U.S.SK Hynix is already building a $3.87 billion HBM packaging plant in Indiana, and the market knows it has an appetite for more.SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won recently confirmed the company is aggressively scouting additional U.S. and Korean sites for future wafer fabs, as long as the right power, water, and workforce conditions are met, Bloomberg indicated.More SK Hynix:Jim Cramer’s cryptic comments on key AI supplier turn headsMajor AI chip stock plunges after blockbuster $26.5 billion Nasdaq debutSK Hynix is testing the limits of Wall Street’s ETF boomThe appetite for U.S. capacity is genuine. This particular target just was not it.Moor Insights and Strategy CEO Patrick Moorhead called the Intel talks unlikely, noting that Ohio remains central to Intel’s plan to win outside foundry customers, StockTwits reported.Selling the campus SK Hynix supposedly wanted would undercut the exact turnaround story Intel is trying to sell investors ahead of its Thursday, July 23, earnings report.A denial is not the same as a closed doorWhat happened this week is less about one campus in New Albany and more about how thin the line has gotten between memory chip supply and desperation.AI demand has made HBM capacity scarce enough that investors will bid up two stocks on a deal neither company confirms, then barely blink when it gets denied.Intel reports earnings on Thursday, and direct questions about the Ohio site’s future will be asked.Until then, the market has already told investors what it thinks a deal between these two companies would be worth, whether or not one ever gets signed.Related: SK Hynix is testing the limits of Wall Street’s ETF boom

Every lease starts as a bet between strangers.The landlord bets that the person on the other side of the application is who they claim to be and earns what they claim to earn. The renter bets that the apartment in the photos exists and that whoever is collecting the deposit actually owns the place.For most of the last century, that bet got settled face to face. You met the landlord, you walked the unit, and somebody looked you in the eye and made a judgment call.Then the process moved online, and the eye contact went away. Applications became uploads. Tours became video walkthroughs.Approvals became a decision made by someone three time zones away who has never stood in the building.Renters have been trained to worry about one half of that arrangement. The copied listing. The deal that is too good. The wire transfer that vanishes.Far fewer are watching the other half, where a bigger and costlier fraud fight is under way, and where honest applicants are quietly picking up the tab.What renters already know about rental listing scamsThe visible version of this problem is bad enough on its own. Since 2020, people have filed nearly 65,000 rental scam reports totaling about $65 million in losses, according to the Federal Trade Commission.The playbook rarely changes. Scammers copy a real listing, swap in their own contact details, repost it elsewhere and push the renter to send money before anyone walks the property.More Real Estate:Kevin O’Leary spots a real estate play hiding in plain sightThe U.S. housing affordability crisis just got a major responseWhy mortgage rates are spiking again and what to doFacebook was the most reported starting point, accounting for roughly half of reports in the 12 months through June 2025, with Craigslist next at 16%. The median reported loss was $1,000.Young renters bear the brunt of it. People ages 18 to 29 were three times more likely than other adults to report losing money this way.The defense is familiar. Search the address, check whether the same unit appears elsewhere at a different price, and never hand over a Social Security number before you have agreed to rent, guidance from Zillow explains.That is the fraud renters can see coming. It is not the one reshaping what they pay.

Rental scams cost renters $65 million, while AI application fraud raises deposits for honest applicants.ABRAHAM GONZALEZ FERNANDEZ / Getty Images

