Median home prices just reached a record high last month of $419,300 in the US, according to the National Association of Realtors.
Part of the reason for those high prices is that people have been holding onto their homes — and phones and cars! — longer. They’re doing so in part because they can’t afford new homes at those prices, which in turn drives prices up even more.
If you’ve already made plans for a Mother’s Day gift in advance of this Sunday, congratulations. But if alarm bells are suddenly ringing, consider this a gentle reminder that, like a sizable share of the US population this time of year often does, you can still scrape together some last-minute flowers for the woman who carried you for nine months.
Data from Google Trends reveals that searches for “same day flower delivery” spike in the US in May every year, when Mother’s Day takes place. As we noted last February, the same query also gains traction around Valentine’s Day.
This year, however, it appears that searches for last-minute flowers have remained elevated in the last two months after the usual peak in February — with the search interest this April actually exceeding that seen around Cupid’s Day.
Honestly, we’re not sure why searches are spiking a little early. One explanation might be that Passover and Easter have overlapped at the start of April, and Americans wanted to celebrate with some flowers. Maybe it’s a host of Claude bots that are now running errands for AI-obsessed execs — or perhaps Americans are just impulse-buying some seasonal spring blooms after an unusually warm March, without a particular occasion.
The ideal place to start a career might be less about prestige and more about where the paycheck stretches furthest.
