The Holiday Downtime Report 2025: Key Trends, Costs, And Lessons From This Year’s Biggest IT Outages
The cost of unplanned downtime increases annually, with businesses across every industry niche exposed to potentially ruinous expenses.
The cost of unplanned downtime increases annually, with businesses across every industry niche exposed to potentially ruinous expenses. The causes of IT outages vary along with recovery costs, so it’s vital for organizations of all sizes to carry out reconnaissance and learn from the trends and calamities others have faced in this context.
The dangers of downtime and the likelihood of it occurring increase during peak periods of activity. As the holidays approach, it’s especially useful to reflect on the most prominent incidents that occurred last year, with a view to preventing them as 2025’s busiest season begins.
To that end, the team at IoT solutions provider Digi Infrastructure Management put together an overview of serious outages from 2024 and 2025 across several key sectors, including the trends they point toward, the costs incurred, and what can be gleaned from the fallout.
Retail Downtime
One of the most prominent outages in this sector in the last 12 months involved Ahold Delhaize, a multinational retail company that suffered a cyberattack in November 2024.
With over 2,000 stores nationwide, including many Stop & Shop locations, and sales exceeding $14.49 billion in the U.S alone, the attack disrupted both brick-and-mortar transactions and e-commerce operations.
The outage was traced to Food Lion, one of its sub-brands, with the repercussions impacting the organization for more than seven days. This included trends with issues with its pharmacy services, with reports of customers being unable to pay with debit cards in some instances.
In April 2025, the company confirmed via a statement that the downtime caused by the attack also resulted in direct data theft. The perpetrators, reportedly affiliated with INC Ransom, stole as much as 6 terabytes of private information.
Subsequently, the group threatened to sell the data if certain, undisclosed demands were not met. It was subsequently confirmed that 2.2 million people had their data exposed in the attack.
While the costs incurred by Ahold Delhaize during this downtime and the subsequent ransom negotiations have not been made public, it is reasonable to assume that they amount to tens of millions of dollars. IBM’s most recent data breach research suggests the average cost of individual incidents is $4.4 million. Coupled with the in-store disruptions and reputational damage to its sub-brands, Ahold Delhaize’s incident serves as a cautionary tale for the entire industry.
Aside from the likely expense of this outage, it highlights the trend for interconnected systems to leave retailers exposed to wide-ranging disruption, even if the source of the original breach is localized. As soon as one IT asset becomes compromised, others may fall, or must be taken offline as a precaution.
Manufacturing Downtime
The toll taken by downtime in manufacturing is just as prominent and problematic as in retail, and the root causes of the costliest incidents are also shared.
The daily cost of downtime in this sector is estimated at $1.9 million, with the cost of ransomware attack-related downtime for manufacturers over a five-year period pegged at $17 billion. In terms of duration, outages associated with ransomware typically take around 11 days to resolve, although the most severe instances can persist for months.
The most prominent example actually comes from 2025, and the full extent of the damage done will take some time to quantify. The U.K.-based automaker Jaguar Land Rover suffered more than four weeks of downtime following a cyberattack in September, with losses exceeding $68 million suffered for each week its manufacturing operations were on pause.
This incident demonstrated not only the startling costs one company can incur as a result of downtime but also the knock-on effects of a significant manufacturing shutdown that ripples down the supply chain. More than 5,000 companies were affected by JRL’s outage, resulting in cumulative costs of over $2.55 billion.
The combination of lost earnings and recovery expenses will impact the manufacturer for half of this total, with the rest falling on suppliers, partners, and the broader economy.
As with the retail industry, lessons manufacturers can learn from this include the importance of business continuity planning in the face of persistent and pressing cyber threats. While an organization like JRL has the backing and the brand clout to weather this storm, it is unlikely that smaller-scale manufacturing firms would be able to undergo weeks of downtime with the possibility of recovery remaining intact.
Agri-Food Downtime
Businesses involved in agriculture and food production join their counterparts in retail and manufacturing as they struggle with the rising tide of cybercrime. In fact, one report suggests that the agri-food sector has experienced a 101% increase in such incidents over the past year, which is significantly higher than the 38% average across all industries.
Researchers argue that although it is usually the multimillion-dollar breaches that make headlines, more attention needs to be focused on the plight of smaller businesses that suffer from the same issues, albeit on a smaller scale.
Again, ransomware remains the primary concern in this sector. When IT assets are compromised, regional farmers and food producers could end up paying around $5,000 to regain access to mission-critical data. The downtime they experience during an infection also creates costs and complications that need to be recovered from.
Last Lessons from Downtime Incidents
The lessons exemplified by the most significant outages of last year are the same ones demonstrated in the wake of downtime incidents that have occurred over the course of more than a decade. Cyber threats are the biggest stumbling block for modern businesses, regardless of the industry in which they operate. Failure to protect systems and devices from these threats results in steep recovery costs, often amounting to millions of dollars for even midsize organizations.
Taking proper precautions and planning to preserve business continuity when attacks inevitably occur is a necessity for companies across the board. Some will have to learn the hard way, and these mistakes are undoubtedly helpful for others to absorb and avoid.
On Dec. 4, Apple announced that General Counsel Kate Adams and Jackson, vice president for environment, policy, and social initiatives, are retiring. Both reported directly to CEO Tim Cook.
Jackson, who joined Apple in 2013, oversaw the company’s diversity initiatives and much of its policy work in Washington, D.C., following her four-year tenure as an Obama-appointed administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She will retire in late January 2026, according to Apple.