How AI rent fraud slips past landlord screeningLos Angeles landlord Michael Renkow approved a tenant in September 2025 for two units renting at $5,300 a month each. The bank statements, employment records, and ID all cleared.Two days later, his bank flagged the cashier’s checks as fraudulent, and someone was already living in the apartment and refusing to leave, reported Bisnow. The seven-month eviction that followed cost $90,000.What changed is the price of a convincing lie. Forging a pay stub used to take skill or a trip to the dark web. Generative tools cut that down to a prompt and a small fee.Related: Real estate giant updates mortgage rate, home price predictionsMRI Real Estate Software bought 200 artificial intelligence-generated fake IDs, some for as little as $5, and ran them against the optical card readers most leasing offices depend on. The readers flagged 26% of them.Roughly three in four walked through the front door.Documents are the entry level. Some fraudsters now register real limited liability companies and issue real-looking pay stubs from those businesses to people who do not exist, Findigs CEO Steve Carroll explained in an interview with TheStreet.That is a synthetic identity, and it beats document review by design. The document is not forged. The company is.The identity layer is moving the same way. Deepfakes now account for one in five biometric fraud attempts, and deepfaked selfies rose 58% in 2025, according to Entrust.Why honest renters absorb the cost of rental fraudHere is the part nobody prints in a leasing brochure. Fraud losses do not stay with the landlord. They get priced into the next lease.When I lined the industry surveys up against the federal data, the gap was the story. Renters report losses one at a time in four-figure increments. Operators absorb theirs in seven figures and rebuild their screening rules around it.The numbers behind that gap:Nearly all rental housing providers surveyed, 93.3%, reported experiencing fraud in the prior 12 months, according to the National Multifamily Housing Council.The average respondent wrote off close to $4.2 million in bad debt over that period, with about a quarter of it tied to nonpayment on fraudulent applications, the same NMHC survey confirmed.On average, 23.8% of eviction filings traced back to fraudulent applications and the missed rent that followed, NMHC found.More than 70% of property managers said most fraud surfaces only after move-in, according to Snappt.Real estate fraud drew 12,368 complaints and $275.1 million in reported losses last year, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center noted.Each application fraud case runs about $15,000 to clean up, said Kevin Donnelly of the Real Estate Technology and Transformation Center, who told Bisnow the cost “ultimately gets borne by the community.”In a renter’s terms, that is a larger deposit, a higher income multiple, a co-signer requirement that did not exist three years ago and an approval that takes days instead of hours.Not everyone accepts the framing. Much of the data comes from the industry itself, and expanded screening carries its own fees and its own risk of shutting out qualified renters, argued National Consumer Law Center senior attorney Ariel Nelson in the same report.That tension is why rental screening is becoming a policy fight rather than a technology one. What a clean rental application looks like nowThe uncomfortable finding in my analysis is that the honest applicant now competes against a fraudster with better paperwork.A fabricated pay stub can be built to hit the income multiple exactly. A real one from a small employer or a gig platform often looks messier than the fake.So the advantage has shifted toward verifiability: documents a screener can trace to a source, payroll data that can be confirmed directly, an identity that survives more than an optical glance.”A renter can’t out-negotiate a manual review process that takes days and depends on whoever happens to be looking at the file that week,” said Carroll in the interview. “What they can ask for is a process that decides the same way every time, fast, on evidence instead of a gut check.”Findigs says it renders automatic decisions across a network of more than 400,000 units, with fraud signals shared across that network.Whether automation helps renters depends on what it is tuned to do. Pointed at risk, it becomes one more reason to say no. Pointed at evidence, it is the closest thing a renter has to a fair hearing.The arms race will not slow down, because both sides are buying the same tools. What renters can control is how fast they can prove they are real, and that is worth more at the leasing office right now than another month of deposit money.Related: When to buy a home instead of continuing to rent, according to Scott Galloway

