Homebuyers across the United States now face a significantly longer financial timeline before purchasing a home makes more sense than renting, according to a new analysis from real estate technology company Zillow, which found that a median-income household needs nearly 15 years to both save for a down payment and financially break even on homeownership.

According to Zillow, a household setting aside 10% of the median income needs 8.5 years to reach a 20% down payment on a typical single-family home nationally, followed by another 6.2 years before buying becomes more cost-effective than continuing to rent. Combined, that puts the total national breakeven timeline at just under 15 years, a figure Zillow arrived at by measuring two distinct phases: the time required to save for a down payment, and the additional time needed to recover the upfront costs of homeownership relative to renting.

“Buying a home is a financial commitment measured not just in dollars, but in years,” Zillow wrote in its analysis. “Whether to buy or rent is a complex question that depends on where you want to live and your lifestyle preferences, in addition to your financial situation.”

Kara Ng, senior economist at Zillow, said the breakeven timeline offers homebuyers a more complete picture of a housing market than list prices alone can provide. “The common wisdom is that saving early to buy a home is the smart financial move, but the reality is more nuanced,” Ng said. “The breakeven number tells you something about a market that a price tag alone doesn’t.” Ng encouraged prospective buyers to factor that longer horizon directly into their decision-making process. “Buyers should think about not just when they can afford to buy, but how long they’d need to stay before owning makes more financial sense than renting,” she said. “Homeownership comes with equity and stability, while renting offers flexibility and freedom from maintenance bills and emergencies.”

Zillow’s analysis found dramatic variation in breakeven timelines depending on location, driven largely by differences in local rent trends and home price appreciation. In Austin, Texas, a household saving for a down payment reaches the 20% threshold in roughly eight years, faster than the national pace, but then faces an 18-year wait before homeownership becomes financially advantageous compared with renting, a delay Zillow attributed in part to recently declining local rental costs. Miami tells a different story: buyers there spend roughly five additional years saving for a down payment compared with Austin, but reach the breakeven point in about half the time once they do purchase, meaning Miami homebuyers ultimately come out ahead financially roughly three years sooner than their counterparts in Austin.

The report identified purchasing a starter home, defined by Zillow as a property in the bottom third of regional home values, as one of the clearest ways buyers can shorten their overall timeline. On a national level, Zillow found that buying an entry-level home rather than renting a typical apartment cuts the total combined savings-and-breakeven timeline roughly in half, to just 7.2 years.

However, Zillow’s data suggests many buyers remain reluctant to take on properties requiring significant renovation work despite the potential savings such properties often offer. “However, with the cost of homeownership this high, buyers have signaled they do not want an expensive project,” Zillow wrote. According to the company’s research, turnkey homes, those ready for immediate move-in without renovation, sell for 2.9% more than expected, while homes noted as recently remodeled in their listing descriptions sell for 2.2% more than comparable homes without such renovations mentioned. By contrast, fixer-upper homes sell for 14% less than comparable move-in-ready properties. Zillow cautioned that while not every starter home requires renovation, buyers considering a fixer-upper should carefully account for the full cost of ownership, including the likelihood of future repairs.

The current, extended homebuying timeline represents a substantial deterioration compared with conditions before the pandemic. Zillow found that today’s national breakeven timeline runs nearly four years longer than the 11-year wait homebuyers faced back in July 2019, underscoring how significantly affordability has eroded over the intervening years.

Zillow attributed much of the current affordability crisis to a persistent nationwide housing shortage, which the company estimates stands at 4.7 million homes. According to the analysis, metropolitan areas with the largest housing shortages tend to also carry the longest breakeven timelines for prospective buyers. Los Angeles, for example, has the second-largest housing deficit in the country at nearly 345,000 homes, translating into a breakeven timeline of almost 38 years for buyers in that market.

To address the shortage, Zillow has advocated for a range of policy changes aimed at lowering construction costs and encouraging new housing development, including updating local zoning laws to allow for higher-density housing, simplifying municipal permit approval processes, and expanding access to financing options for manufactured homes.

Zillow’s warning arrives as mortgage rates have shown modest signs of easing in recent weeks. Freddie Mac reported Aug. 20 that the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage stood at 6.65%, down slightly from 6.67% the previous week. “The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage declined this week averaging 6.65%,” said Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s chief economist, adding that Freddie Mac emphasized borrowers can still save meaningfully by comparison shopping among lenders for the best available rate. Separately, Mortgage News Daily reported a daily 30-year fixed rate of 6.77% as of Aug. 21, with the outlet’s Matthew Graham noting that recent bond market volatility was unrelated to the U.S. Treasury Department’s mid-week announcement regarding its expanded bond buyback program, characterizing the earlier market reaction to that news as having been “overdone.”

