Foreclosure Relief: Not Until Obama Takes Over Any use of $700 billion in financial industry rescue money to aid homeowners will come after President George W. Bush leaves office next month. That word came recently from Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass. While the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has proposed to use $24 billion from the financial […]

October Pending Home Sales Slip 1% Despite a meltdown in financial markets, a credit freeze and soaring unemployment, housing markets fared better than expected in October. The number of homes under contract to be sold fell by just 1% year over year according to a report released recently by the National Association of Realtors (NAR), […]

New Home Sales Fall to 18-Year Low Sales of newly constructed homes slumped in October to an annual rate not seen since 1991, according to government figures released recently. The U.S. Census Bureau reported that new home sales fell to an annualized rate of 433,000 in October. That’s down 5.3% from the revised 457,000 annual […]

The Mortgage Meltdown: Can Anyone Stop It? Fifteen months into the worst credit crisis in decades, major banks and the federal government are coming together on a solution for struggling mortgage borrowers. The goal is to hasten the process for renegotiating hundreds of thousands of delinquent loans, either those held by major banks or held […]

Home Prices Decline – AGAIN According to a report released recently by the National Association of Realtors (NAR), national home prices, driven lower by a flood of foreclosures, plummeted in the third quarter by a record 9% year-over-year. The median price of a single-family home fell in four out of five states. The national median […]

Homeowners Under Water ationwide, almost one out of every five homeowners with a mortgage owes more to their lender than their properties are worth. But if you subtract the states where nearly 60% of all homeowners are "under water" (owing more on their mortgage than the home is worth), which includes California, Florida, Arizona, Georgia […]

Pending Home Sales Fall in September The Pending Home Sales Index for the month of September fell 4.6% to 89.2 after climbing 7.4% in August, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). Still, the index was up 1.6% from a year ago. The NAR report said the dip in sales was tempered by a […]

Obama’s Foreclosure Moratoriam Campaign Promise Between rising foreclosures and falling home prices, housing issues became a huge concern in the months leading up to the election. As such, they’re likely to continue to take priority during President-elect Barack Obama’s first term. "This is really an unprecedented crisis we’re in," said Peter Tatian, senior research associate […]

Rescue for U.S. Homeowners? Housing is at the root of the financial crisis, and preventing foreclosures could bring a double-barreled benefit. It would allow families to remain in their homes and could also help keep the housing market from spiraling out of control. The more foreclosed homes that get dumped on the market, the more […]

Foreclosures Rise Again U.S. foreclosure activity in September rose 21 percent from a year earlier but fell by double-digits from the prior month as some state laws slowed the foreclosure process. Foreclosure filings—default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions—fell by 12 percent from August to 265,968 in September, according to a monthly report by […]