🌞 Happy Monday!

🌧️ Today's weather: Partly sunny then chance of showers and thunderstorms, with a high of 86 and a low of 75.

🎶 Sounds like: "I Wish I Didn't Waste Your Time" by Thundercat, who is performing Friday at the Miami Beach Bandshell.

🎂 Happy birthday to our member Rebecca Rotolante!

🚨 Situational awareness: We're at our annual retreat today-Wednesday, so we're taking the opportunity to highlight stories from our colleagues around the country over the next few days.

Today’s newsletter is 999 words — a 4-minute read.

Miami house hunters, circle Nov. 29–Dec. 5 on your calendars.

Why it matters: That may be the best week of the year to buy a home, according to a new Realtor.com report.

By the numbers: Nationwide, shoppers could find up to 32% more homes for sale than at the start of the year and face less competition than in spring and summer, per the real estate site.

• Plus, listing prices typically fall around 4% from their seasonal high — potentially saving buyers $14,000 on a median-priced home.

The big picture: "Home shoppers heading into fall will find an opportunity that has been hard to come by in recent years: more choices and less urgency," Realtor.com senior economist Hannah Jones said in a press release.

Yes, but: Mortgage rates hitting 7% and stubbornly high home prices continue to sideline many.

• U.S. existing-home sales fell 2% in August, down 1.2% from a year ago, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Zoom in: The best week to buy depends on where you live.

• In New York and Milwaukee, it's Sept. 6–12, while more than a dozen major metros, including Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Denver and Philadelphia, match the national Sept. 27–Oct. 3 window.

The fine print: Realtor.com analyzed several years of seasonal housing data, including listing prices and inventory levels, to determine the best week to buy a home nationally and in the 50 largest U.S. metros.

• Mortgage rates weren't included.

Tell a house hunter

It very much doesn't feel like fall outside, but pumpkin spice latte is back and it's got competition.

The big picture: Caramel apple, brown sugar and maple lattes are all on the rise — even though PSL has powered fall menus for two decades.

The latest: McDonald's dropped its longtime PSL and instead rolled out caramel apple pie coffee drinks this season, saying: "Step aside pumpkin spice, there's a new flavor in town!"

Caramel, apple and cinnamon are the three most-ordered fall flavors on DoorDash, ahead of pumpkin, according to data shared with Axios.

Other flavors spicing things up:

• Brown sugar is DoorDash's breakout fall flavor of 2026, with orders up 58% year over year.
• Maple latte searches on Yelp rose 65% in July from a year earlier, while searches for "salted maple latte" jumped 591%.
• Cardamom, peanut butter and hazelnut are also among Google's top-trending latte searches.

Go deeper

🤑 FIU faculty are questioning a decision to allow president Jeanette Nuñez to take home a $400,000 bonus package while the university pauses raises and offers buyouts to other employees. (Miami Herald)

✌️ UM jumped nine spots to become Florida's second-highest-ranked school in the U.S. News & World Report's 2027 rankings of all American colleges and universities. (Miami Herald)

• FIU rose to become the fifth-highest-ranked in Florida.

🚊 Brightline will continue running its trains as normal after its parent entities filed for bankruptcy. (WLRN)

• The private commuter rail reached a restructuring agreement that would allow it to reorganize its billions in debt while receiving new funding.

Spirit Halloween is haunting the shells of former big-box stores again this fall as it opens 1,500 locations nationwide.

The big picture: The stores appear and vanish each fall, so finding this year's Spirit often means relaying directions with neighbors in retail shorthand: "Where the old Party City used to be."

By the numbers: Of the locations analyzed by Axios, 153 — just over 1 in 10 — were labeled "Former Joann" stores in Spirit's locator.

• Joann closed all of its fabric and craft stores in 2025.
• Former Big Lots stores ranked second with 103 locations, followed by Party City with 100. Both chains shed hundreds of locations after bankruptcy.

Zoom out: Spirit, which bills itself as North America's largest Halloween retailer, relies on temporary leases to transform vacant storefronts into seasonal shops.

• The arrangements bring property owners exposure and a few months of rent while they search for long-term tenants.

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Brach's candy has made its iconic fall candy wearable.

The big picture: Burning leaves, pumpkin pie and, now, candy corn. The Chicago-based candy conglomerate's latest invention banks on the waxy, orange, yellow and white treat being one of fall's evocative scents.

Driving the news: The first-ever Ode to Candy Corn perfume is only available Oct. 1 at 7pm for $22.

State of play: The waxy treat can be polarizing. The super sweet little wedges prove addictive for some candy lovers, while other trick-or-treaters are less than jazzed when it shows up in their bag.

Yes, but: Brach's reports it was the No. 1 seller in the seasonal candy aisle last year.

Dig in: Ode to Candy Corn starts buttery, then a caramelized sugar scent sets in, punctuated by vanilla.

The verdict: A fun treat, especially for a young person who wants perfume but isn't ready for Chanel No. 5 or Drakkar Noir.

Share this scent

😃 Sommer and Martin are on their way to Atlanta to hang with our Axios Local colleagues for a few days to yap endlessly about local journalism and how to best serve our amazing readers.

This newsletter was edited by Jeff Weiner.