Her focus on social justice and renewable energy became less central during the second Trump administration, which publicly opposes DEI programs and has criticized climate change initiatives.
The change comes even though Apple shareholders rejected a February proposal to end the company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion program. The conservative think tank, the National Center for Public Policy Research, had urged Apple to follow other major companies in scaling back DEI, which has faced criticism from Republicans and President Donald Trump.
“The vibe shift is clear: DEI is out, and annual merit is in,” Stephen Padfield, executive director of the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project, said in a pre-recorded statement played to Apple shareholders at the time.
Jackson’s departure leaves a small number of Black executives—5%, according to Apple. Cynthia Bowman, vice president, global talent and people business planning; Alisha Johnson-Wilder, director of external engagement for environment, policy, and social initiatives; and Wanda Austin, a key board member with extensive science and tech leadership, are among the few that remain.
Companywide, Black employees remain the lowest-represented minority group at Apple, aside from Indigenous staff at just 1% and multiracial employees at 3%. Black representation is stronger in retail and sales than in technical or leadership roles.
Why Black Businesses In SoCal’s Orange County Are Thriving As Trailblazers
With strong support from the community, the small number of Black-owned businesses in Orange County are thriving as pioneers.
Black-owned businesses are limited in Southern California’s Orange County, but growing relocation, community support, and local advocacy have helped the ones that are open thrive in recent years.
Though Black residents make up only about 1.7% of Orange County’s population—roughly 54,000 people—Black representation in Irvine is small but powerful. From soul food restaurants in bustling shopping districts to the county’s sole Black-owned wine cellar, these entrepreneurs are carving out space and earning strong support from the community.
Take Lynda’s African Delicacies, for example. The African restaurant in the Airport Business Center often draws long lines of locals eager to grab their orders from the city’s premier African food haven. Founded by Linda Umaru after the success of her hair braiding and beauty business, she has rapidly expanded both ventures thanks to the strong support from the Irvine community and popularity on TikTok.
A Nigeria native, Umaru moved to Irvine in 2005 after marrying her husband. When they welcomed their first child, she chose to stay home rather than pay for daycare and started a hair-braiding business to support the family. As she cooked meals for her clients during appointments, she realized there was a demand for her food as well. What began in a small 1,200-square-foot salon quickly expanded — first to 3,500 square feet, and now to a 5,000-square-foot braiding salon and beauty supply store on Sky Park Circle, just steps from her restaurant.
Lynda’s African Delicacies began in 2019 as a food truck, but after locals consistently flooded the window with orders, Umaru expanded to a brick-and-mortar location in November 2024. Now running a cozy eatery near her braiding salon, she’s already preparing to enlarge the space to welcome more dine-in customers.
“The food is bigger than the hair salon,” Umaru tells BLACK ENTERPRISE. “The traffic, you cannot just imagine, people were asking us how can you bring African food in Orange County, in Irvine. But my first thing that came to my mind is the kind of people coming to my house and when I was giving them this food, there’s not any barrier for any race that they were eating this food. And that’s how I realized, ‘Okay, this can be a business for us.’ And it’s just the crowd that they are coming here, it’s not even close to Africa. It’s just the Orange County people from different kind of race, everybody just love the food.”
With both businesses thriving, Umaru is celebrating and sharing the beauty of the African diaspora in Orange County, supporting protective-style wearers and serving delicious food to a diverse community.
“When you relate with the community and you offer them something of this nature, they go for it,” Umaru said. “They were able to relate with the food and the community loves it because of the kind of ingredients we are using in the food is mostly coming from Nigeria. So we cook it just like the way we cook it back in Nigeria and people love it.”
@ocfeed @lyndasafricandelicacies – 17951 sky park circle bldg 35 suite J, Irvine, California 92614 Authentic African cuisine – right here in Irvine!! This is a unique spot – we only have a few African eateries in OC and Lynda’s is super legit. Lynda’s began in a home kitchen, then turned into a food truck, and now operates as a brick and mortar in a little food center in an office park in Irvine. The menu is simple, and they have all the classics. Do not leave without fufu, it’s kind of the vehicle with which you actually eat the rest of the food, typically made from cassava. It’s starchy, doughy, and not meant to carry much flavor – because the rest of the food packs that punch. https://lyndasafricandelicacies.com/menu They have lots of veggie options, you of course have to get plantains. Get yourself some oxtail, it’s nice and tender. A traditional order for anyone trying it out for the first time seems to be oxtail fufu and egusi. It’s full of spices and flavored right, with a deep and rich earthy hearty taste that I’m gonna bet you haven't encountered before. Jollof fried rice is also a must. And then there’s their red sauce they’re putting on everything. Give me a bottle of that to take around with me wherever I go. SO good. Have you tried African food before? . . #african#africanfood#irvine#orangecounty♬ original sound – Ocfeed
The growing visibility and success of Black-owned businesses in Orange County wouldn’t be possible without the tireless, behind-the-scenes work of the Black Chamber of Orange County. For more than 40 years, the Chamber has championed businesses, education, and veterans across diverse communities, helping ensure the strong representation seen in the region’s business landscape today.
“Orange County has 34 municipalities, Irvine being one of them. Before COVID, the Black Chamber Office was in Irvine,” the Chamber told BLACK ENTERPRISE. “We were located in the Orange County Workforce Solutions facility, where the county was dedicated to helping people and businesses overcome obstacles, reach their goals, fulfill their potential and contribute to a thriving region.”