Forecasting is mostly a way of buying peace of mind. You want a number for the worst case so you can decide how frightened to be, and once you have that number, you quietly stop thinking and start bracing for it.That instinct is not irrational. It is how you decide whether to refinance, whether to take the job across town, whether the August road trip is still on.Then late February arrived, and the worst case got a number.When the United States and Israel struck Iran on Feb. 28, Tehran shut the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow channel that carries roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and refined products. The forecasts that followed were not subtle. Trading desks talked about crude at $150 a barrel. Some of them talked about $200.You ran that math in your head. Most drivers did. One tank, times 52 weeks, times two cars in the driveway.Five months later, that number still has not shown up. Brent crude futures peaked around $126 a barrel, comfortably below the 2008 record of $147, and averaged roughly $101 between the start of the war and June 11, before briefly retreating to prewar levels near $70 in early July, according to Reuters.The distance between that forecast and your actual receipt is one of the most underrated personal finance stories of the year. It is also worth real money to you.What 5 months of war actually did to oil pricesStart with what a closed Hormuz is supposed to mean. About 20% of the world’s oil and refined products move through it, and before the war, 100 to 130 ships passed through the waterway daily, according to AAA. Traffic has been a fraction of that for most of the year.That is the textbook definition of a supply shock. The textbook says prices go vertical and stay there.Related: JPMorgan sends blunt verdict on oil, economyThey did not. West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, has swung between roughly $68 and nearly $113 since the fighting began, AAA reported. It sat near $85 on Tuesday, July 21.At the pump, the damage was real but bounded. Here is the shape of it.Feb. 28: This is the day the strikes began: the national average for regular gas was $2.98 a gallon, according to AAA.May 21: The national average peaked at $4.56, its high for 2026, AAA reported.Early July: Brent briefly retreated to prewar levels near $70 a barrel, Reuters reported.July 20: The national average climbed back above $4 for the first time since June 17, AAA said.July 21:WTI traded near $85, roughly $18 higher than a year earlier, according to AAA.5 reasons the oil price spike never showed upThe mechanics are not mysterious, and none of the five reasons involve luck, according toReuters. They involve a market that had far more slack in it than the models assumed.China was the surprise. The world’s largest oil importer cut crude purchases to their lowest in nearly a decade by June, curbed fuel exports and shifted drivers toward electric taxis, the wire service reported.More Oil & Gas:Goldman sends a fresh warning to the oil marketDrivers lose control over gas price squeezeBessent tells gas stations the savings better show upThe United States pumped harder. Domestic crude production hit a record 13.93 million barrels a day by April, and Washington drained the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as part of a record 400 million-barrel release coordinated by the International Energy Agency in March.Saudi Arabia rerouted. The kingdom pushed far more crude out of its Red Sea port at Yanbu, partly replacing barrels stranded behind Hormuz.Traders stopped chasing headlines. Liquidity thinned, funds refused to build big bullish positions, and the market went numb to each new announcement out of Washington and Tehran. “Everybody is bullish now, but nobody is long,” said Ilia Bouchouev of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.And there was simply more physical crude sitting around than the doomsday models assumed, which is why the European grades that help set the Brent benchmark flipped from a record premium in April to a discount.What $150 oil would have cost you at the pumpHere is where I ran the numbers, because this is the part that lands in your budget rather than on a trading screen.AAA’s own rule of thumb is that every $1 move in crude translates to 2.4 to 2.5 cents a gallon at the pump. Crude accounts for roughly 57% of what you pay for a gallon of regular, according to the Energy Information Administration.Run the $150 forecast through that. With WTI near $85 now, an extra $65 a barrel works out to about $1.59 a gallon, which would put the national average somewhere around $5.60.The all-time record national average is $5.02, set on June 14, 2022. The consensus disaster scenario would have blown past the worst pump prices in American history by roughly 60 cents.The $200 version gets uglier. That is about $2.82 a gallon on top of today’s price, or a national average near $6.80.Now put it in household terms. A two-car family burning 1,000 gallons a year would have paid about $1,600 more under $150 oil, and roughly $2,800 more under $200 oil.That is a car payment. It is also, for a lot of households, the entire difference between funding a Roth IRA this year and telling yourself you will start next year.What struck me running this against the actual pump data is how little comfort that offers, because you are already paying.The national average crossed $4 on July 20 for the first time since June 17, AAA said. At $4.02 against $2.98 on the day the war started, that same 1,000-gallon household is out about $1,040 a year already. Diesel, which sets the cost of nearly everything trucked to your grocery store, hit $5.14, AAA reported.