With economic data expected to pick up significantly in the coming week, including anticipated remarks from Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh at the central bank’s annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, mortgage rates and broader housing affordability trends are likely to remain closely watched by prospective buyers weighing whether current market conditions justify committing to the increasingly lengthy financial timeline Zillow’s analysis has identified as the new reality facing most Americans looking to transition from renting to homeownership.

The Bank of Thailand is ready to host the 2026 IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings, expecting 15,000-20,000 participants and showcasing Thai culture, benefiting tourism and economic cooperation.

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Key Points

• The Bank of Thailand (BOT) is prepared to host the 2026 Annual Meetings of the IMF and World Bank, expecting 15,000 to 20,000 global participants, including finance ministers and economic experts.
• The event will highlight Thai culture with local cuisine and traditional textiles, and the BOT encourages public engagement to welcome visitors.
• Hosting the meetings is anticipated to provide significant economic opportunities for Thailand, particularly benefiting the tourism sector and showcasing the country’s role in international economic cooperation.

The Bank of Thailand (BOT) has affirmed that the country is fully prepared to host the 2026 Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Group, with between 15,000 and 20,000 participants and accompanying delegates expected from around the world.

BOT Assistant Governor Chayawadee Chai-anant said the meetings will welcome finance ministers, central bank governors, and leading economic and financial experts. The expected turnout would make the gathering one of the largest IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings held outside Washington, D.C.

Thai culture will feature throughout the event, including local cuisine for delegates and traditional textiles from different regions used at the venues. Chayawadee also encouraged the public to welcome international visitors and take pride in Thailand’s role as host.

The BOT expects the meetings to provide economic opportunities for Thailand, including benefits for the tourism sector, allowing the country to demonstrate its role in international economic cooperation. 

Source : Thailand Ready to Host 2026 IMF World Bank Meetings

It has commissioned the Wales Centre for Public Policy to undertake the review

The formula used to distribute Welsh Government funding to local authorities is being reviewed.

The Plaid Cymru administration has commissioned the Wales Centre for Public Policy (WCPP) with work already underway to update the evidence base underpinning the formula, with initial focus on education and personal social services, which together account for nearly three-quarters of the funding distribution.

Assessment will be made of additional costs arising from sparsity, rurality, deprivation and demographic change. WCPP will also review funding distribution methods used across the UK and internationally.

The Welsh Government said that given the scale and complexity of the review, the earliest point at which any changes could be implemented would be for the 2028-29 local government settlement.

The review was discussed with local government in the finance sub-group, which includes leaders from local authorities and the Welsh Local Government Association, last month The group was provided with an update on progress to date, the proposed scope of the review, and proposals for future work. The group supported the direction of travel.

Minister for Local Government, Housing and Planning, Siân Gwenllian, said: “Local authorities across Wales are on the front line of delivering the services people rely on every day, and it’s right that the way we fund them is based on evidence and keeps pace with how our communities are changing.

“That’s why I’ve been clear that this review must be done in partnership with local government, and I’m pleased colleagues on the Finance Sub-Group have supported the work so far.

“This is about making sure that funding reflects the real pressures faced by different parts of Wales, whether that’s a sparsely populated rural authority or an area with a growing and ageing population.”

Dr Helen Tilley, director of policy and practice (Welsh Government) at the Wales Centre for Public Policy said:“We are delighted to have been invited to provide evidence for this critically important review, particularly by considering how the experiences of other countries may be relevant to Wales.

“The thorough nature of the review is commensurate with the significant impact that the revised formula will have on the day-to-day lives of people across Wales, both directly through the provision of public services and more broadly through its influence on labour market participation and, in turn, the Welsh economy.”

A range of analytical improvements are being considered as part of the review, including:

Development of new sparsity and dispersion measures, including those derived from travel-time data, to better capture the costs of delivering services in rural and remote areas;development of school-level and pupil-based indicators to better reflect need within the education system;

Engagement with counterparts in Scotland on approaches to updating needs-based distributions; and

Consideration of the implications of an ageing population for patterns of need and service demand, particularly within personal social services.

The NCSC said QR codes were also increasingly being used in phishing emails to disguise links to malicious sites.

Microsoft said this was the fastest-growing scam technique aimed at people’s emails, with 18.7m cases recorded in March of this year.