The aim is to build on the county’s progress in diversifying its business landscape and remain a reliable resource for future Black-owned ventures in Orange County.
“Access to information is our motto and we are here to help all in our ethnic com munities, to improve, enhance and grow their business,” the Chamber said.
Consider Georgia’s Restaurant, the only soul food restaurant at the bustling Irvine Spectrum Center. Shoppers from every background line up for its crispy fried chicken, flavorful jambalaya, hearty gumbo, and honey-buttered cornbread—comfort classics that keep guests licking their fingers. Founded by Gretchen Shoemaker, the menu honors her childhood spent cooking alongside her grandmother, crafting dishes with “the whole heart and soul,” as she describes on her website. Now with four Southern California locations, Georgia’s presence in Irvine and nearby Anaheim reflects the growing space for Black-owned businesses in Orange County—and the community support helping them thrive.
Elsewhere, McClain Cellars is making history as the only Black-owned wine cellar in Orange County. Founded by Jason and Sofia McClain, the couple turned their shared passion for wine into a full-fledged emporium that celebrates community, craftsmanship, and their own love story. After two decades in the tech world, Jason felt inspired to create something more personal. In July 2016, he and Sofia set out to craft exceptional wines from California’s best soils—bottles meant to evoke real emotion. Their journey took them up and down the West Coast, scouting vineyards and selecting the perfect wines to build their signature collection and found Irvine to be the best location to house one of its four SoCal locations.
“McClain Cellars chose Irvine as its headquarters because of the city’s unique business environment and community,” Jason tells BLACK ENTERPRISE. “As a hub for technology and innovation, Irvine’s corporate landscape provided a perfect fit for our wine blending and team-building events. We saw an opportunity to introduce a new kind of luxury experience to the city, one that combines the craft of winemaking with the corporate culture of Southern California.”
From their award-winning wines to premiere wine tasting room and unique wine blending experience that gives patrons the chance to be a winemaker for a day, McClain Cellars has built a sustainable business in a city not known for its Black representation while showing the success that comes when given space for ownership.
As the only Black-owned wine cellar in Orange County, McClain Cellars could have faced resistance, but Jason says the local community has been nothing but “welcoming and supportive.”
“People have embraced the concept of having a winery tasting room and event space right here in Irvine,” he said. “The feedback on our award-winning wines, our customer service, and the overall atmosphere has been overwhelmingly positive, which has been crucial to our success.”
Now they’re proudly building bridges and bringing Black excellence to the OC. Beyond being the county’s only Black-owned wine cellar, McClain Cellars also expands its cultural impact through its “Black Heroes Collection,” a wine series honoring African American icons such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, the Tuskegee Airmen, and Marian Anderson, among others.
“This has been a powerful way to share important stories and history with the Irvine community,” Jason said.
The McClains’ success highlights the growing opportunities for diverse business owners in Orange County, where an increasingly inclusive approach is helping local entrepreneurs introduce new concepts that bring the community together.
“Our thriving business demonstrates that Irvine’s community is open to new ideas and is actively seeking to support diverse businesses,” Jason said. “It shows that when you provide an excellent product and a truly welcoming experience, people will respond with open arms, regardless of the business owners’ background. This support has been crucial and truly highlights Irvine’s commitment to creating a vibrant and inclusive city.”
Michael Jordan Takes The Stand In High-Stakes NASCAR Antitrust Trial, Says Teams Deserve ‘Fair Treatment’
Jordan is the co-owner of the 23XI Racing team.
Michael Jordan stepped into a Charlotte, NC, federal courtroom Dec. 5 not as an NBA legend, but as a NASCAR team owner fighting what he calls an unfair system. Testifying for an hour in the antitrust case brought by his 23XI Racing team and Front Row Motorsports against NASCAR, Jordan argued that the stock car racing organization’s current business model leaves teams without true partnership or economic stability. Jordan owns 23XI Racing with Denny Hamlin.
Jordan opened his testimony with a simple introduction: “My name is Michael Jeffrey Jordan, and I grew up in Wilmington, North Carolina.” He next detailed his lifelong passion for motorsports that began with childhood trips to Talladega Superspeedway. Even today, he told the court, he never misses a race and attends up to a dozen events a year, The New York Times reports.
His testimony centered on why he chose to challenge NASCAR after recent charter negotiations his team participated in broke down. Jordan said team owners have been “browbeaten for so many years” while pushing for structural changes, including permanent charters and improved revenue terms. None of those priorities, he said, were meaningfully addressed.
“I wasn’t afraid” to take legal action, Jordan testified. “It needed to be looked at from a whole different perspective.”
Jordan said he has invested $35 to $40 million into 23XI Racing since launching it with driver Denny Hamlin in 2020. That includes purchasing a charter for $28 million, a charter that has since expired after the team refused to sign a deal they considered unacceptable. He rejected provisions that blocked antitrust challenges and a take-it-or-leave-it structure, he said, undermined teams’ ability to operate sustainably, Fox 8 reports.
His goal, he testified, is for a business model that allows teams and NASCAR to grow together.
“The thing I’m hoping for is you create more of a partnership between two entities,” Jordan said. “If that’s the case, it becomes a more valuable business.”
Jordan also acknowledged that 23XI talked with other teams about the charter terms. He said the goal wasn’t to sway anyone for his own gain, but to make sure every owner understood just how lopsided the economics were.
