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Global Most Loved Workplaces 2025

Global Most Loved Workplaces 2025

Newsweek27-05-2025

Global Most Loved Workplaces 2025
The Global Most Loved Workplaces® stand out for reasons beyond just compensation. These are companies where employees feel respected, empowered and inspired to do their best work, places defined by trust, inclusion and purpose-driven culture.
A fast-changing global workforce has made it clear: People want more than just a paycheck. According to statistics published by the Pew Research Center, only half of U.S. employees say they are 'extremely or very satisfied' with their jobs overall. About 30 percent say they are 'extremely or very satisfied' with their pay, just 37 percent expressed high levels of satisfaction with chances for training or ways to develop new skills and only 26 percent are satisfied with their job promotion opportunities. However, at the organizations recognized here, these priorities are not only met but exceeded.
To spotlight exceptional workplaces worldwide, Newsweek again partnered with the Best Practice Institute to present the third annual Global Most Loved Workplaces® ranking.
Learn how your company can qualify for future recognition by visiting https://mostlovedworkplace.com.
The list is based on BPI's Love of Workplace Index®, which draws from surveys of more than two million employees worldwide, in-depth interviews with hundreds of company leaders, analysis of external public ratings, company news and employee reviews.
Workplaces were measured in five primary areas to determine how employees feel about where they work: the level of collaboration at the workplace, how positive workers are about their future at the company, how much employer values align with employee values, respect at all levels and career achievement. Employee wellness, diversity, inclusion, career advancement and other workplace and talent development initiatives were also considered.
The result is a list of 100 companies where employees are proud to work and feel genuinely connected to the mission and culture.
This year's leaders include HLB (#1), Petfolk (#2), Synctera (#3), Supercharge (#4) and Customer.io (#5). Newsweek is proud to recognize these companies, among others, with a spot on this year's list.
To get recognized as a Most Loved Workplace, click here.
Global 2025 Rank
Logo
Company
Location
Industry
1 HLB London, UK Financial Services 2 Petfolk Charlotte, NC Veterinary 3 Synctera Palo Alto, CA Technology 4 Supercharge Budapest, Hungary Information Technology 5 Customer.io Portland, OR Technology 6 YouScan Kyiv, Ukraine Information Technology 7 APCO Washington, DC Advisory & Advocacy 8 TaylorMade Golf Co. Carlsbad, CA Sporting Goods 9 Veritiv Atlanta, GA Distribution 10 Kaplan Fort Lauderdale, FL Education Services 11 Distology Greater Manchester, UK Technology 12 NCR Atleos Atlanta, GA Financial Services 13 Vasion St. George, UT Technology 14 Zabka Group Poznan, Poland Retail 15 Airfinity London, UK Health Care 16 Seer Interactive Philadelphia, PA Media 17 Ergeon San Francisco, CA Construction 18 Airhelp Berlin, Germany Travel Tech 19 Kyndryl New York, NY Information Technology 20 Kevel Durham, NC Computer Software 21 Pattern Lehi, UT E-Commerce 22 ERM London, UK Professional Services 23 Tanium Emeryville, CA Technology 24 O2E Brands Vancouver, Canada Home Services 25 Chainlink Labs Remote Information Technology 26 Iguzzini Illuminazione Recanati, Italy Electronic Appliances 27 Databricks San Francisco, CA Software 28 Neo4j San Mateo, CA Software 29 PureSpectrum Westlake Village, CA Market Research 30 Nectar Ltd Ta' Qali, Malta Food & Beverage 31 Cloudbeds San Diego, CA Software 32 Crazy Maple Studio Sunnyvale, CA Entertainment 33 Xtrac Thatcham, UK Manufacturing 34 OxfordSM Woking, UK Consulting 35 Incyte Wilmington, DE Biotech 36 Wyndham Hotels Parsippany, NJ Hospitality 37 TravelPerk Barcelona, Spain Hospitality 38 Cielo Wauwatosa, WI Talent Acquisition 39 Corpay Atlanta, GA Financial Services 40 LHi Group London, UK Staffing & Recruiting 41 Stihl Waiblingen, Germany Manufacturing 42 Fresenius Medical Care Bad Homburg, Germany Health Care 43 Nehmeh Doha, Qatar Industrial Solutions 44 Karyopharm Therapeutics Newton, MA Biotech 45 Cint Stockholm, Sweden Research Technology 46 Jumo Cape Town, South Africa Fintech 47 eXp Realty Bellingham, WA Real Estate 48 Mochi San Francisco, CA Health Care 49 Automattic San Francisco, CA Program Development 50 Daemon London, UK Consulting
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AI Impact Awards 2025: How 7 Health Care Winners Measure Impact
AI Impact Awards 2025: How 7 Health Care Winners Measure Impact

