James' World 2

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Melissa Heikkilä via Lensa

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Buying a home in the colder months is often a smart move, but this year is a bugger. A new report from real-estate firm Redfin shows that on average, a record 2% of the homes for sale on the U.S. market were pulled from listings every week in the 12 weeks leading up to Nov. 20. For buyers and sellers alike, that might sound alarming. Here is what’s going on.

Why is this happening?

Redfin analyzed MLS data from 43 of the 50 most populated metropolitan areas in the country, determining sellers are delisting their properties because they’re not getting offers at their preferred price—or in some cases, no offers at all. The monthly mortgage payment on the median-asking-price home is also 40% higher right now than it was a year ago.

While there might have been a housing market frenzy last year, it looks like that has really slowed down. Home prices spiked during the height of the pandemic, leading to “pandemic boomtowns,” but those locations—like Sacramento, Calif. and Austin, Texas—are seeing the biggest declines in listings now.

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Photo: pryzmat (Shutterstock)

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HAVE A HAPPY AND SAFE NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

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Lensa AI’s popularity has had a notable impact on the App Store’s Top Charts. The photo and video editing app recently went viral over its new “magic avatars” feature, powered by the open-source Stable Diffusion model, allowing users to turn their selfies into styled portraits of themselves as sci-fi, anime, or fantasy characters, among other artistic renderings. Consumer demand for the app, and for AI edits more broadly, has now pushed numerous other “AI” apps into the U.S. App Store’s Top Charts. As of Monday, the top three spots on the U.S. App Store are all held by AI photo editors, and even more AI art apps are newly ranking in the Top 100.

The No. 1 spot on the U.S. App Store, however, continues to be held by Lensa AI, which saw 12.6 million global installs in the first 11 days of December, up 600% from the 1.8 million installs it saw during a similar time frame in November (November 20 through November 30), according to new data from app store intelligence firm Sensor Tower. The U.S. accounted for 3.6 million of those new December installs, estimates indicate.

In fact, 8 out of the top 100 apps by downloads on the U.S. App Store were AI art apps during the December 1 through December 11 time frame, the firm’s analysis found.

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Image Credits: Lensa AI on Instagram

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PICTURE BOOKS

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You may have noticed a new trend taking over your Instagram feed. Your friends are turning themselves into digital art with the help of an artificial intelligence-generated app called Lensa.

Lensa AI is currently the top free app in Apple

App Store, though you’ll have to pay to use the AI artwork feature.

Lensa first launched as a photo editing tool in 2018, but last month the company released a new feature called “Magic Avatars.” These AI-generated digital self-portraits turn you into works of art in a variety of themes, from pop to fairy princesses, to anime.

You get a 7-day free trial. Subscription fees vary after that, with yearly unlimited access ranging from $14.99 to $49.99. To use the “Magic Avatar” tool, you’ll pay an additional $3.99 for 50 images.

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When the pandemic began, I didn’t place any bets on what the future would hold. But if I had, I would certainly be out a lot of money. One of my expectations was that pandemic-induced economic uncertainty would result in a baby bust. I had research on my side indicating that unemployment leads to reduced conceptions. Others made similar predictions—Brookings Institution researchers forecast in June 2020 that the pandemic would result in up to half a million fewer births in 2021. “Recessions mean fewer children,” they wrote.

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H. Armstrong Roberts / Getty; FPG / Getty

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