The First Good News of 2025

Let's kick off the year with some optimism and positive headlines!

What better way to kick off 2025 than with GOOD NEWS FRIDAY headlines featuring lots of positive progress in the world? You’re going to love this week’s items.

But first, register for my free webinar. It will jump-start your success this year plus I’m giving away a FREE YEAR of my upgraded newsletter (worth $150) to THREE lucky attendees!

Want a great book on the monumental good news of our era? Grab a copy of: Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future, by Johan Norberg:

“Despite what we hear on the news and from many authorities, the great story of our era is that we are witnessing the greatest improvement in global living standards ever to take place. Poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy, child labour and infant mortality are falling faster than at any other time in human history.”

First Real Estate Industry Good News for 2025

• Pending home sales jumped 2.2% in November, for the fourth month, according to NAR.

• Existing home sales rose 6.1% over November 2023, the largest year-over-year gain since June 2021 (+23%).

• Buyer showings stayed above pre-pandemic levels at 107.4 says Showingtime (100=Jan 2014).

• The Wall Street Journal reported 555,000 unmarried couples bought a home before getting married, up 46%; 11% of all buyers placed investing in the home ahead of wedding costs.

• Sales of new construction in November 2024 rose 5.9% over October.

Other Good News in the Economy

• November New Business Applications rose 5.5% says the Commerce Department

• The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reported GDP hit 3.1% in Q3 of 2024

In Health and Science Good News

• A new drug Lenacapavir lowered the risk of HIV infection by 96%

• Drinking coffee daily may prolong lifespan by 2 years, says MedicalNewsToday

• California scientists made a nano-tool that diagnoses illness from a single molecule

• A 2-mile underwater tunnel in China turned a 1-hour bridge trip into a 5-minute trip, using 18 tubes of continuously-poured concrete containing 6 lanes for traffic.

Definitely Worth Mentioning Good News

• A sponge made of squid and cotton offers a low-cost, scalable solution to remove microplastics from water, say Chinese scientists, with almost 99.9% efficacy.

• Children in France now lock their phones away during school, part of a ‘digital pause’ experiment at 200 schools.

• The UK launched a 24-hour mental health line; dialing 111 at any time reaches health professionals who can set up assessments and dispatch crisis teams.

• An AI-enhanced finger-prick test predicts Parkinson’s disease seven years earlier than the onset of symptoms, researchers in the UK and Germany discovered.

No Tiny Deed Goes Unrecognized

Home builders, REALTORS, Lowe’s, and Incredible Tiny Homes of Tennessee joined forces to build over 100 tiny homes for residents who lost everything in the wake of Hurricane Helene.

“The plan is to build and deliver 67 tiny homes to flood victims just in time to make sure they have a home for the holidays and deliver an additional 33 by early January,” said Lowes. Each tiny home is built on wheels, sleeps four people, and features heat, electricity, a kitchen, a bathroom, and furnishings.

The owners of Tiny Homes, Amanda Hayes and Randy Jones watched as the floods ravaged their hometown. “Seeing all the devastation around us… people camping out and leaving everything… We knew immediately that we wanted to be able to offer to the flood victims somehow, some way” to survive.

Once they got started, the entire community joined in the effort, including funding from Lowe’s, support from the Home Builders Association of Greater Charlotte, builders like Kelly McArdle Construction, and Lowe’s volunteers alongside Habitat for Humanity, Advance Roofing and Exteriors and members of the Home Builders Association and other local organizations.

Personally, I watched REALTOR friends in the area and around the country jump into action as well, with emergency and sustained efforts over the past few months. From big projects to hundreds of tiny donations, it’s a powerful reminder that doing a GOOD DEED is the norm, not the exception in people everywhere.

So, welcome to 2025! And remember that it’s not only on FRIDAYS that we find plenty of GOOD NEWS to celebrate, as we live the spirit every day of a HAPPY New Year.