Newsweek

time2 hours ago

  • Newsweek

AI Impact Awards 2025: How 7 Health Care Winners Measure Impact

Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Artificial intelligence is an all-consuming force in the health care industry—and it's still gaining momentum. In 2024, the global health care AI market was estimated at more than $26 billion, and it's expected to grow to over $187 billion by 2030. There's good reason for the boom. Health care executives, physicians and tech leaders alike agree that AI has enormous potential in the industry. It can help make outdated processes more efficient, generate new meaning from massive pools of data and even improve communications between industry stakeholders. But as the AI market grows, it's becoming more challenging for health systems to parse through the noise and find solutions that will actually improve care outcomes. Newsweek spoke with health care and life sciences winners of our inaugural AI Impact Awards to determine how they define and measure impact. Health care and life sciences were just one of the industries represented, and across more than a dozen categories, there were 38 total winners were selected by a panel of AI and subject matter experts. Here's how seven award-winning companies distinguish their AI models from the hype cycle: Several health care companies received AI Impact awards for their significant contributions to the industry. Several health care companies received AI Impact awards for their significant contributions to the industry. Newsweek Illustration AI Health Care, Best Outcomes, Care Coordination – Xsolis Xsolis has created a suite of AI solutions to better connect health care providers with payer organizations and health plans. It serves more than 500 hospitals and health systems and 18 health plans nationwide—and is rapidly expanding its market share, securing spots on the Inc. 5000 and the Deloitte Tech Fast 500 for the fastest growing private companies. To measure impact, Xsolis tracks the number of cases that are denied and overturned by insurance companies, according to Dr. Heather Bassett, the company's chief medical officer. "We're able to show our clients, through the use of our AI and other analytics, that they were able to appropriately capture revenue based on the medical intensity of their patient population," Bassett told Newsweek. "Today, we're at about $1.5 billion that we've either protected or helped our clients appropriately capture [across our company's lifetime]." Since most hospitals are understaffed, they aren't always able to fight every claim and maximize their reimbursements, she added. Xsolis' tool boosts the efficiency of utilization management teams by approximately 20 percent, allowing them to review a larger share of cases. AI Health Care, Best Outcomes, Health Equity – Bunkerhill Health "For us, it's actually fairly easy to quantify impact," Nishith Khandwala, co-founder and CEO of Bunkerhill Health, told Newsweek. The company uses AI to identify clinically significant findings that are hidden in patient records, and ensure that patients receive the follow-up care they need to prevent future complications. For example, a patient might get into a car accident and receive a CT scan to check for cracked ribs. The CT scan might also find signs of coronary artery disease—but in today's medical system, those findings would never be flagged because they weren't relevant to the car crash. Bunkerhill Health tracks success by counting the number of patients that it flags for a separate encounter with a specialist, like a cardiologist or an oncologist. "In our office, we have a counter," Khandwala said. "Every time we find a patient who we discovered to have high risk for some other problem, we increment that counter, because that's the number of lives that we have impacted." AI Health Care, Best Outcomes, Patient Care – Cera Based in the United Kingdom, Cera is harnessing technology and AI to predict and prevent avoidable falls and hospitalizations in the elderly population. Its ecosystem includes a proprietary app that allows health care staff, patients and families to log health indicators in real time, along with two AI models. The first, Falls Prevention AI, predicts 83 percent of falls up to seven days in advance—allowing health care staff to intervene and prevent the leading cause of hospitalizations in adults over age 65. The second, its Hospitalization Predict-Prevent tool, predicts three-quarters of hospitalizations one week in advance. Together, the pair of AI tools flag up to 5,000 high-risk alerts each day, according to Cera founder and CEO Dr. Ben Maruthappu. Data like this shows the impact that the tools are having on patient safety (and on the U.K.'s health system, which spends over £2.3 billion per year on falls in the over-65 population). "Most importantly of all, we are using AI to make an impact at scale," Maruthappu told Newsweek. "Cera works with over a hundred U.K. Local Governments and the majority of NHS regions, reducing costs, transforming life for patients, and bringing healthcare services into the future." AI Health Care, Best Outcomes, Diagnostics – Color Health Color Health is the largest virtual cancer clinic in the United States, created in partnership with the American Cancer Society. Last summer, it teamed up with OpenAI to develop