Homebuyers searching for a bargain have made a Pennsylvania port city one of the hottest housing markets in the country.

Erie, Pennsylvania, is situated on Lake Erie and is the home of Pennsylvania’s only Great Lakes port and the community’s affordability and quality of life have helped vault it up the rankings of Realtor.com’s hottest housing markets.

The June edition of the hottest housing markets report ranked Erie second in the country, trailing only Hartford, Connecticut, which topped the list for the second consecutive month. The report gauges demand based on unique views per property on the Realtor.com platform, along with the pace of the market based on the number of days a listing remains active online.

Erie, Pennsylvania, as seen from Lake Erie. (Marli Miller/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

In June, Erie attracted 3.3 times the national average number of viewers per property, while the average listing was sold in just 29 days – the same as Hartford and six days faster than a year ago. By contrast, the median U.S. home was on the market for 53 days before being sold in June.

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“The hotness in Erie is largely fueled by significant inventory scarcity,” said Realtor.com senior economist Hannah Jones.

“While other markets have seen some progress in inventory availability, Erie continues to see falling levels of for-sale listings. As a result, the market continues to heat up relative to the rest of the country,” she said.

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The Northeast is the hottest region in the country and dominated the top 20 rankings. (Getty Images)

Erie, which has a population of about 91,000, has a median listing price of $239,000 – a level that’s about $200,000 lower than the national median and is roughly half of Hartford’s.

That made Erie the second most affordable city in the country among the 20 hottest housing markets, behind only Binghamton, New York, which had a median home price of $227,000 last month.

“For buyers looking to be in the Great Lakes region, Erie may be top of the list with appealing quality-of-life amenities and widespread affordability.”

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Erie has a tight inventory of home listings, which has led to one of the lowest times on the market in the country. (Getty Images)

Realtor’s report noted that the Northeast and Midwest continue to dominate the top 20 hottest housing market rankings, with 16 of the high-demand communities being located in the Northeast.

Nationally, median list prices declined 2.5% year over year in June, and pending home sales moved higher for the seventh straight month.

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“That combination of falling prices and rising contract signings signals that sellers are meeting buyers where they are,” Jones said. “Sellers who are pricing realistically are being rewarded with engagement.”

A Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton nicknamed Gus goes up for auction Tuesday at Sotheby’s in New York City, with the auction house estimating the fossil could fetch between $20 million and $30 million, the highest presale estimate ever placed on a dinosaur skeleton, even as paleontologists warn the sale could push one of the most complete T. rex specimens ever found permanently out of scientific reach.

Gus was discovered in 2021 on a 6,500-acre cattle ranch in Harding County, South Dakota, owned by Gary “Gus” Licking, after whom the dinosaur is named. The skeleton measures roughly 38 feet from nose to tail and stands more than 12 feet tall, and is composed of 183 individual bone elements, representing about 61% of the dinosaur’s possible bone count and 75% to 80% of its original bone mass by weight, according to Sotheby’s. The skull alone measures 54 inches and retains roughly 82% of its possible bones. Marks across the skeleton, including healed fractures and what appear to be bite wounds to the skull, suggest Gus survived violent encounters with other predators during its lifetime roughly 67 million years ago, during the late Cretaceous period.

The excavation and preparation of Gus took nearly five years in total. Licking had spent years walking his property and noticing small bone fragments and teeth scattered across the land, eventually growing convinced something significant lay beneath the surface. He was proven right when paleontologists with Theropoda Expeditions, a Texas-based commercial excavation firm, found the fossil on the exact parcel of land Licking had pointed them toward. The team spent three years carefully extracting the skeleton from the ground, followed by another two years cleaning, cataloging and assembling the bones into their current mounted, predatory pose. Licking died roughly a year into the excavation, though his widow, Dana, continued following the project’s progress.

Thomas Heitkamp, president of Theropoda Expeditions, described the painstaking nature of the reconstruction process. “It really does feel like tackling the world’s hardest puzzle, except we have to find all the pieces first,” Heitkamp said. “All those bones separated for 67 million years that we can now, almost magically, fit back together. There’s something deeply satisfying about that.”

Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby’s global head of science and natural history, said the combination of factors that make Gus stand out is difficult to overstate. “The completeness, the quality, the size, and the preservation” set the specimen apart, Hatton told Reuters, emphasizing that finished fossils require significant expertise to properly identify and assemble. “What I think is really important for people to understand, when we talk about dinosaur fossils, is that they don’t come out of the ground complete,” Hatton said. “It takes highly specialized, careful, diligent, skilled people to recognize what they’re looking at, to tell the difference between a piece of rock and a piece of this animal.”

Gus’s opening bid is set at $19 million, according to Sotheby’s online registry. If the fossil sells within its estimated range, it would fall short of the current auction record for a dinosaur fossil, set in 2024 when Apex, a Stegosaurus skeleton, sold for $44.6 million to billionaire investor Ken Griffin, who has since loaned the specimen to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Notably, Gus’s estimate could prove conservative, given that Apex itself carried a presale estimate of only up to $6 million before ultimately selling for nearly eight times that figure.