This is because QR codes allow scam links to “slip through” on email, while a URL embedded in a message might be filtered out as spam, said Professor Filipo Sharevski of DePaul University in Chicago, who has studied the malicious use of QR codes.

The black and white squares also make it easier for criminals to hide the true website they are taking you to, he said, because even if your phone lets you preview the link before clicking, it is often shortened or disguised.

Another reason QR codes are so valuable to criminals is that people are often naturally trusting of them, Prof Sharevski said.

His team has carried out experiments placing QR codes around his university campus and in workplaces, to study people’s willingness to scan them.

“We don’t question our boarding pass on our phone, we don’t question our concert ticket,” he said.

“We learn slowly through scam experiences. Our phone rings… we abandon that.

“We get an email, and we abandon that…but these QR codes, we have no reason to suspect them.”

You can listen to BBC Scam Secrets on BBC Sounds.

Emmy-nominated actor Charles Melton is in final negotiations to play Kakashi Hatake, the masked elite ninja and mentor figure at the center of the “Naruto” manga and anime franchise, in Lionsgate’s upcoming live-action film adaptation, according to multiple outlets including Variety and The Hollywood Reporter.

The film is being directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, whose recent credits include “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” and is based on Masashi Kishimoto’s long-running manga series about a young ninja named Naruto Uzumaki who dreams of becoming the leader of his village while carrying the spirit of a nine-tailed demon fox sealed within him. Melton’s casting as Kakashi would mark the first confirmed major role announced for the highly anticipated adaptation, with a global casting search still underway to find actors to play the franchise’s title character, Naruto, along with fellow Team 7 members Sasuke and Sakura.

According to Variety, the negotiations for Melton to join the project come amid speculation that the actor would instead be announced as part of Marvel Studios’ “X-Men” cast during last week’s D23 convention. Melton had previously been rumored to be in talks for the role of Beast, also known as Hank McCoy, in that upcoming Marvel project. When Marvel unveiled its “X-Men” cast at D23 without Melton’s name attached, some outlets suggested the actor may have turned down the part, a decision that now appears to have opened the door for his move to the “Naruto” adaptation instead.

Kakashi Hatake ranks among the most popular and enduring characters within the “Naruto” franchise. Within the story, he serves as the mentor and squad leader for Team 7, the group of young ninja that includes the series’ three central characters. Slash Film described Kakashi’s defining traits in detail, noting that his rarely removed mask gives him an air of mystery, though the character’s most distinctive feature is arguably his left eye, which contains a red “Sharingan” that grants him the ability to copy and use the techniques of other ninja, earning him the nickname “the Copy Ninja” within the series. According to the same outlet, Kakashi’s backstory, while avoiding specific spoilers, plays a crucial role in the broader narrative arc of the franchise’s eventual endgame.

Gizmodo’s coverage of the casting news characterized Kakashi as Team 7’s leader and mentor, describing him as a fan-favorite character with a tragic backstory who outwardly appears indifferent toward his team members despite genuinely caring for them. The outlet noted that getting the character right will be especially important given that the film is expected to serve as something of an origin story, potentially launching a broader franchise built around the “Naruto” property.

Melton’s casting also carries particular resonance given his personal background and previously stated affinity for anime and manga. According to Tech Times, Melton is a second-degree Taekwondo black belt who competed in the Junior Olympics in Seoul, and he spent part of his childhood in South Korea. He has described filming the second season of Netflix’s “Beef” in South Korea as “coming home,” and has publicly named several other major anime franchises, including “Dragon Ball Z,” “Demon Slayer” and “Jujutsu Kaisen,” among his personal interests.

Tech Times further characterized Melton’s casting as evidence of a deliberate creative approach by director Cretton, arguing that the “Naruto” story requires an actor capable of navigating the series’ wide emotional range, which shifts between broad comedic moments, such as Naruto’s persistent ramen obsession and struggles with basic ninja techniques, and considerably more devastating emotional beats, including Kakashi’s own personal losses, the massacre of Sasuke’s clan, and Naruto’s pervasive sense of loneliness throughout the story. The outlet pointed to Melton’s performance in “Beef,” which similarly required navigating a wide tonal range, as evidence that Cretton is approaching the project primarily as an emotional storytelling challenge rather than purely as a spectacle-driven blockbuster.

Melton has built a growing reputation in Hollywood over the past several years across a range of projects. He received an Emmy nomination for his role in the second season of Netflix’s anthology series “Beef,” in which he starred alongside Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan and Cailee Spaeny. He previously earned significant critical acclaim for his performance in Todd Haynes’ 2023 film “May December,” and is also known for his roles in “Her Private Hell,” “Warfare” and the long-running CW series “Riverdale.”