its Cancer Copilot: a novel AI architecture that creates accurate clinical recommendations for clinicians, expanding access to world-class oncology expertise for doctors working at major cancer centers, small community health facilities and every setting in between. The company primarily charts AI impact in two ways, co-founder and CEO Othman Laraki told Newsweek. First, it tracks how much time clinicians save by using the AI tool. Traditionally, nurses and oncologists had to spend 1-2 hours looking through a patient chart and determining how to prepare them for treatment, Laraki said. Using AI, they can craft the same plan in just 15 minutes. Additionally, Color Health measures how, when and why clinicians opt to change the output of the AI model. The company's most recent data shows that physicians choose to make changes in less than two percent of the clinical decision factors suggested by the model. Most of those changes had to do with formatting, Laraki added; the model has an error rate under one percent. "It's performing way better than anything that we've seen published so far," Laraki said. "And it's not because we're using better models—we're using standard open AI release models—but it's because of this architecture that makes the model behave in a very predictable way." AI Health Care, Best Outcomes, Physician Satisfaction – Iodine Software At Iodine Software, impact is measured in reimbursement gains, along with improvements in productivity and physician satisfaction, according to co-founder and CEO William Chan. The company utilizes AI to automate the middle of the revenue cycle, which traditionally requires nurses and physicians to manually collect, interpret and analyze patient data. By inserting AI into the process, Iodine Software paints a more complete clinical picture for insurance companies, ultimately resulting in fewer denials and more accurate reimbursements to health systems. Across all of Iodine's 1,000 hospital clients, that rightsizing yields a cumulative $2.4 billion per year, Chan told Newsweek. Iodine Software also saves time for health care providers, cutting the time spent reviewing patient case records by "at least half," Chan said. Since the AI model presents information in a concise, precise and actionable way, physicians can respond to information requests more quickly. Clarification asks that once took three days to answer have been whittled down to two hours, in some instances. "Physicians love that interaction compared to what it was previously," Chan said. Best of – Most Innovative AI Technology or Service, Extraordinary Impact in AI Innovation – Phare Bio In 2020, researchers at the Collins Lab at MIT made a landmark discovery when they used AI to identify a new class of antibiotics. Phare Bio was born from that breakthrough, and has since leveraged AI to uncover two additional novel antibiotic classes. The company's model prioritizes the superbugs identified as the most dangerous by the CDC and the WHO, and predicts drug efficacy, toxicity and pharmacokinetics with high accuracy. Phare Bio has also developed AIBiotics, a generative AI platform that designs new antibiotics. Ultimately, the company aims to improve the efficiency of antibiotic research and development, according to Dr. Akhila Kosaraju, its president and CEO. How does it measure that? Ultimately, by "taking better and fewer shots on goal," Kosaraju told Newsweek. It often costs between $1.3 and $1.5 billion to get a single drug over the finish line for FDA approval. "Those numbers are so high [because they] encompass all of the failures along the way to get to that one exceptional drug," Kosaraju said. "If we can reduce the number of shots on goal substantially, we can half or quarter the cost and time to get these drugs into clinical trials, and then ultimately to be FDA-approved." AI Education, Best Outcomes, Higher Education – MedCerts MedCerts has integrated conversational AI, generative AI and natural language processing into its training programs for health care and IT students. Now, students can interact with virtual patients who respond and adapt to their input in real time. One of the company's major innovations was an in-house AI program for certified nursing assistants (CNAs), designed to develop and assess soft skills like empathy, communication and problem-solving. Traditionally, these skills have been tough to measure—but with MedCerts' AI model, students can practice responding to high-pressure situations in a safe, yet nuanced environment. Student engagement is a primary indicator of an educational tool's impact, according to Dana Janssen, MedCerts' chief product officer. AI has enabled the company to give students a more interactive experience and bolster their chances of success. "One of the biggest KPIs for us is program completion, because you can't get certified and you can't get a job without first completing your programs," Janssen told Newsweek. "The more engaging we can make our content or our training—the more interactive—the more effective it ultimately is." To see the full list of AI Impact winners, visit the official page for Newsweek's AI Impact Awards. Newsweek will continue the conversation on meaningful AI innovations at our AI Impact Summit from June 23 to 25 in Sonoma, California. Click here to follow along on the live blog.

