By Courtney Wirths
Features Editor
• The number of first-time home buyers is the lowest is has been since 1987 — only 33 percent of new homes sold were to first-time buyers. Young would-be buyers struggle to come up with the savings for a down payment. When student debt is at record highs, rent becomes more expensive and the job market for recent grads is sluggish. This is all in addition to a relatively tight lending environment. Lastly, new home prices have actually been rising which further adds to the difficulty young home buyers face.
• Taylor Swift pulled her music from Spotify. The decision came after months of back-and-forth between the music streaming service and the once country, now pop star. Swift had initially wanted her new album, “1989,” to be only available to stream outside the United States. When the service declined, Swift only released the album for purchase. Spotify issued an apology to its users which led to Swift’s entire catalog being pulled by her recording company, Big Machine Label Group.
• Thirteen years after the Twin Towers fell on the morning of September 11, 2001, the first employees of the World Trade Center entered through the doors to go to work on Monday, Nov. 3. The 175 individuals work for the publishing giant Condé Nast. The rest of Condé Nast’s 3,400 employees will be moving down to the lower Manhattan offices over the next several months.
• The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Justice Department fined Hyundai Motor Co. and Kia Motors Corp. $300 million for improperly overstating vehicles’ fuel-economy claims. The punishment is the largest of its kind ever issued by the U.S. government and sets a precedent for other car companies. An estimated 1.2 million Hyundais had overstated milage capabilities – over a quarter of those 2011-2013 models sold in the United States.
* All information according to the Wall Street Journal.