Five months of war, a closed Hormuz, and gas at $4.02 instead of $5.60.Abraham Gonzalez Fernandez / Getty Images

Why your gas budget is still exposed to HormuzThe reason this matters going forward is that most of the shock absorbers listed above were one-time moves.The Strategic Petroleum Reserve fell to 311.4 million barrels last week, its lowest level since March 1983, and has given up more than 104 million barrels since the war began, AAA reported. That cushion does not refill quickly.China can only cut imports so far. Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea workaround carries its own risk, with roughly 2.5 million barrels a day exposed to Houthi threats, and if a ceasefire does not materialize, “the risk of a significant rebound in oil prices would be substantial,” Rystad Energy geopolitical analysis head Jorge Leon said, according to Seeking Alpha.Pump prices nationally had been falling steadily since late May, and drivers “can also expect higher prices in the short term,” said AAA Oregon/Idaho public affairs director Marie Dodds.So stop watching the headlines out of Tehran. They have stopped moving the price, which is exactly what the traders worked out months ago.Watch the reserve level and the Yanbu shipments instead. Those are the two numbers standing between your current fuel budget and the forecast that never came true, and one of them is running low.Related: Chevron makes critical move to sidestep Iran oil risk

A clip from an old Lex Fridman podcast interview with Mark Zuckerberg is making the rounds on X (the former Twitter), and the timing of its revival is the most interesting part of the story. The clip shows Zuckerberg praising Elon Musk’s overhaul of Twitter at a moment when the two men were in the middle of a very public rivalry. Nobody paid much attention when it aired. People are paying attention now.The clip surfaced on X on July 20, and it hit differently than it would have a few years ago. Meta has since gone through versions of the same thing Zuckerberg praised Musk for doing. The question the clip is raising right now is whether it worked.What Zuckerberg said about Musk and the Twitter overhaulSpeaking on Lex Fridman’s podcast, Zuckerberg said Musk’s overhaul of Twitter went deeper than simple cost-cutting. Musk had acquired the company for $44 billion and cut the workforce from roughly 8,000 employees to fewer than 2,000 in a matter of months. Zuckerberg said the more important part was what Musk was trying to build afterward.More Mark Zuckerberg:Mark Zuckerberg says infinite money won’t make him quit his jobMark Zuckerberg makes a move on a new billion-dollar marketMark Zuckerberg admits mistakes in leaked memo after Meta layoffs”I do think that Elon led a push early on to make Twitter a lot leaner,” he said. “You can agree or disagree with exactly all the tactics, but a lot of the specific principles that he pushed on around basically trying to make the organization more technical, around decreasing the distance between engineers of the company and him, fewer layers of management, I think those were generally good changes.”Musk continues to apply versions of that same philosophy across his companies, as TheStreet reported.Zuckerberg also said Musk gave other tech founders permission to do what they’d wanted to do anyway. “My sense is that there were a lot of other people who thought that those were good changes, but who may have been a little shy about doing them.” He was careful not to offer a full endorsement of everything Musk did. “From the outside, it’s very hard to know. Did he cut too much? Did he not cut enough? I don’t think it’s my place to opine on that.”Why Zuckerberg’s take on Musk and Twitter is landing differently nowWhen Zuckerberg made those comments, Meta was in the middle of its own restructuring. The company cut more than 21,000 jobs in what Zuckerberg called a “year of efficiency,” running almost in parallel with the Fridman interview. The praise for Musk fit the moment. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff put the prevailing mood plainly: “Every CEO in Silicon Valley has looked at what Elon Musk has done and has asked themselves, ‘Do they need to unleash their own Elon within them?'” NBC News reported.The clip has resurfaced now because Meta is in the middle of another version of the same bet. The company cut another 8,000 jobs this year and moved 7,000 workers into AI-focused roles, as TheStreet reported. The pitch to shareholders was the same one Zuckerberg praised Musk for making: fewer layers, faster output, engineers closer to leadership.At a July staff meeting, Zuckerberg told employees that AI-agent progress “hasn’t really accelerated in the way that we expected.” He also said the layoffs earlier this year were messier than planned. The clip began circulating on X later that month.