'Always On,' How Workers Are Suffering From 'Infinite' Work
'Always On,' How Workers Are Suffering From 'Infinite' Work

Newsweek

time3 hours ago

  • Newsweek

'Always On,' How Workers Are Suffering From 'Infinite' Work

Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Though "Infinite Workday," might sound like the title of a sci-fi film, it's a reality for many Americans, according to a recent report from Microsoft. The tech giant released their 2025 Work Trend Index Annual Report this week, which highlighted the relentless nature of the modern workday. Newsweek spoke to the experts to find out more about the "infinite workday," and how they are impacting Americans. The Context The phrase infinite workday refers to being constantly connected to work, from dawn until late at night. A spokesperson for Microsoft told Newsweek that "The infinite workday perfectly speaks to how we all feel. Work has reached peak inefficiency, and we can't look away." Composite image of a stressed worker, a clock, a laptop and a note reading, "Back to work." Composite image of a stressed worker, a clock, a laptop and a note reading, "Back to work." Photo-illustration by Newsweek/Getty/Canva What To Know Microsoft reported that the average employee receives 117 work emails each day, 153 Teams messages each day, has 2 minutes between interruptions (be it a meeting, call or message) and that 57 percent of meetings are called in the moment and do not have a calendar invite. In an email shared with Newsweek, a Microsoft spokesperson said that U.S. users average 155 chat messages per person each day, which is just above the global average. U.S. workers averaged 155 chat messages per person per day—just above the global average of 153. For email, U.S. workers send an average of 120 emails per person per day, which again is just above the global average. The intensity of the workday comes at a time when workplace satisfaction is increasingly low. In May of 2025, Glassdoor released their Employee Confidence Index and found that only 44 percent of U.S. workers feel optimistic about their company's prospects—the lowest reading ever recorded. Gallup meanwhile reported in a 2024 that employee engagement was at a 10-year low, with enthusiasm and involvement both dropping sharply. Meanwhile, The State of the Workforce Report from MeQuilibrium, which analyzed findings from 5,477 employees across various industries, found that 35 percent of employees feel worse about their work situation and 49 percent feel worse about their finance. Why Is Work Stress So Prevalent in America? Though Microsoft's study is not country specific, the problem of the infinite workday is a pervasive one for Americans. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average working week for all employees, including part time employees in private industries as of 2022 was 34.5 hours. Though the Fair Labor Standards Act sets a standard workweek of 40 hours, for most U.S. workers, there is no federal limit on how many hours you can work in a week. Newsweek spoke to Juliet Schor author of Four Days a Week: The Life-Changing Solution for Reducing Employee Stress, Improving Well-Being and Working Smarter. "U.S. workers have longer hours than people in other high-income countries," she told Newsweek via email. As for the factors driving this, Schor pointed to a "lack of legal protections to turn off devices, high numbers of companies with outsourced teams so there's a need to work across time zones, weak levels of unionization, long hours culture and high health care costs borne by employers." Newsweek also spoke to Ellen Ernst Kossek, distinguished professor emerita of management at Purdue University, who said that U.S. culture itself, "Really emphasizes work," and that "The U.S. identity is linked really heavily to work." She highlighted the right to request flexible working and right to disconnect laws in other countries like the U.K. and said that by comparison the U.S. is more "always on," and that there is an expectation to be online. Vili Lehdonvirta, professor of technology Policy in the Department of Computer Science, Aalto University, Finland, echoed this point. "In many sectors, like technology and finance, there is an expectation that workers should be available to their employers also outside formal working hours, and this norm is probably stronger in the U.S. than in many places in Europe." Lehdonvirta pointed to different technology adaptations and urban planning as playing a potential role in this. He said that mobile devices like Slack and Microsoft Teams makes "always-on culture easier to enact in practice." Speaking to Newsweek over email, Stewart Friedman, emeritus practice professor of management at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, said, "Norms