After Jordan testified, Race Team Association executive director Jonathan Marshall took the stand to outline financial models showing NASCAR teams lag behind franchises in leagues like the NBA, NFL, MLB, and MLS. Earlier in the day, NASCAR president Steve O’Donnell and Joe Gibbs Racing co-owner Heather Gibbs also testified.
The trial began Dec. 1 and is expected to run about two to three weeks.
Supreme Court To Weigh Trump’s Bid To End Birthright Citizenship
The government contends that the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment was intended to grant citizenship to freed slaves and their descendants, not to children of illegal immigrants or temporary visitors.
The U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether President Donald Trump can legally restrict birthright citizenship, taking up a contentious issue that could reshape American immigration law. The justices announced on Dec. 5 that they will hear arguments, most likely in April, with a decision expected by the end of June.
Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office in January, declaring that children born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrants or foreigners on temporary visas would no longer automatically receive citizenship. The administration framed the policy as a measure to curb illegal immigration and “birth tourism,” in which pregnant women travel to the U.S. to secure U.S. citizenship for their children, Politico reports.
The policy, however, was blocked almost immediately by lower courts. Federal judges ruled that the order conflicts with the Constitution’s 14th Amendment and longstanding legal precedent, including the 1898 Supreme Court case “United States v. Wong Kim Ark,” which guarantees citizenship to nearly all individuals born on U.S. soil. Critics argue that no president has the authority to redefine who a citizen is and warn that the policy could create legal chaos, since state and local authorities issue birth certificates without recording parents’ immigration status.
After facing early legal roadblocks, the Trump administration first asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on lower courts’ use of nationwide injunctions, which had blocked the policy nationwide. In June, the Court limited judges’ ability to issue such sweeping orders but didn’t decide on the main issue of birthright citizenship. In September, the administration went back to the high court, this time asking justices to rule directly on whether the executive order itself is constitutional, Reuters reports.
The government contends that the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 after the Civil War, was intended to grant citizenship to freed slaves and their descendants, not to the children of illegal immigrants or temporary visitors. Lawyers for the states challenging the order, along with immigrant rights groups, claim the policy could undermine equal treatment under the law and overturn over 100 years of established practice, according to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History & Culture.
The case stems from a class-action lawsuit challenging Trump’s order, with lower courts ruling in favor of the plaintiffs and stopping the policy from taking effect nationwide. The Supreme Court’s decision will be crucial, as it could settle the legal question once and for all and impact the lives of thousands of children born in the U.S.
Using AI To Predict And Prevent Weather Catastrophe Home Insurance Claims
A revolutionary solution is emerging from the convergence of artificial intelligence machine learning and Big Data.
The insurance industry has reached a critical juncture. With climate change driving an undeniable surge in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, including ferocious hurricanes and devastating wildfires, the traditional actuarial models that have long supported risk assessment are struggling to keep up. This, in turn, is leading to a surge in catastrophic home insurance claims that threaten financial stability and can undermine the fundamental promise of protection that policyholders expect.
However, a revolutionary solution is emerging from the convergence of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and Big Data: a shift from reactive claim processing to proactive risk prediction and prevention. Cheap Insurance explains how AI is transforming the data to defense strategy for insurers, offering unprecedented granularity and speed in anticipating weather catastrophes, leading to faster claims, reduced losses, and ultimately, greater resilience for communities.
A New Era for Home Insurance: From Policy to Protection
The global shift in risk assessment, powered by the AI imperative, has its most immediate and direct impact on homeowners insurance. For policyholders, the core promise of the insurance contract is protection from the unexpected, but the mechanism for delivering this promise is undergoing a revolutionary change.
Historically, homeowners insurance has relied on broad actuarial averages. A home’s premium was determined largely by its ZIP code, the age of the structure, and basic construction type. This approach created inherent inefficiencies: Homeowners who invested in their property’s resilience often subsidized those who did not, and the price of protection struggled to keep pace with hyperlocalized, rapidly escalating climate risk.
The Homeowners Insurance Shift: Risk Scoring and Personalized Premiums
AI-driven data models are introducing unprecedented granularity to home insurance. Instead of a single, area-based risk score, policyholders are now being assessed based on a digital twin of their specific property, using data points previously inaccessible.
Individual hazard scores: AI analyzes specific data like roof material and age, the proximity of defensible space from wildfires, tree overhang, and microtopography for flood risk. This allows insurers to assign a precise, property-specific risk score.
Equitable pricing: This detailed risk analysis translates into fairer, more personalized premiums. Homeowners who invest in mitigation, such as upgrading to impact-resistant roofing or installing water-flow monitoring systems, can see tangible reductions in their cost of coverage, directly incentivizing resilience.
Proactive engagement: The insurance relationship shifts from a transactional contract to an active partnership. Insurers can leverage AI to provide personalized risk notifications, offering homeowners specific, actionable steps to protect their property before a weather event, such as clearing gutters before a heavy rain or trimming trees ahead of hurricane season.
By moving beyond simple averages to complex, property-level intelligence, homeowners insurance is becoming a dynamic, data-driven tool for disaster prevention, not just recovery.
The Rising Tide of Weather Risk and the AI Imperative
The financial toll of weather-related disasters is growing exponentially. Annual insured losses have ballooned into the hundreds of billions, prompting a critical reevaluation of risk management. The challenge lies in the sheer volume, velocity, and variety of data required to accurately model these complex events. This is where AI excels, proving its value across the spectrum of major catastrophic events.