According to Tech Times, the negotiations for Melton’s role remain ongoing and have not yet been formally finalized, which the outlet characterized as standard practice during the final-negotiations stage of a major casting deal. Lionsgate has not issued an official comment confirming the casting, and Variety indicated it had separately reached out to the studio for comment on the report.

Filming for the “Naruto” adaptation is not expected to begin until February of next year, according to Gizmodo’s reporting, leaving additional time for the broader casting search to continue for the film’s younger lead roles before production gets underway. The search for actors to portray Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura reportedly began last month, according to Variety, and remains ongoing as the studio and filmmaking team work to finalize the full ensemble alongside Melton’s expected role as Kakashi.

Should Melton’s casting as Kakashi be finalized, it would mark his entry into what many industry observers view as one of the most significant franchise adaptations currently in development, given “Naruto’s” massive global readership and the manga’s status as one of the best-selling series in publishing history. With the broader casting search for the film’s central young characters still underway and production not expected to begin until early next year, further details regarding the film’s full cast, plot specifics and release timeline are expected to emerge in the coming months as Lionsgate and Cretton continue assembling the project.

US fiscal deterioration is increasingly becoming a key risk for global markets, with higher Treasury yields potentially putting pressure on equities and constraining the Federal Reserve’s policy flexibility, Jefferies said in its latest research report.

The brokerage said the US public debt has crossed the $40 trillion milestone even as the fiscal deficit continues to widen, creating an environment in which long-term borrowing costs could remain elevated.

The US fiscal deficit rose to $432 billion in July, the highest monthly deficit since March 2021 and a record for the month. The deficit for the first 10 months of the fiscal year reached $1.799 trillion, already exceeding the full-year FY25 deficit of $1.775 trillion. The annualised fiscal deficit-to-GDP ratio also increased to 6.1 per cent in July from 5.7 per cent in June.

Jefferies expects fiscal deterioration to continue putting upward pressure on long-term Treasury yields. Nominal US GDP growth has averaged 5.9 per cent over the past 12 quarters, and the brokerage argues that nominal growth running above the 10-year Treasury yield is a signal that yields should move higher. Recent auctions underline the pressure: the 10-year Treasury auction yield reached 4.683 per cent, the highest since 2007, while the 30-year auction yield climbed to 5.216 per cent, its highest since 2001.

The pressure is compounded by rising government spending and weakening receipts. Federal government outlays surged 21.7 per cent year-on-year in July, while receipts declined 1.3 per cent. National defence spending increased 19.9 per cent during the month. At the same time, net interest and entitlement spending rose to 98.4 per cent of annualised government receipts, highlighting the growing fiscal burden.

Going ahead, the key market trigger will be the 10-year Treasury yield crossing 5 per cent, which Jefferies sees as a potential near-term risk for equities. The yield was around 4.69 per cent after recently touching 4.746 per cent. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent‘s decision to at least double long-term Treasury buybacks could help contain the rise, but the underlying fiscal pressures remain.
Jefferies also noted that the Treasury’s growing reliance on short-term funding and intervention to support the long end highlights the constraints facing monetary policy. The brokerage believes the fiscal backdrop is ultimately supportive for gold, while higher-yield risks could make equity valuations increasingly vulnerable if the 5 per cent Treasury threshold is breached.

A powerful new artificial intelligence model called Ox Alpha has quietly become one of the most talked-about releases in the developer community this month, offering free access to a massive one-million-token context window even as the identity of the company behind it remains entirely unconfirmed.

According to Bloomberg, the model appeared on AI marketplace OpenRouter last week under the label “stealth model,” offering a roughly one-million-token context window capable of processing text, image and video input. Ox Alpha debuted on OpenRouter and the open-source terminal agent OpenCode on Aug. 20, marking, according to Coursiv, the fifth so-called stealth model release to appear on the platform over roughly the past six months.

Technical specifications listed on OpenRouter describe Ox Alpha as a reasoning model built specifically for coding tasks, sustained autonomous agent work and production-level workloads. According to Techstrong.ai, the model features a context window of 1.05 million tokens, an expansive maximum output of 131,072 tokens, and full multimodal capabilities supporting text, image and video inputs. The model was promoted alongside OpenCode, with the preview billed as a zero-cost option for complex coding and long-running agentic tasks during a limited, roughly weeklong promotional window.