about boundaries between work and the rest of life vary across countries and they are resistant to change." He said that though people in the U.S. work longer than those in Europe, they are "less burdened," by work than people in South Korea or Japan. "The values underlying national or regional cultures play a big role in determining expectations about the parts of life to which we allocate our attention." How 'Always On' Work Culture Negatively Impacts Employees We know that workers are indeed always on, but how is this impacting them? For Schor, the risks are clear. "Workers burn out, have health problems and as a result do lower quality work and are more likely to quit," she said Lehdonvirta told Newsweek, "Studies suggest that workers in an always-on work culture experience more work-home-interference, fatigue, and other negative consequences." A 2019 study from Myers-Briggs surveyed 1,000 people about always-on culture and found that people who were able to access calls and emails for work outside of hours were more engaged in their job, but more stressed. The study found that 28 percent of always on employees said they couldn't mentally switch off, while 20 percent reported mental exhaustion. According to Lehdonvirta, the consequences of this vary. "Worker-controlled flexibility over when to carry out duties can even be a positive thing for combining work with other commitments. Organizational culture and the behavior of supervisors as role models matters," he said. "People do have different styles of working," Kossek said, noting that people may work out of hours to enable taking breaks at other times in order to help balance work-life responsibilities. "There is a risk to working odd hours," Kossek said, noting that "We can make unhealthy choices," such aa checking emails on weekends or vacations when it's not an emergency. Kossek highlighted that workers are also bringing the job home with them. "Think about two hands going back and forth, representing emails and texts going into crossing borders into home, home into work," she said, There is a "high pattern of integration here," Kossek said, and likened the amalgamation of work and home life to trying to text while driving. The Entry of Artificial Intelligence Microsoft's report comes as the world of work is being rapidly changed by the increasing prevalence of Artificial Intelligence. AI is a polarizing topic—some liken it to a new industrial revolution, while others are sounding the alarm on ethical and environmental concerns. But how will it impact the workplace? Will this new technology rebalance the rhythm of the working day, or will it hit the gas pedal on an already unsustainable work pace? A spokesperson for Microsoft told Newsweek "At a time when nearly every leader is trying to do more with less, we have a real opportunity—not to speed up a broken system, but to refocus on the 20 percent of work that drives 80 percent of the impact, to reorganize into flatter, more agile teams, and to pause long enough to learn how to use AI—not just to support the work, but to transform it." Schor though, said that "AI can go either way." "It can lead to job stress, unemployment and higher productivity requirements. But it can also be a way to enhance productivity," she said. Lehdonvirta shared a similar sentiment. "It depends entirely on what they can do," he said, adding that if these tools "genuinely help people," to off-load tasks then they could help to achieve "sustainable working styles." However, "If they become yet another notification that interrupts you, or yet another inbox that needs to be dealt with, then the consequences may be different." Friedman told Newsweek, "To the extent that AI tools give greater freedom and flexibility in determining how we allocate our attention to the people and projects about which we care the most, then they can be useful in helping us produce greater harmony and impact as leaders in all the different parts of our lives." What's Next The workforce is rapidly changing, but more change may need to come to tackle always on culture. "We have to come up with new norms for managing, when we're on and when we're off work and new ways of communicating," Kossek said. Schor said, "When workloads increase, reducing hours can often make it easier to do all the work," this is because "people are most rested and less burned out." A good work life balance is key in this, but it takes commitment. "People are trying to be great employees, but also have a rich personal life," Kossek said. Friedman told Newsweek that "learning how to manage boundaries between different parts of life," like "work, home, community," is possible. But "it takes conscious effort and continual experimentation."