The Zuckerberg clip has resurfaced now because Meta is in the middle of another version of the same bet.Reynolds/Getty Images

The management philosophy Silicon Valley is still being asked to proveMusk’s Twitter overhaul became a Silicon Valley reference point for a specific reason. The cuts were dramatic, but what actually spread across the industry was the theory underneath them. Tech companies had grown fat on low-interest-rate money and had built organizations with layers of management that slowed everything down. Musk’s argument was that cutting them back would make the companies better, not just leaner.That argument spread, and most large tech firms have been through some version of it. The philosophical case was easy to make, although the financial case is still being built, and the timeline on it keeps moving. Meta has been spending between $125 billion and $145 billion on AI this year while trimming headcount, and Zuckerberg is now conceding that the returns haven’t emerged on the timetable he expected.What this means for Meta investors watching the efficiency betWhen Zuckerberg praised Musk’s Twitter cuts, he was doing more than tipping his hat to a rival. He was telling Meta investors that his own restructuring made sense and that a leaner company would be a better one. Investors went with it. Meta stock climbed back hard from the year it bottomed out, and the company has been spending more than $100 billion a year on AI since then, with relatively little shareholder resistance.The clip’s revival asks a harder question. Leanness was supposed to produce faster, better output. Yet three years into that experiment, the largest tech companies are still spending heavily, and the returns are not arriving on the timelines their leaders described. The management philosophy Zuckerberg praised Musk for pioneering is now a financial thesis that the market is still waiting to see confirmed.Related: Mark Zuckerberg says infinite money won’t make him quit his job

When I was younger, I would hear the term “starter home” tossed around by my parents and teachers.The starter home was a house they bought when they were younger. It wasn’t the biggest or best house, but it provided them with their own space and allowed them to start building equity. That way, they could eventually sell it and use the earnings to make a down payment on their “forever home.”They had bought starter homes, and it was implied that I could one day, too.Fast forward 15 or 20 years, and this simple tale doesn’t feel simple at all. I reported on the housing market through the COVID-19 pandemic and have watched it struggle to recover ever since.Due to the housing inflation resulting from the pandemic, paying less for starter home so you can get your foot in the door seems … frankly, unrealistic.New research from Realtor.com found that starter homes are still more expensive than before 2020. But the ship may finally be turning — starter home pricing and availability have improved since 2022.Well, in some parts of the U.S.Realtor.com breaks down starter home pricing and inventoryLet’s be clear about what Realtor.com is referring to when it talks about “starter homes.””To capture the starter home market, we focus on homes priced at roughly 80% of the area’s median, capturing the relative affordability of the lower end of the market,” wrote senior economist Hannah Jones.”We also track absolute dollar thresholds like the share of listings priced under $350,000 to reflect real-world affordability for households trying to qualify for a mortgage at current rates,” she explained.The real estate listings website used this methodology because, traditionally, starter homes have been geared toward two types of people: first-time homebuyers who aren’t ready to buy their forever home and/or lower-income earners who can’t yet afford the larger house they might want.In 2019 (before the pandemic), the starter home price threshold was $256,000 nationwide. In 2022, it peaked at $359,000. Now, it has dropped by 4.2% since 2022, sitting at $344,000.Related: Boomers have unfair edge over younger homebuyersThis is obviously still a huge jump from 2019 prices. But the good news is that the national housing market is improving a little bit for starter homes.Your location plays a major role in the affordability and availability of starter homes, though. The starter home price threshold has decreased since 2022 in the West (-7.3%) and the South (-3.5%), but it’s up quite a bit in the Northeast (12.6%) and Midwest (10%).It’s a similar story with starter-home inventory — and inventory is critical, because when there are fewer houses on the market, buyer competition drives up home prices.In 2019, 55.6% of houses listed on the U.S. market qualified as starter homes. That share plummeted to 37.9% in 2022.National inventory has increased since 2022 … but only by 0.1 percentage point to 38%.Again, housing inventory in the West and South has improved since 2022, but it’s worsened in the Northeast and Midwest.So, America’s starter home offerings have started to improve. But the country still has a long way to go. Especially with inventory.

