Housing: Best Time to Buy in Four Years   It may be the best time to buy a house in more than four years.   According to a report released recently by Cleveland-based bank National City Corp., together with financial analysis firm Global Insight, revealed that more than 88% of the 330 housing markets surveyed […]

Foreclosures Hit Another All-Time High   How many more times must we hear this report?  Foreclosures hit another all-time high?   More home owners than ever are losing the battle to make their monthly mortgage payments.  Over 900,000 households are in the foreclosure process, up 71% from a year ago, according to a survey by […]

Home Equity Slips Below 50%   According to a report released recently by the Federal Reserve in its quarterly U.S. Flow of Funds Accounts, Americans’ percentage of equity in their homes has fallen below 50 percent for the first time on record since 1945.   According to the report, homeowners’ percentage of equity slipped to […]

Pending Home Sales Fall in December   The pending home sales index, based on contracts signed but not closed in December, was down 24.2% from the prior year’s period, according to a report from the National Association of Realtors (NAR). The index, which is considered a leading indicator of existing home sales, had also declined […]

Recession in Richmond VA Real Estate?   What Happens When There is a Recession and No One Comes?   It looks like 73 out of 150 metropolitan statistical areas did not get invited to doomsday, showing increases in median existing single-family home prices from a year earlier, including 11 areas with double-digit annual gains and […]

Lenders Put a Freeze on Foreclosures   Six of the nation’s largest mortgage lenders, in a joint effort to cool the raging foreclosure crisis, have agreed to temporarily stop foreclosure proceedings on homeowners who have fallen seriously behind in their house payments.   Under a program unveiled recently, legal efforts to oust seriously delinquent borrowers […]

Richmond VA Housing Slump? Homeowners Don’t Believe It   Despite numerous reports showing home values in historic decline, more than three out of four homeowners believe their own home has not lost value in the past year, according to an online survey.   The survey was conducted by Harris Interactive for Zillow.com, a Web site […]

Most Middle Class Workers Still Can’t Afford a Home   Despite the housing slump, most middle income workers still don’t earn enough to buy a median-priced home in their hometowns, according to the Center for Housing Policy.   The center, an arm of the affordable housing advocacy group the National Housing Conference (NHC), compared housing […]

Foreclosures Up 75% in 2007   The number of foreclosures soared in 2007, with 405,000 households losing their home, according to a report released recently.  That’s up 51 percent from the 268,532 homes that were repossessed in 2006.   Total foreclosure filings soared 97% in December alone compared with December of 2006, according to RealtyTrac, […]