How Austin Is Navigating the Post-Pandemic Housing Hangover
How Austin Is Navigating the Post-Pandemic Housing Hangover

Newsweek

time4 hours ago

  • Newsweek

How Austin Is Navigating the Post-Pandemic Housing Hangover

Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Home prices are once again falling in the pandemic-era boomtown of Austin, as the Texas city continues experiencing one of the most dramatic corrections in the country. The median sale price of a home in Austin was $560,000 in May, down 4.6 percent from a year earlier and from $575,000 in April, according to Redfin data. In May 2022, when home prices reached their peak in the city, a typical home in Austin would cost buyers an average of $667,050—more than $100,000 more. Despite facing lower prices, buyers in the city are staying put. Home sales in Austin declined by a staggering 12.9 percent year-over-year in May. A total of 853 properties went under contract that month as mortgage rates still hovered around the 7 percent mark and economic uncertainty grew across the country. Not only were fewer homes in the Texas capital sold that month, but those that managed to find buyers waited an average of 48 days on the market before the deal was closed, 6 days more than in May 2024. Nearly 40 percent of homes sold (37.1 percent) had price drops. By comparison, home prices continued to rise at the national level last month (up 1 percent year-over-year), while home sales decreased by a more modest 5.9 percent compared to the same period a year earlier. Photo-illustration by Newsweek/Canva "What we're seeing in Austin is a necessary and overdue normalization after an unprecedented period of price acceleration during the pandemic. It is a return to sustainability," Emily Girard, chief executive officer of Unlock MLS and the Austin Board of REALTORS, told Newsweek. "We've come off a period where double digit annual price increases weren't a viable option for the long-term health of our market. This recalibration was expected and welcomed many buyers who were previously sidelined." How Did Austin Get Into This Mess? In the years following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Austin metropolitan area, which includes Round Rock and San Marcos, experienced significant growth, dramatically reshaping its housing market. Thanks to its relative affordability, high quality of life and thriving job market, the city has long been one of the fastest-growing in the country, adding nearly 1 million new residents every year between 2020 and 2023, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. All these newcomers needed housing, and when historically low mortgage rates spurred a homebuying frenzy across the country in the pandemic years, Austin quickly found itself short on inventory. "In 2021 during the pandemic, more homes were sold in the Austin-Round Rock MSA than ever before, and sales dollar volume yielded more than a $23 billion impact on the Austin-area economy," Girard said. "The pandemic led to increased demand as buyers in the market had more disposable income and reevaluated their needs in a living space after spending months at home," she said. "That, combined with record-low interest rates at the time and an Austin economy that continued to make major company relocation announcements regularly, led to more homes being sold and prices increasing to an unsustainable level." What Is Happening Now in Austin? The story of the Austin housing market "is basically the same as the national story, just a bit more dramatic," Joel Berner, senior economist at told Newsweek. "Following the peak of the pandemic, there was a major run-up in home prices amid record-low mortgage rates as buyers rushed to snatch up homes," he said. The median listing price of a home in the Texas city jumped from $369,745 in April 2020 to $625,000 in April 2022, marking a 69 percent growth over just two years. Inventory plummeted during this period, contributing to sending home prices through the roof, but recovered quickly to pre-pandemic levels by 2023. "Since then, inventory has continued to grow year-over-year," finally slowing down the vertiginous growth of home prices in the city, Berner said. According to data from the number of active listings in the Austin-Round Rock area reached 12,525 in May, the highest figure on record since the