Hail Storms: Granular Risk at the Rooftop Level
Hail is a sneaky, expensive hazard that can hit an area without much warning and with billions of dollars in damage to roofs and vehicles. Historically, insurers quoted risks based on wide geographic classes, such as ZIP codes.
AI for prediction: Advanced AI models make use of the latest satellite imagery, drone footage, and high-resolution weather radar data to predict hail formation with greater precision. Machine learning algorithms are trained on vast datasets of past storm tracks, atmospheric conditions, and geographical features to generate hail fall probability maps at the neighborhood or even property level.
AI for prevention: More importantly, AI assesses the vulnerability of specific properties. By analyzing roof shape, material aging, slope, and prior damage data points invisible to traditional models, AI can determine the true risk of a single home. This precision allows insurers to offer proactive incentives for homeowners to upgrade to impact-resistant roofing or simply perform timely maintenance, turning predicted risk into preventative action.
Hurricanes: Speed and Accuracy in Forecasting
Hurricanes and tropical storms are the most financially destructive natural hazards. Their unpredictable paths and devastating mixture of wind, rain, and storm surge demand a system that can process data faster than the storm can move.
Generative AI in modeling: New models, like those leveraging generative AI techniques, can run thousands of hurricane simulations in minutes, a process that once took hours on supercomputers. This speed is crucial for producing real-time ensemble forecasts that quantify the probability and uncertainty of various storm outcomes. This drastically improves an insurer’s ability to refresh risk scores and manage exposure dynamically.
Targeted preparedness: Following a major event, AI-powered computer vision models analyze post-event drone and aerial imagery to provide instant, street-by-street damage assessments. This enables predictive claims triage, where the most severely impacted policyholders are identified and prioritized for outreach and relief immediately, streamlining a process that historically caused massive delays and customer frustration.
Further reading: The dynamics of tropical systems, especially in high-exposure regions, are constantly evolving. Detailed analysis of localized risk, such as the advanced modeling and impact assessments specifically applied to Florida hurricanes, provides essential context on regional volatility.
Wildfires and Floods: Building Resilience from the Ground Up
The threats posed by wildfires and floods are often interconnected, driven by complex variables like topography, human development, and shifting climate patterns. AI provides the necessary intelligence to untangle these complexities.
Wildfires: Mitigating the Urban Wildland Interface
Where wildfires used to be generally confined to remote forests, they are now impacting developed areas with greater consistency due to years of drought and high winds.
Early detection and prediction: AI models ingest diverse data, including soil moisture levels, topographical maps, wind forecasts, utility infrastructure data, and historical burn patterns, to generate highly accurate Wildfire Risk Scores.
Prescriptive prevention: Insurers are using these scores to drive “firewise” behaviors. AI can recommend specific mitigation steps for a property, such as creating a defensible space, clearing brush, or installing fire-resistant vents. By measuring the reduction in risk achieved by these actions, insurers can justify tailored, fairer premiums for those who invest in resilience.
Floods: Hyperlocal Inundation Mapping
Floods are the most common and costly natural disaster globally, yet insurance coverage gaps remain significant. Traditional flood maps based on historical floodplains are often outdated and fail to account for the impact of intense, localized rainfall events.
Predicting compound flooding: AI is revolutionizing this with hyperlocal inundation models. By integrating real-time rainfall radar, river gauge data, and high-resolution digital elevation models (DEMs), AI can predict compound flooding (the combination of storm surge and heavy rainfall) at a street and even individual house level.
Near real-time alerts: This capability enables insurers to issue near real-time, actionable alerts to policyholders, giving them a critical window to move valuables, set up preventative barriers, or evacuate. For claims, AI-powered systems can instantaneously identify which policies are exposed in the predicted inundation zone, enabling the rapid deployment of resources once the water recedes.
AI’s Role in Streamlining the Claims Experience
Beyond prediction and prevention, AI is fundamentally improving the claims process itself, particularly during the high-stress period following a catastrophic event.
AI Application: Natural Language Processing (NLP)
Function in claims processing: Summarizes claim narratives, flags key details (policy endorsements, complex damages) from unstructured customer communication.
Benefit ofaccelerated triage: Reduces manual review time, ensuring faster initial response to policyholders.
AI Application: Computer Vision (CV)
Function in claims processing: Analyzes drone/satellite imagery and policyholder photos to automatically assess and categorize damage (hail impact, roof integrity).
Benefit ofrapid loss quantification: Speeds up initial damage estimates and reduces the need for immediate physical inspections.
AI Application: Anomaly Detection
Function in claims processing: Scans large volumes of catastrophic claims for patterns indicative of potential fraud or abuse, which often spike after a disaster.
Benefit offraud mitigation: Protects the policy pool while maintaining swift processing for legitimate claims.
The Future of Insured Resilience
The journey from Data to Defense is transforming the insurance industry from a passive payer of losses to an active partner in resilience. AI and ML are not just efficiency tools; they are the core engine for a new generation of homeowners insurance that is more precise, proactive, and equitable.
By utilizing granular data to predict threats, encouraging pre-incident action, and improving the post-catastrophe claims experience, insurers are not only protecting their own financial health but also building stronger, more secure communities in the face of an increasingly unpredictable climate. The age of reactive homeowners insurance is over; the era of AI-driven resilience has begun.
Playwright And ‘Emily In Paris’ Actor Jeremy O. Harris Arrested In Japan For Alleged Drug Smuggling
Customs officers allegedly found 780 milligrams of Ecstasy, also known as MDMA, in his tote bag.
