Building Construction

BEIJING—A monthly measure of new home prices in China fell for the first time in more than six years, offering further evidence of the pain that Beijing’s regulatory campaign is inflicting on a sector that has long served as an economic growth engine.Average new-home prices in 70 major cities edged 0.11% lower in April from a year earlier, according to Wall Street Journal calculations based on data released Wednesday by China’s National Bureau of Statistics. The decline, though slight, marks the first such decrease since…

WASHINGTON—The Biden administration on Monday plans to announce steps aimed at addressing the U.S. shortage of entry-level homes, including expanding federally backed financing for affordable housing and directing grants toward localities that encourage construction.Each regulatory move is technical and modest, though the administration hopes they will collectively dent the estimated shortage of millions of homes over the coming years. “While the policies cover a wide range of issues and agencies, most are intended to do…

People who agreed to buy homes under construction but haven’t yet closed are facing mortgage-interest rates that could be nearly double what they anticipated when they paid their deposits.New-home buyers are confronting multiple obstacles this year, from surging mortgage rates to home construction that is taking longer than usual due to supply-chain and labor constraints. Many home buyers who signed contracts for new homes in 2021 or early this year calculated monthly payments based on near-record-low mortgage rates of…

PIGEON FORGE, Tenn.—Tom and Barb Hansen’s search for a retirement spot reads like the script to a road movie. California’s Lake Tahoe. Sedona and Scottsdale in Arizona. The Ozark Mountains of Missouri. Myrtle Beach, S.C.Over a decade or so, the couple traveled the country to imagine life after Mr. Hansen retired as president of a community bank in the suburbs west of Chicago. In 2018, the Hansens, ages 61 and 60, picked rural Sevier County, Tenn. A lot of other people had the…

ARDOIX, France—After 15 years of manufacturing entirely in Asia, French sportswear firm Salomon SAS, eager to cut emissions and reduce bottlenecks, decided it was time to start making its signature sports shoes at home. The challenge, in a country where shoemaking died out years ago, was how to build the necessary supply chain. The first phase of Salomon’s solution was to build an automated sneaker factory in this small town near the Alps. It also redesigned its shoes, drastically shrinking its supply chain…