The scale of the offering has drawn particular attention given both its size and its cost. According to Startup Fortune, OpenRouter’s live model catalog lists Ox Alpha under the identifier “stealth/ox-alpha,” with prompt and completion pricing both set at zero during the preview period. ModelsAtlas, a separate service that tracks model listings across the industry, similarly confirmed Ox Alpha’s Aug. 20 release date and free pricing structure under the same stealth identifier.

Explainx.ai’s coverage indicated the model has already seen significant real-world usage since its debut, reporting that Ox Alpha has carried billions of tokens’ worth of traffic from coding tools including Claude Code and Hermes Agent, based on verified data from OpenRouter’s own usage dashboard. The outlet also noted that OpenCode’s hosted service, OpenCode Go, extended the same free access arrangement on Aug. 21, offering near-unlimited, completely free access to Ox Alpha for six additional days, with usage through that channel not counting against users’ normal OpenCode Go quota.

Despite the model’s growing popularity among developers, its creator has remained deliberately anonymous, fueling widespread speculation across the AI community about which company might be behind the release. According to Techstrong.ai, early technical fingerprinting analysis has led much of the developer community to suspect the model originates from a major Chinese technology lab. Developers analyzing Ox Alpha’s tokenizer across multiple benchmark prompts reported raw token counts nearly identical to those produced by Z.ai’s, formerly known as Zhipu AI, GLM-5.3 model, differing only by what appeared to be a standard wrapper layer. Additional technical indicators, including specific “dirty token” errors observed during testing, were reported to align with behaviors previously documented in both the Qwen and GLM model families, two prominent lines of Chinese-developed large language models.

Explainx.ai’s more detailed forensic analysis, published Aug. 22, reported that further investigation had strengthened the theory pointing toward Zhipu AI’s GLM family specifically, citing matching stack trace behavior, a shared error code numbered 1214, and what the outlet described as a 30-out-of-30 tokenizer match against known GLM model characteristics. Even so, the outlet emphasized that no official confirmation from any lab had been issued as of that analysis, meaning the GLM theory remained a strong but ultimately unverified hypothesis rather than a confirmed identification.

Alternative theories have also circulated within the developer community, with some analysts pointing toward Xiaomi as a possible source given the company’s own history of releasing AI models. According to Explainx.ai, OpenRouter has a documented pattern of eventually revealing the identities behind some of its past stealth model releases, noting that two previous stealth models, known during their preview periods as Hunter Alpha and Healer Alpha, were later confirmed to be Xiaomi MiMo models once their creator chose to go public. As of this report, Ox Alpha’s creator has not received any such official reveal.

OpenRouter’s own official listing for Ox Alpha provides limited additional clarity regarding the model’s origins while addressing one notable data privacy concern directly. According to the platform’s public documentation, “Ox Alpha is a stealth model. It is developed and operated by a third-party provider who has chosen to remain anonymous during this preview. OpenRouter routes requests to it and is not its developer, owner, or provider. Prompts and completions are retained by the provider and are not used for training; all other use is governed by the Stealth Model Terms.”

That data retention disclosure represents a notable departure from how some previous stealth model releases have historically operated. According to Explainx.ai, stealth model providers have historically logged user prompts specifically to gather data for further model improvement and training, whereas Ox Alpha’s listing makes a comparatively narrower claim regarding how submitted data will be used and retained during this particular preview period.

The launch also coincides with significant broader corporate activity involving OpenRouter itself. According to Startup Fortune, payments company Stripe has reportedly agreed to acquire OpenRouter, the startup whose API platform routes developer requests across more than 400 different AI models, in a deal valued at more than $7 billion, a figure representing more than five times the roughly $1.3 billion valuation OpenRouter had achieved in a funding round completed just months earlier.

For developers eager to test Ox Alpha’s capabilities while the free access window remains available, several outlets have offered practical guidance on how to responsibly evaluate the model. Coursiv recommended that developers use the preview period to test genuine, non-sensitive tasks, such as fixing a bug in a small project or adding a feature alongside accompanying tests, rather than experimenting with sensitive proprietary code or data given the still-unconfirmed identity of the provider handling and retaining submitted prompts. Startup Fortune similarly cautioned developers to treat data retention, the provider’s continued anonymity, and any unverified performance or capacity claims as the primary limiting factors to weigh when deciding how extensively to incorporate the free model into real development workflows, rather than focusing purely on its zero-dollar price tag.

As the promotional free-access window continues to run its course, developers and industry analysts are expected to keep closely monitoring both Ox Alpha’s real-world performance benchmarks and any further forensic clues that might eventually reveal which company built the model, with the current leading theory pointing toward Zhipu AI’s GLM lineage, though that identification remains unconfirmed by any official source as of this report.