Zillow wants to help millennials buy their first homes with RealEstate.com

By Lulu Chang May 2, 2017

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Becoming a homeowner may not be such a pipe dream after all, at least not with RealEstate.com in your back pocket. On May 2, online real estate marketplace Zillow Group announced the launch of a new tool aimed at millennials. Aptly named RealEstate.com, the site is heralded as a “new consumer real estate brand tailored to first-time home buyers,” which allows potential customers to search for homes based on critical criteria like monthly payment and down payment amounts.

While young home buyers may be interested in whether or not a building is pet friendly or how big a home’s master bedroom may be, the top concern is still budget, according to the 2016 Zillow Group Consumer Housing Trends Report. Be that as it may, Zillow’s study suggests that younger, more inexperienced home buyers are almost twice as likely to overspend than repeat buyers, putting them in sticky situations that could preclude the possibility of, well, becoming a repeat buyer.

But RealEstate.com hopes to solve that. The site gives interested parties an “All-In Monthly Price” for each and every home, also providing estimated expenses that could contribute to the overall monthly spend, including principal and interest, property taxes, homeowner’s insurance, HOA fees and utilities, and closing costs. Moreover, all this information can be seen in English, Spanish, or Chinese.

“RealEstate.com is designed to equip the next generation of home buyers to find a home that suits their needs and budget,” said Jeremy Wacksman, CMO at Zillow Group. “We know from our research that affordability is a huge driver for home buyers, and that first-time buyers are more likely to go over budget. By tailoring the home search experience on RealEstate.com around a home’s monthly cost, we hope to make the home buying experience less daunting and even more transparent for first-time buyers.”

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Gaming

Report finds millennials want to use cryptocurrency in their favorite games

Bitcoin

A recent report published by Worldwide Asset Exchange states that millennials want to see cryptocurrencies become a normal part of gaming. The report stems from 1,000 gamers located in North America that have already purchased, sold, and traded virtual items online at least once.
According to the report, 75 percent of the 1,000 gamers surveyed want to exchange virtual goods into currency they can use to buy and sell items on other platforms. Two-thirds of those surveyed want more opportunities to use cryptocurrency within popular gaming networks, such as Xbox Live and Sony's PlayStation Network.
The survey found that 80 percent of the millennial participants are interested in using cryptocurrency to make transactions within their favorite games. A larger 87 percent have never even attempted to use digital coins in games and online gaming networks. For those that have bought, sold, and traded virtual goods, 64 percent of those gamers feel the process needs major improvement.
"The virtual gaming items market is plagued by high fees and exchange rates, rampant fraud, inefficient intermediaries and slow transaction times -- issues that could be solved by the widespread adoption of cryptocurrency," the company says.
Based on the survey, 55 percent already own some form of cryptocurrency. Meanwhile, a recent London Block Exchange Report claims that a mere five percent of the entire millennial population owns cryptocurrency. That seems to indicate millennial gamers will likely purchase, sell, and trade digital currency more so than the non-gamer millennials. One in three millennials is expected to own cryptocurrency by the end of 2018.
Finally, millennials interested in using cryptocurrency within games rate ease of use as the biggest lure followed by the platform's heightened security and low exchange rates.
Right now, many games offer their own currency to buy digital goods in exchange for real-world cash. For instance, by investing in Silver for Destiny 2, you can purchase cosmetic items such as weapon ornaments, emotes, armor shaders, and so on. In The Elder Scrolls Online, gamers purchase Crowns to buy virtual goods like pets, houses, mounts, and even additional content.
On a network level, Microsoft had a virtual currency system for Xbox Live for years, called Microsoft Points or Xbox Live Points, but retired its virtual coins for real-world cash/credit in August 2013. But there is a good chance both Microsoft and Sony could jump on the cryptocurrency bandwagon given the rising popularity of digital coin investments.
What is missing from the equation is a digital currency for use within any game. "The global nature of the online gaming community coupled with the tech-savviness of the millennial generation means the adoption rate of cryptocurrencies within gaming should only increase with time," Worldwide Asset eXchange states.
Worldwide Asset Exchange (WAX) provides a global, decentralized marketplace for virtual goods. Customers can sell any virtual asset on their marketplace in return for WAX Tokens that can be exchanged for cryptocurrency. The platform relies on a blockchain providing a real-time catalog of items.

Smart Home

Build.com’s In-Home Preview lets you test-drive your appliances in AR

Build.com

You can't exactly take your furniture for a test drive (not yet, at least), but the next best thing just may be the introduction of augmented reality to a growing number of home improvement platforms. The latest to jump on the AR bandwagon is Build.com, an exclusively online home retailer that is not opting for a brick-and-mortar experience, but just may be the next best thing. With "In-Home Preview," the company is leveraging Apple's ARKit development platform, and promises to "take users beyond just visualizing how a product will look in their home." In fact, folks can now interact (virtually, of course) with various appliances, turning a faucet on and off, moving handles, and more.

It's a pretty nifty feature that allows you to remodel your home with a bit more information than you might've had previously. For example, if you're looking to revamp your kitchen, you can scroll through Build's iOS app, and select a faucet that best matches your existing appliances. But not only will you be able to "see" what it looks like once installed, you'll also be able to play around with it, adjusting the water temperature (if you turn it to hot, you'll see steam), changing water flow and spray patterns, and more.

Cars

Heetch wants to help Europeans get home from the late party safely

heetch is back

Just as Uber faces down the end of its tenure in one European nation, another ride-hailing service is looking at a renaissance. If you're one of the few people who remembers Heetch, you may be wondering where it's been for the last several months. And if you've never heard of the company at all, it's just as well. The company is effectively starting over. Originally founded in 2014, the startup was all but shut down in March of this year when it "failed to convince [the court] of the legality of its business." After a fine and being charged with illegally operating a taxi business, Heetch is back at it again.

The company's previous legal troubles are seemingly of no concern to investors, who just pledged $12 million to the French firm to start anew. So now, six months after its initial skirmish with the law, Heetch is back with the exact same proposition (but hopefully, more careful legal terms). Heetch differentiated itself from the plethora of other ride hailing services by offering rides in the latter part of the day, specifically after 8 pm. The target demographic is younger riders who are looking to get from Paris to the suburbs (or vice versa), and may not have a car themselves.