The auction continues a lineage of high-profile dinosaur sales dating back nearly three decades. Sotheby’s held the first-ever dinosaur auction in 1997, when Sue, a T. rex discovered in 1990 near the same South Dakota region where Gus was found, sold for $8.4 million to a group of institutions purchasing on behalf of Chicago’s Field Museum, where the specimen remains on display today. Sue, at 90% of its possible bone mass, remains the largest and most complete T. rex skeleton ever discovered, edging out Gus on completeness even as Gus approaches similar scale. Another nearby T. rex, known as Stan, sold at auction in 2020 for $31.8 million, a record at the time for a dinosaur fossil.

Gus’s discovery site sits within the Hell Creek Formation, a geological region spanning parts of South Dakota, Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming that has produced some of the most significant T. rex finds in paleontological history, including one of the first T. rex skeletons ever unearthed in 1902, the fossil discovery that gave the species its name.

The impending sale has reignited longstanding tension within the scientific community over the private auctioning of scientifically significant fossils. Some paleontologists argue that skyrocketing auction prices for specimens like Gus effectively price public museums and academic research institutions out of acquiring fossils that could otherwise contribute meaningfully to scientific study. University of Edinburgh paleontologist Steve Brusatte has noted that with price tags reaching $30 million or more, no public museum or research institution can realistically compete in these auctions. Susannah Maidment, a senior researcher at London’s Natural History Museum, pointed to an even larger concern lurking beneath public auctions. “I’ve heard of private sales of T. rex specimens that have achieved more than $50 million,” Maidment said, adding that such a sum “would absolutely revolutionize the collections, facilities and galleries of any museum or university across the UK.”

Other researchers have pushed back on the notion that commercial excavation is the only path to recovering significant fossils, arguing that public institutions could pursue similar finds if landowners chose to work with museums rather than commercial paleontology firms from the outset. Some in the field have also questioned commercial excavators’ framing of their work as preserving fossils for the public good. Kristi Curry Rogers, a professor of biology and geology at Macalester College, has argued the broader debate is less about legal ownership and more fundamentally about scientific stewardship of specimens that offer unique insight into prehistoric life.

Sotheby’s has pushed back against the notion that private sales necessarily remove fossils from public view, pointing to arrangements such as Ken Griffin’s decision to loan Apex to a major New York museum following his 2024 purchase. Hatton has also described a broadening buyer base for major fossil sales in recent years. “The dinosaur market today is broader than most people realize — and widening,” Hatton said. “Interest now comes not only from U.S.-based museums and private collectors, but also major international museums, foundations, and individuals creating destinations of their own. What unites them isn’t a single profile but a shared respect and curiosity for objects.”

Whether Gus ultimately ends up displayed publicly, tucked away in a private collection, or somewhere in between will not be known until Tuesday’s auction concludes, when bidders at Sotheby’s New York office, and potentially online, determine just how far the market is willing to push the price for one of the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons ever pulled from the ground.

Senator Lindsey Graham was a great American patriot. He was a freedom fighter. He was a throwback to an older Republican party that shunned isolationism and understood that America must never retreat from its friends, its allies, or the cause of freedom.

He was a great friend of Israel at a time when far too many in American politics are turning away from Israel. And even retreating to a hateful bigoted antisemitism, that is plaguing the socialist leaning Democratic party today, and even I say with regret, infiltrating some extreme elements in the GOP.

On this and most things regarding foreign policy, Graham knew the difference between right and wrong, good and evil. He passed away Saturday. But he would not have been happy with the events that transpired Sunday in the Middle East.

Here’s how President Trump, a dear friend of Lindsey Graham’s, reported to Fox & Friends this morning: “So something that nobody knows. Yesterday they had an 11-hour meeting. Everything’s 11 hours with these guys. You know, you can’t settle one sentence in one hour and one minute. It should be one minute. And everything was agreed to yesterday.” 

Mr. Trump added: “And they leave the room and they call back and they say we had to make a couple of changes. They got to make changes. We’re not going to make changes. Always changes. They just, you know, they’re professional negotiators. That’s all they are. I don’t even call them good at it. They haven’t gotten anything from me.”

If I understand the chronology here, yesterday meaning Sunday, according to Mr. Trump, there was an 11-hour meeting with Iran of course, and everything was agreed to. Presumably that means opening up the Hormuz Strait, and denuclearizing Iran, and moving the enriched Uranium out of that country. Then, the Iranians walk out of the room shortly after, call back and say we have to make some changes.

The next thing you know — we’re still on yesterday, Sunday — the Iranians hit an oil tanker in the Strait, and then proceeded to bomb Oman, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. Six of our Gulf allies.

Presumably these decisions were made within an hour or two, after this 11-hour meeting agreement that turned out to be a complete lie. Which of course that’s what the Iranians do, they lie. It’s the nature of their immoral, gruesome, barbaric, Nazi-like regime.

