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Selling to Buy a Bigger Home? It May Be Rough in This Hot Market

Green Finance Goes Mainstream, Lining Up Trillions Behind Global Energy Transition

Chinese banks raise mortgage rates, helping to rein in runaway prices that puts housing affordability further out of reach

Mark Levitan, Who Measured the True Face of Poverty, Dies at 73

He came up with a more realistic threshold, changing the way New York City determines who is impoverished and persuading the Obama White House to follow suit.Mark Levitan, who was instrumental in providing New York City officials with a more realistic measure of poverty, and in persuading the federal government to follow suit, died on Thursday at a hospital in Manhattan. He was 73.His son, Dan, said the cause was complications of leukemia. Dr. Levitan lived in Brooklyn.The results of Dr. Levitan’s alternative method of measurement were nothing to boast about: In 2006, the first year that the new formula was applied, the overall poverty rate in the city leapt by more than four percentage points compared with the official benchmark, and among older people it soared to a stunning 32 percent from 18.1 percent.But by calculating the added benefits of tax credits, food stamps and housing subsidies to poor people while also taking into account the local costs of rent, transportation, health care and child care, economists, using Dr. Levitan’s methodology, could also calibrate which anti-poverty programs were doing the most good for which group.In 2011, for example, Dr. Levitan found that food stamps and other benefits helped keep

Apple CEO Tim Cook faces sharp questioning from judge in Epic Games trial

Tim Cook, chief executive officer of Apple Inc., center, arrives at U.S. district court in Oakland, California, on Friday, May 21, 2021.Nina Riggio | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesApple CEO Tim Cook faced sharp questioning on Friday from Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers about Apple’s App Store business model at the end of his testimony in the Epic Games v. Apple trial.The questioning gave a preview into Judge Rogers’ thinking before she decides whether Epic Games’ argument is strong enough to force Apple to allow it to install alternative app stores on the iPhone and avoid the App Store’s 30% fee on in-app purchases.Rogers asked Cook what his problem was with allowing iPhone users the choice of a lower fee, specifically for games. Cook said that users have a choice between iPhones or Android devices.She followed up by asking about whether Apple has a problem with giving users information to get the same in-app purchases through a web browser, bypassing Apple’s 30% fee, suggesting a compromise where Apple would allow a company like Epic Games to link app users to a web browser to make transactions, instead of forcing them to use Apple’s in-app purchase mechanism.”The gaming industry seems to be generating

Microsoft CEO Nadella says power in the workplace is not to be abused

Satya Nadella, chief executive officer of Microsoft Corp., speaks during the company’s annual shareholders meeting in Bellevue, Washington, on Nov. 29, 2017.David Ryder | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesMicrosoft CEO Satya Nadella said Friday that executives should not abuse the power they are given. It was some of the first commentary coming from the top of the company after media reports said Bill Gates, Microsoft’s co-founder and original CEO, had pursued an employee in 2000.The company hasn’t had much controversy since Nadella took over as CEO in 2014. He’s generally been seen as a thoughtful leader who has helped to reinvigorate the company in the highly competitive technology industry. Only rarely has he had to deal with complexity. Now, he’s having to confront a challenge brought on by his predecessor with actions from two decades ago, when he was one of many vice presidents.”Overall, the power dynamic in the workplace is not something that can be abused in any form, and the most important thing is for us to make sure that everybody is comfortable in being able to raise any issues they see, and for us to be able to fully investigate it,” Nadella told Jon Fortt on CNBC’s “TechCheck.”In

Verizon and T-Mobile are building digital bundles that AT&T hasn't matched

In this articleVZTMUSTSOPA ImagesAs consumers deal with a deluge of streaming video services, an obvious solution is rebundling. We still don’t know which company will be the first to offer a batch of subscription products for a discounted price — similar to traditional pay TV.The answer is an important one. The aggregator of content is the user’s direct point of commerce — which comes with the perk of consumption data. That’s the ideal position in the digital age, when advertisers follow spending habits.Unlike cable TV, a digital bundle of services doesn’t need to be restricted to just television. This gives an aggregator the ability to personalize offerings like never before, mixing and matching television, news, e-commerce, gaming, health, and any other service that charges a monthly or annual subscription rate.The obvious “aggregator 2.0” candidates are the streaming hardware technology companies (Apple, Amazon, Roku) or the cable companies (Comcast, Charter, Altice USA) that have traditionally bundled content. It’s also possible media companies, such as Disney, could embrace bundling by incorporating other programming into their streaming ecosystems.But now, a couple of U.S. wireless companies are springing out to an early lead: Verizon and T-Mobile.In the past year, Verizon and T-Mobile have methodically

Snap buys WaveOptics, a company that makes parts for augmented reality glasses, in $500 million deal

In this articleSNAPSnap is acquiring WaveOptics, a company that creates lenses and other parts that are used in augmented reality glasses. The acquisition will give Snap many of the components to create glasses that people can wear and then see computer-generated imagery overlaid on top of the real world.Snap confirmed to CNBC on Friday the deal is worth about $500 million in cash and stock, with about half paid upfront in stock. Snap will pay the remainder in cash or stock in two years. The Verge first reported on the acquisition.Shares of Snap were flat.Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snap, announces new Spectacles AR glasses that let you overlay digital objects on the real world.Source: SNAP Inc.Snap unveiled its first augmented reality Spectacles glasses on Thursday, but they aren’t for sale. Instead, Snapchat is giving them to creators first, as it presumably continues to fine-tune the glasses until it’s ready to sell a version to consumers. The new Spectacles use lenses developed by WaveOptics.They’re a first step in the race to AR glasses among tech companies, however, with other firms like Apple and Facebook working on similar products. Developers will need to make compelling apps for the glasses, which currently only

Existing-Home Sales Declined in April, With a Tight Supply and Record Prices.

Soaring prices and a shortage of available homes are starting to hold back the blazing U.S. housing market.Sales of existing homes fell 2.7 percent in April, the National Association of Realtors said Friday. It was the third straight monthly decline after a surge in transactions earlier in the pandemic.Mortgage rates have crept up since the start of the year, which has likely put a crimp in demand. But the main force holding back sales isn’t a lack of willing buyers. It is a lack of homes for them to buy — especially at prices they can afford.The median sales price of an existing home was $341,600 in April, up 19.1 percent from a year earlier. Both the price and the increase were record highs. The number of homes on the market rose in April but was down 20.5 percent from a year ago and remained close to a record low.As a result, competition for homes can be intense. The Realtors said that 88 percent of homes sold in April were on the market for less than a month. A quarter of buyers paid cash. At Redfin, the online brokerage, half of all homes sold in recent weeks have gone for