American playwright and actor Jeremy O. Harris, best known for his record-breaking Tony-nominated play “Slave Play,” was arrested for drug smuggling on Nov. 16, 2025 at Naha Airport in Okinawa, Japan, after customs officers allegedly found 780 milligrams of Ecstasy, also known as MDMA, in his tote bag. Harris, 36, has just arrived in Okinawa for sightseeing purposes from the United Kingdom via a layover in Taiwan.
Authorities in Japan immediately detained him on suspicion of violating the country’s strict Narcotics and Psychotropics Control Act. On Dec. 4, Okinawa customs officials filed a criminal complaint with the regional prosecutor’s office, marking the formal start of charging procedures, The Guardian reports.
As of now, he remains in custody at a police station in Tomigusuku city in southern Okinawa. Police have declined to confirm whether he has admitted to the allegations, and there is no public word on whether he has retained a lawyer. Japanese authorities said they did not find any other drugs in his luggage and believe the MDMA was for his personal use. Police are still investigating, according to Okinawa Regional Customs spokesperson Tatsunori Fukuda, The Associated Press reports.
Under Japanese law, even small amounts of illicit drugs can lead to serious consequences, potentially several years in prison if convicted.
Harris’s profile had soared in theatre and television. The 2019 production “Slave Play” was once the most Tony-nominated play in Broadway history. It received 10 nominations. Beyond the stage, he has expanded into television and film, appearing in the popular Netflix series “Emily in Paris,” Variety reports. He is also recognized for writing the 2020 film “Zola,” this year’s films “The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick” and “Erupcja,” and for his role as a producer on the second season of HBO’s “Euphoria.” Harris most recently premiered his play “Spirit of the People” at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts in July.
2026 Housing Market Predictions, According To Redfin
U.S. homebuyers will start to get some relief in 2026. Next year will mark the beginning of a long, slow recovery for the housing market.
U.S. homebuyers will start to get some relief in 2026, with affordability improving as income growth outpaces home-price growth. Next year will mark the beginning of a long, slow recovery for the housing market.
“The Great Housing Reset” will take shape in 2026. It won’t be a quick price correction, and it won’t be a recession. Instead, the Great Housing Reset will be a yearslong period of gradual increases in home sales and normalization of prices as affordability gradually improves. It will start next year, with incomes rising faster than home prices for a prolonged period for the first time since the Great Recession era.
It won’t be enough to make homebuying affordable in the short run for Gen Zers and young families, who will be forced to make tradeoffs, from moving in with roommates or their parents to delaying having children. Politicians on both sides of the aisle will respond to the widespread housing affordability crisis, introducing policies to lower costs, including YIMBY measures and expanded manufactured housing. Some of those proposals will chip away at affordability, but they won’t be an instant fix.
Prediction 1: Mortgage Rates Will Dip to Low-6% Range, One Factor Improving Affordability
Mortgage rates will continue their slow slide but remain high relative to the pandemic era. The 30-year fixed rate will average 6.3% for the entire year, down from its 2025 average of 6.6%.
Redfin Real Estate
A weaker labor market will lead the Fed to cut interest rates in 2026 and bring monetary policy to a more neutral place, which should keep mortgage rates in the low-6% range. But lingering inflation risk and the likelihood that we’ll avoid a recession will keep the Fed from cutting more than the markets have already priced in. That’s why rates may dip below 6% occasionally, but not for any meaningful period.
The Fed will change leadership in 2026, but that is also unlikely to bring significantly lower mortgage rates, as long-term rates—like mortgage rates—are set by bond markets.
Prediction 2: Homebuying Affordability Will Improve As Wages Grow Faster Than Prices
Redfin expects the median U.S. home-sale price to rise 1% year over year in 2026. Prices will tick up only marginally because still-high mortgage rates and prices, along with a weaker economy, will curb demand.
Homebuying will become more affordable because home prices will grow more slowly than wages for a sustained period for the first time since the aftermath of the financial crisis. The small price increase combined with mortgage rates dipping lower than they were in 2025 means monthly housing payments will grow more slowly than wages, too.
Redfin Real Estate
Slow demand has historically caused prices to fall. Redfin doesn’t expect that to happen in 2026 because sellers will pull back, too. That’s largely because many would-be home sellers have enough equity to avoid falling behind on their mortgage payments. Mortgage-delinquency rates are low, and most homeowners will be able to wait until the housing market further recovers to list their home.
In the past, the same economic forces limiting homebuying demand also forced many homeowners into distressed sales, but today’s homeowners tend to have good credit, a lot of equity, and low rates, putting less pressure on potential sellers than on buyers.
The improvement in affordability will be significant enough to lure back some house hunters, but homebuying will remain out of reach for a lot of sidelined buyers. Gen Zers and young families will feel the pinch of still-high costs, with many of them opting for nontraditional living situations to afford housing.
Prediction 3: Home Sales Will Rise 3%
Redfin predicts that sales of existing homes will end 2026 up 3% from 2025, with sales coming in at an annualized rate of 4.2 million.
Redfin Real Estate
Redfin expects a stronger spring homebuying season in 2026 because mortgage rates were sitting around 6.8% during the spring of 2025—meaningfully higher than the 6.3% rates we’re predicting this year.
Sales will increase only slightly because affordability will improve just enough to lure some on-the-fence buyers. Many house hunters will remain priced out and/or limited by a stalled labor market, including some Americans who have lost their job—or fear losing their job—as AI takes a toll on the white-collar workforce.