Now, in response to that, as I understand the chronology here, reported by Mr. Trump, the commander-in-chief has decided the United States will become the guardian of the Strait of Hormuz, and restore the naval blockade on Iranian ports for Iranian ships. And later today, Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social that he will be making a Speech to the Nation on Thursday at 9 p.m. Eastern. Somehow it seems that the American response to Iran’s warfare escalation should be greater. Now we may hear about that Thursday evening, but not tonight.

And by the way, in addition to Iran’s repeated violation of the ceasefire, and the memorandum of understanding, by bombing oil tankers and our Gulf state allies and American military bases, our satellite pictures have discovered that Iran appears to be using the roughly $5 billion worth of oil sales given to them prematurely, to rebuild their nuclear installations at Pickaxe and Parchin Mountains.

To be sure, we bombed them heavily in recent days. And that’s important. And to be sure when you cross a red line with Mr. Trump, you will pay for it. Yet I would think the late Senator Graham would want even bigger strikes at Iran right now, this evening.

And perhaps those bigger strikes are in fact coming. I hope so. I knew Lindsey down through the years. I loved his wickedly hilarious sense of humor. And the good work he did as the budget chairman on one, big, beautiful bill last year. 

By the way Senator Ron Johnson, a free market supply-sider, may well become the next Senate budget chairman. Wouldn’t that be something. Graham also defended Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his September 2018 Supreme Court confirmation hearings. He was not really an economic guy, and I never agreed with him and his gang of eight bipartisan attempts to solve immigration, or climate change, or other domestic matters. Yet when it came to defending America, and our allies, and the freedom that has made this the greatest country in the history of history, my hat’s off to the late senator, Lindsey Graham.

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The Trump administration on Monday released guidance from several financial regulators reminding banks and credit unions about the credit risks posed by lending to borrowers who aren’t authorized to work in the U.S.

The guidance said that borrowers who aren’t legally eligible to work in the U.S. pose an elevated credit risk because there’s greater uncertainty about their ability to generate income, maintain employment and remain financially stable.

It was issued by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the National Credit Union Administration, with the agencies urging financial institutions to identify, measure, monitor and control these risks through safe underwriting practices that take it into account.

“President Trump has made restoring integrity to America’s financial system a priority, and Secretary Bessent has provided strong leadership in ensuring that federal financial policy reflects that objective,” Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould told FOX Business in an exclusive statement. “Americans expect their banking system to support lawful business, not facilitate money laundering, or risks associated with criminal illegal immigration.”

The inter-agency guidance informs banks and credit unions that they should consider credit risks when lending to borrowers who aren’t authorized to work in the U.S. (Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

TRUMP ADMIN TO TELL BANKS IMMIGRATION STATUS MAY BE CONSIDERED IN MORTGAGE, CREDIT DECISIONS

The comptroller added that the guidance is based on existing requirements that financial institutions must abide by in their dealings with customers and that a prospective borrower’s work authorization should be part of those considerations.

“Banks already have a responsibility to know their customers and appropriately manage risk. Our interagency guidance reinforces that obligation by making clear that institutions should account for the safety and soundness, compliance, and credit risks associated with serving individuals who are not authorized to work in the United States,” Gould explained.

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A prospective borrower’s authorization to work in the U.S. could factor into mortgage applications. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

The agencies’ announcement notes that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a guidance in June that informed financial institutions that they may consider a consumer’s ability to legally work and earn income in the U.S. when making lending decisions around things like mortgage and credit card applications.

CFPB’s guidance explained that the lack of legal authorization to work in the U.S. could lead to changes in a borrower’s income, citing an example in which a credit applicant may be subject to deportation.

It added that information can be derived from a direct inquiry or the consumer’s use of “atypical identification methods, such as an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN), typically issued to taxpayers… who lack proof of legal residency.”

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Applications for credit cards may also evaluate a would-be borrower’s work authorization. (iStock)

The guidance also follows the release of a working paper by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, which the authors noted was a preliminary draft circulated for professional comment, which found that the influx of illegal immigrants between 2021 and 2024 significantly increased housing demand while boosting employment and having little measurable effect on wages.

The Fed economists estimated that unauthorized immigrant worker flows accounted for about 30% of employment growth, roughly 30% of home-price growth and about 20% of rent growth in the average metro area between March 2021 and March 2024.

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However, they emphasized that the estimates apply to the average metro area studied and don’t suggest immigration was the sole driver of rising housing costs nationwide.

FOX Business’ Amanda Macias contributed to this report.

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Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have no stock, option or similar derivative position in any of the companies mentioned, and no plans to initiate any such positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Seeking Alpha’s Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given that any particular security, portfolio, transaction or investment strategy is suitable for any specific person. The author is not advising you personally concerning the nature, potential, value or suitability of any particular security or other matter. You alone are solely responsible for determining whether any investment, security or strategy, or any product or service, is appropriate or suitable for you based on your investment objectives and personal and financial situation. The author is an employee of Seeking Alpha. Any views or opinions expressed herein may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank.