As we close out the week, Wall Street is still buzzing at the prospect of lower interest rates, even as other economic indicators like unemployment and inflation flash red. The housing market also remains wonky, as mortgage rates keep both buyers and sellers feeling stuck.

In today’s newsletter, we’ll visit suburban Houston, where chaotic trade policy and immigration crackdowns have had knock-on effects on a once-booming market for new homes. Later, we’ll look at a Hollywood spending spree and answer your questions about the end of a tariff-free shipping loophole. Have a great weekend!  

— Tony Wagner and Virginia K. Smith, newsletter editors

In Atascocita, a well-off suburban community northeast of Houston, 47-year-old Jackie Chandler is trying to build her dream home. 

“We have a really tight knit sense of community here. We know all of our neighbors. They know all of us. They've seen our kids grow up,” she told Marketplace’s Elizabeth Trovall. 

Far from the traffic-filled highways of the city, it’s quiet. A bald eagle flies overhead. 

Chandler loves it so much here, this is the second time she’s building a new home, for her husband and two kids. They started building their first home in 2016 — the house is just down the street from their new build. 

This time, they wanted something new and a little smaller.

“We are in the very early stages of construction,” she said, standing in a grassy lot filled with a large dirt-packed rectangle. It’s called “the pad,” where the house will be built. Despite being covered in dozens of loads of dirt, it’s still not tall enough.

“It is still 25 loads too short,” she said. 

Construction has barely started and they’re already at least two weeks behind where they thought they’d be. 

Chandler said she wasn’t prepared for how much had changed when it comes to building a new house. The process has been riddled with uncertainty. 

“When we started getting estimates back, it was really eye opening to us that — because there was a lot of uncertainty about tariffs, and now you're seeing enforcement of immigration… ICE and all this stuff happening — there was a lot of uncertainty about cost,” she said. 

She and her dad, who both work in construction, were surprised. 

“Where we thought maybe the budget would be $15,000 for a line item, it was coming in at $28,000,” Chandler said. 

She said tradespeople would hold off on quoting her for jobs, with prices and labor being so unstable. Instead they’d push it off, telling her to call back when she gets her framing up and then they could give her an estimate. 

“You can't do that when you're trying to plan to build a house,” she said. “You need to build your budget and you need to get everybody lined up.”

They had to take out a new construction loan. After adding up the estimates, it’s costing them more to build a smaller home on the same street.

“We were $100 dollars a square foot there,” she said. “This house is probably $200 a square foot.”

And after the home is built, Chandler isn’t sure how long they’ll stay there. 

During this process, the family has been considering a drastic option: moving to Mexico. 

It’s been about a year since new-ish Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol announced a new strategy to turn the chain around. We wanted to know: How much of that plan has been achieved? Are workers noticing anything different? Workers at some 600 stores voted to unionize in recent years, and are still negotiating a first contract. Listen to Eisen’s view from the ground, and read Starbucks’ response.