Prediction 4: Rents Will Rise As Demand For Apartments Rises and Supply Falls
Demand for apartments will rise as supply falls in 2026, leading to rising rents in many metro areas. Nationwide, rents will rise about 2% to 3% year over year by the end of 2026, roughly the pace of inflation.
Apartment construction has slowed from its 2021-2022 surge and is expected to continue slowing, meaning fewer apartments are hitting the market and there’s more competition for each one. At the same time, many Americans are renting instead of buying because down payments and monthly mortgage payments are expensive. However, in some areas like South Florida and Southern California, tightened immigration enforcement is likely to put a lid on rental-demand growth.
Prediction 5: High Housing Costs Will Reshape Households, With More Roommates and Fewer Babies
The improvement in affordability won’t be enough to immediately boost homeownership for young families. Gen Z and millennial homeownership rates flatlined last year, which will likely continue.
Household makeup will shift further away from the nuclear family, with more adult children living with their parents and vice versa. Redfin also expects more friends to pool resources to buy homes together, often with prenup-style agreements. The portion of young adults living with their parents is down from its pandemic peak, but is historically high. Roughly 6% of Americans who struggled to afford housing as of mid-2025 moved in with their parents, and another 6% moved in with roommates; those shares will increase next year.
Redfin also expects high homebuying costs to make families smaller. The fertility rate has been gradually declining for years, and it’s expected to continue falling.
More families will renovate their homes to comfortably accommodate multiple generations. In a November Thumbtack survey of more than 100 home renovation professionals, multigenerational features, like separate suites for extended family, were the most commonly cited response when asked to predict the most popular design trend of 2026. Picture a garage that’s converted into a second primary suite for adult children moving back in with their parents. Redfin agents in places like Los Angeles and Nashville say more homeowners are planning to tailor their homes to share with extended family.
Prediction 6: Affordability Crisis Will Unite Policymakers Across Party Lines
Voters in the November election—especially young ones—made it clear that lowering housing costs is their top priority. Not only are sale prices and mortgage rates high, but the total cost of homeownership is rising due to skyrocketing insurance premiums and the likelihood that utility costs will surge due to large-scale AI-driven data centers.
President Donald Trump may declare a national housing emergency to help more Americans afford homes, and other politicians on both sides of the aisle will introduce more policies to help alleviate the housing affordability crisis. The Yes In My Backyard (YIMBY) movement will pick up more supporters across party lines, opening the door for initiatives that increase housing supply: A bipartisan congressional caucus has already proposed legislation, including the Yes in My Backyard Act, and the Build More Housing Near Transit Act is making its way through the government.
Other housing proposals will include zoning changes to make it easier to build accessory dwelling units and home additions. Redfin also expects more states to tackle the housing crisis plaguing their rural residents; some will mirror New York’s focus on building manufactured and modular homes in rural parts of the state.
Sensible policies may start to chip away at the housing affordability crisis, and quixotic proposals like the 50-year mortgage may capture the attention of politicians who want a quick housing fix. But the only thing that will make homes more affordable is time. Housing costs soared much faster than earnings during the pandemic, and while wages will start outpacing home prices next year, it will take about five years for the housing market to return to a semblance of normal.
Prediction 7: More Americans Will Refi and Remodel
Redfin expects U.S. mortgage refinance volume to increase more than 30% annually in 2026, ending the year at a total of $670 billion. More Americans will refinance largely because 20% of mortgaged homeowners have a rate above 6%, and those who bought recently with an elevated rate are chomping at the bit to bring their monthly payments down.
Redfin also anticipates more homeowners to tap home equity to fund renovations. Strong home-value appreciation over the last several years means many homeowners have sizable equity; the typical mortgaged homeowner had $181,000 in untapped equity as of mid-2025. That allows homeowners to take out a home equity line of credit or do a cash-out refinance to fund remodels. For many people, renovating their current home is more appealing and less costly than moving.
Prediction 8: NYC Outskirts, Great Lakes Region Will Be Hot … Zoom Towns Like Nashville and Austin Will Not
Areas close to New York City will attract people who need to commute to the office. The Midwest and Great Lakes regions have wide appeal because they’re fairly affordable and provide relatively safe havens against climate-related events like wildfires and floods. Small and midsized cities are luring recent graduates with affordable rents and opportunities to build stable careers in blue-collar fields, as AI replaces some entry-level white-collar jobs.
The housing markets most likely to heat up in 2026 are NYC suburbs (including Long Island, the Hudson Valley, Northern New Jersey, and Fairfield County, Connecticut), Syracuse, New York; Cleveland, Ohio; St. Louis, Missouri; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Madison, Wisconsin.
On the flip side, homes will languish on the market in coastal Florida and throughout Texas due partly to natural disasters and surging insurance costs—and partly to pandemic-era remote workers moving back to where their office is located. People who need to sell may be forced to take a loss.
The housing markets most likely to cool down in 2026 are Nashville, Tennessee, San Antonio and Austin in Texas, and Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, and Miami in Florida.
Prediction 9: Climate Migration Will Go Hyperlocal
As climate-driven events like hurricanes and wildfires become more frequent and intense, climate will become a more popular reason to move. But people won’t necessarily make big moves, like from coastal Florida to the Midwest.
