THE BYTE

Welcome to the BYTE, where we serve up the latest home and tech news from the last week for you to sink your teeth into.

This week we’re taking a BYTE out of December 2016, two companies trying to help real estate, the best jobs, the future of coffee, and loads of new tech from last year. Dig in!

Generally

What Are The New Numbers?

12% more new homes were sold in 2016 than 2015. But, December new home sales dropped 11.7%.

Taking The Good With Maybe Not So The Bad

The numbers have finally been crunched on the 2016 year and overall it is good news! New home sales in 2016 exceed 2015 by 60,000 homes. Home availability was pretty tight in 2016 which was the major factor in more new homes being bought and bought quickly. So what happened in December? December broke a three month streak of gains and was the lowest in sales for the 7 months prior. However experts say there is no need to worry December is usually slow and the cold weather and increase in national volatility were most likely the causes. Most people agree that December was kind of a fluke and expect that 2017 is going to be a good year in housing.

Helping Hands

Two Grow

CoreLogic and Redfin both made some announcements this week. CoreLogic is trying to help real estate professionals stay informed. CoreLogic launched a new app for iPhones called RealQuest that helps get detailed property info, transaction history and data on neighborhood sales. The app is said to cover 3,100 counties and contain 99.9% of all U.S. property records. Redfin announced it is joining the mortgage game, enter Redfin Mortgage. Loans will start in “the first half of 2017” and only in Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. They hope to make a digital process of the entire buying process for buyers.

Take Notes

Who Works Now-A-Days? 

Glassdoor released their “Top 50 Best Jobs in America” list. Topping the list is Data Scientist with the gold medal followed by DevOps Engineer, Data Engineer, Tax Manager, and Analytics Manager. The report is created based off of number of job openings, salary and overall job satisfaction rating. Cue many people’s career changes.

The Coffee Game Is Changing

Starbucks is adding a new feature to its app where customers can order and pay for their drinks just by speaking to Siri or Alexa. The AI and bot powered feature is Starbucks’ attempt to jump on the voice computing train. In similar news of robots taking people’s jobs, a coffee shop in San Fran, Café X, just opened and its main employee is a large robot arm that makes and serves all the coffee.

2016 Was Kind Of Cool

Kickstarter is home to many new and innovative products and their new 2016 in review site shows you just how cool people are. You are able to click through and easily see the amazing projects and funded campaigns that made the highlight reel. This is the perfect stop to be inspired on a Monday.

Totally Unrelated

Bacon Me Crazy

An inexpensive, amazing tech innovation has been released to make your bacon cravings that much easier to satisfy.

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