mortgage
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Google's latest search feature helps you buy a house
If you’re planning to buy a house, then congratulations and good luck — it can be a daunting process. To make it a bit easier, Google has teamed with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to create a new mobile Search feature.
Apple will spend $400 million on affordable housing this year
Apple will spend more than $400 million on affordable housing projects and first-time homebuyer assistance programs in California this year.
People are mortgaging their houses to buy Bitcoin
Bitcoin is sitting at $16,674 at the time of writing, after rocketing from $1,000 to more than $19,000 in the course of this year. Those types of eye-catching numbers (and the resulting media hype) are bound to draw the interest of casual folk. But, unless you've got money to burn (like Bitcoin billionaires, and Zuck's Harvard-era nemeses, the Winklevoss twins), most analysts will tell you the same thing: steer clear of the hyper-volatile currency. (Even those dabbling in it have lost tons of cash to cyberattacks on Bitcoin wallets).
Airbnb rentals can play havoc with your mortgage
Renting out your home on a service like Airbnb is supposed to be good for your bottom line, but it's now clear that it can create some headaches if you're a homeowner. The Wall Street Journal is warning that banks may turn down your attempt to refinance your mortgage if they learn that you've rented your home on Airbnb. Simply speaking, banks tend to see homes as either personal residences or investments and don't like the risk associated with the latter. While some banks may allow a gray area between the two, others won't be so kind -- Bank of America, for example, won't give you a home equity line of credit if there's a "material amount" of commerce in your home.
How Rovio CEO's grandparents saved the space program... wait...
Before Apollo 11 made history by successfully shuttling the first humans to the moon in 1969, the space program was in desperate financial condition and President John F. Kennedy had his grandparents mortgage their apartment for the money to keep NASA running. Er, no -- we're getting our stories mixed up here.The bit about the grandparents mortgaging their home to keep a company running is actually the story behind Rovio, the creators of Angry Birds. Rovio was mainly backed by CEO Mikael Hed's dad and it hadn't produced a hit in years before Angry Birds; it was Hed's dad who proposed the family-mortgage plan."He told me that he wanted to mortgage my grandparents' flat so he could put some more money in the company to keep it afloat," Hed told All Things D. "That was pretty tough. I certainly did not want to be the person responsible for putting my grandparents on the street."Hed doesn't have to worry about that now, as Angry Birds is a smash (HA!) hit and Rovio is valued at more than $6 billion. The next game from Rovio is Angry Birds Space, due out for iOS, Android, PC and Mac on March 22, and whose out-of-this-world adorable trailer you can view above.