Starter home pricing and inventory is improving, but only in certain parts of the U.S.Cravetiger / Getty Images

Building more housing would lead to more starter homesEssentially, the solution to the starter-home crisis is to build more homes. The Northeast is the perfect example. Starter home prices have increased in this region since 2022, and inventory has lagged. This is the part of the country where it’s probably the toughest to build more housing. There isn’t much developable land, strict zoning laws stop new construction, and a lot of the buyer demand is in bigger metro areas, Realtor.com explained.The housing shortage is the main culprit behind the national home affordability crisis. When there aren’t enough properties to meet demand, there’s more competition among buyers. Competition drives up prices.More Housing Market:New Redfin data shows housing market is changing fastWhy mortgage rates are spiking again and what to doFannie Mae predicts shift in mortgage rates, housing marketThe 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which became law on July 11, could help with building more affordable housing units. It did away with the rule that manufactured homes must be built on permanent steel chassis. This could save thousands of dollars on the construction of a manufactured house — savings that could be passed onto the buyer.There were roughly 300,000 vacant lots under five acres listed for sale in June, according to Zillow research. The company estimated that if a manufactured house was built on each spare lot, it would decrease the U.S. housing deficit by 6.3%.And that’s assuming you only build one house on each lot.Capital gains tax also hurts inventoryThere’s another reason that inventory is low in America — not just for starter homes, but in general. And once again, it goes back to the COVID-19 pandemic.Due to the housing inflation in the early 2020s, many existing homeowners gained a ton of equity. If they were to sell their homes now, the houses would sell for much more than they originally paid. This sounds great until you factor in capital gains tax.”Many want to avoid paying large capital-gains taxes on the sale of a long-held home that has appreciated a lot in value,” wrote The Wall Street Journal.If they don’t move, then those houses don’t go on the market for younger, first-time homebuyers.”It’s better for [elderly homeowners] to wait until death when the property will get a stepped-up basis and will get shielded by the generous levels of estate tax exemptions as the properties will become inherited by heirs,” Corey Burr, senior vice president at TTR Sotheby’s International Realty, told TheStreet.Currently, an individual is exempt from paying capital gains taxes on up to $250,000 in profit when selling a house, under the IRS Sale of Home Exclusion. Married couples filing jointly are exempt from up to $500,000.Burr pointed out what he believes to be a fatal flaw in the capital gains tax exclusion: The numbers are the same nationwide. The IRS doesn’t consider cost of living differences around the United States. Burr believes it should.”This would result in much higher exemptions levels from capital gains and would immediately incentivize elderly Americans to sell their houses and move into more appropriately-sized properties,” he said. “In turn, this would free up inventory for eager buyers who dream about these larger properties.”Tips for affording a starter homeBuy in a starter-home-friendly area. Not everyone can relocate to buy a house. But if you are interested in moving, consider going to the South, where starter home prices and inventory are improving. The situation isn’t necessarily getting better in the Midwest, but Realtor.com research shows that starter home prices start lower here overall. Find the right balance between the down payment and monthly costs. You don’t need a 20% down payment. First-time homebuyers can often qualify for a conventional mortgage with just 3% down. However, a lower down payment results in a higher monthly payment. Make sure you can comfortably afford both.Search for down payment assistance programs. Although roughly 80% of homebuyers qualify for DPA programs, only about 13% actually use them, according to a study by Realtor.com. Buy a fixer-upper home. Buying a fixer-upper has become less popular, according to Keller Williams. People don’t want to dedicate the time or money to huge maintenance projects. But buying a house that needs a little TLC could cost less. And if fewer people want to buy them, you could face less competition and avoid a bidding war.Related: The U.S. housing affordability crisis just got a major response