Instead, Redfin expects some people living in especially vulnerable neighborhoods to move to less vulnerable parts of the same metro area. For example, Los Angeles Redfin agents say some people plan to leave places like the hills surrounding Malibu or the Pacific Palisades (or not return to places like the Palisades and Altadena after the 2025 wildfires) in favor of flat coastal neighborhoods like Santa Monica or Long Beach. That way, they can keep their job and lifestyle but live in a less vulnerable home. Many people are also shying away from building, buying, and hanging onto homes in climate-risky neighborhoods because insurance costs are sky-high.
This local climate migration could exacerbate inequality. People who can’t afford to leave a vulnerable place like Altadena will be left behind, with a lower local tax base for making climate-resilient investments in the future.
Prediction 10: NAR Will Let Local MLSs Call the Shots, Sparking Consolidation
It’s time-consuming, confusing, and inconsistent for the National Association of Realtors (NAR) to write rules for 500 local multiple listing services (MLSs). NAR will step out of the role of industry rule maker and let local branches create rules about how homes are listed in their markets, something that has already started happening.
NAR, for its part, will focus on advocacy. Putting local MLSs in the driver’s seat will accelerate consolidation with many smaller branches joining bigger networks. This creation of larger, regional MLSs will bring clearer rules, faster innovation, cleaner data, and better experiences for real estate brokers, home sellers, and homebuyers.
Prediction 11: AI Will Become a Real Estate Matchmaker
Generative AI will increasingly help people decide where to move, identifying cities, towns, neighborhoods, and homes that fit users’ budgets and lifestyle criteria. Instead of a typical geographic search, homebuyers will search for precisely what they want and have a back-and-forth conversation with search sites, giving feedback to tailor their search results.
These tools will allow house hunters to find homes with niche features. For instance, Redfin agents expect wellness features to become a defining feature of next year’s high-end housing market; generative AI will help luxury house hunters find homes equipped with advanced air-filtration systems, whole-house water purification, and amenities like meditation rooms and cold-plunge pools.
AI will transform the real estate profession, too, by powering tools that help real estate agents pinpoint the right moment to connect with a customer—and the perfect home to recommend based on the buyer’s preferences.
Russell Wilson And Ciara List Their Massive $54.9M California Estate, With A Football Field And Recording Studio
If they land a buyer at that price, it would become the most expensive home ever sold in the area.
NFL quarterback Russell Wilson and his R&B recording artist wife, Ciara, have recently listed their California home for $54.9 million.
According to Realtor, the property, which sits atop 9 acres in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., has been put up for sale and is listed by Brian Guiltinan of The Guiltinan Group. Based on the asking price, if the couple can get that amount, it would be the highest price a house in that area has sold for. A beachfront compound in the area recently sold for $50 million.
When the Wilsons purchased the estate in 2021, they paid $14.5 million; therefore, the profit they would realize would be almost four times that amount.
The house is located within a small gated community near the Del Mar Country Club. After purchasing the home, the football player had a large equestrian arena on the property converted into a football field. He and his teammates have used it to practice when not at the stadium.
The 30,000-square-foot property is affectionately known as Amor Estate. Amenities for the house include a professional recording studio, where, of course, his wife surely used for her line of work. There is a fitness center with an included sauna and a cold plunge with spa facilities: a club-style game room and a billiards lounge with a full bar. The house has a fireplace and a glam room with a walk-in closet with glass doors.
There was a pool on the outside, as well as a waterslide, a pizza oven, a game pavilion with a candy bar, and a sports court. Guests could make themselves comfortable in the two-bedroom guesthouse, and a 10-car garage was on site.
The couple no longer occupies the residence as the family moved to the East Coast when Wilson signed with the Pittsburgh Steelers last year. They stayed east when the quarterback signed to play for the New York Giants this season.
Gauff earned $31 million—$23 million of which came off the court through partnerships with brands like New Balance, Baker Tilly, Bose, Head, Rolex, Mercedes-Benz, and Chase Bank.
She launched Coco Gauff Enterprises in April with talent firm WME to manage her career, following seven years with Roger Federer’s Team8 agency.
WME holds no ownership stake in the business.
Gauff’s ranking, ahead of fellow WTA top-three players Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek, underscores tennis as the only major professional sport where women’s pay closely rivals men’s.
While WTA Tour prize money generally lags behind the ATP, earnings are equal at Grand Slams and Masters 1000 events. Off the court, six women earned $10 million or more from sponsorships, compared with four active men. Tennis players also dominated Sportico’s overall list of 15 highest-paid athletes, with only five coming from other sports.
Other notable mentions include Naomi Osaka, who pulled in $12.5 million in combined salary, prize money, and endorsements, with her prize winnings placing her ahead of Simone Biles, who earned $11 million from endorsements, and Venus Williams at $10 million in endorsements and $219,000 in salary and prize winnings.
Osaka climbed from No. 59 to No. 16 in the WTA rankings in 2025, bouncing back after a quiet 2024 following the birth of her daughter. Her rise included a run to the U.S. Open semifinals. Williams only competed in three events in 2025, but won her first singles match since 2023 and reached the U.S. Open doubles quarterfinals, boosting her prize money to its highest level since 2021.
Olympic champion Biles, still on a break from competitive gymnastics, recently released her fifth Athleta collection and endorses brands including Audemars Piguet, Lilly, and Nulo Pet Food. Her Netflix documentary, Simone Biles Rising, earned an Emmy, and she is partnering with Playmakers Group to launch a new restaurant, Taste of Gold, in her hometown of Houston.