company began tracking data in 2016. "The correction has come for Austin sooner and more significantly than the national housing market," Berner said, alluding to the recent surge in inventory across the country. In May, there were 2,027,277 homes for sale in the United States, according to Redfin, representing a 13 percent year-over-year increase. Sellers currently outnumber buyers by 500,000 in the U.S. housing market. While Austin has gone from boom to bust in many ways, experts say that the city's housing market is far from crashing. Dwindling sales and falling prices are just a sign that Austin is reverting to being "a normalized market," Girard said. "The demand for homes in Austin is still there. At the same time sellers are adapting to buyer affordability challenges in a higher interest rate environment," she said. "Just last month, pending home sales in the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos MSA jumped 16.1 percent in May, showing that buyers are still very much engaged when prices meet the market," she added. "Sellers are still reaping significant returns, up to 30 percent more than they would have five years ago, even after adjusting their list prices by 7 to 10 percent to reflect today's interest rates." What Does This Mean for Buyers in the City? And Sellers? "For buyers, this is one of the most favorable environments we've seen in years," Girard said, referring to the Austin market. "Buyers have time to shop, compare and negotiate—luxuries that weren't available during the pandemic boom. They're in the market with more intention and more options, especially with increased affordability for first-time and moderate income homebuyers." Jeremy Knight, an Austin-based realtor at The Knight Group, told Newsweek that buyers in the Texas capital are finding very affordable homes at a time when many across the country are struggling. About 59 percent of the homes that sold last month were under $500,000, he said, and 45 percent were under the national average of $415,000, "which means more buyers are finding affordable homes." Knight said that many sellers are still hoping to get the prices they would have fetched in 2022 for their properties, but that is no longer possible. "Some sellers are being smart about pricing and those homes are selling. Unfortunately most realtors are having a hard time both pricing homes to where the market is, and having that hard conversation with their sellers about price," he said. "So, is this the boom hangover? For sellers, it is," he added. "For buyers that want to take advantage of the market and are not scared or understand that rates are high, but they can get a great deal on price and potentially get more closing costs from the seller, this is the time to get great deals." Where Does This Leave Austin? The unfolding correction is "a positive shift" for Austin, Girard said, "and one that supports a healthier housing environment for the long term." According to Knight, home prices in Austin are expected to continue declining this year. "That's because in the last half of the year we always have more inventory. And if you ever look at the seasonal bell curve in Austin's selling season, prices always come down in the last half of the year," he said. However, there are many buyers on the sidelines, which could alter the current market's dynamics if given the chance. "If we do see rates come down in the last half of the year, you'll see more closed numbers and buyers frantic in the market," Knight said. "I don't think prices will shoot up. Prices will flatten out and buyers will still get good deals," he added. "So, I'm projecting a strong last half of the year in sales. We could see positive year-over-year numbers closer to the end of the year if rates drop into the 6.5 percent or lower range." Next year, the city could potentially see home prices going back up, so buyers should take advantage of this moment, Knight said—even if double-digit hikes are likely a thing of the past for Austin. "Buyers are going to say, 'Oh, I should've bought last year.' But positive year-over-year numbers aren't going to be the same numbers as we saw in 2021-2022. Nothing like that," he said. "But, most likely in the 3-5 percent range. Which is what Austin typically saw before the pandemic."

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