The housing market now has more ‘downside risks’: layoffs from DOGE and the trade war

• Apollo Chief Economist Torsten Slok said layoffs from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency and Trump’s trade war could pose a threat to housing, which had a decent month of sales in an otherwise frozen market. A higher unemployment rate would only make matters worse.

It was a week of back-to-back housing data that revealed some positive and some negative manifestations in the market. But there is an unanticipated development to watch out for: the Department of...