Real Estate News
- Government warned of mortgage meltdown - Read full story for latest details.
- Mortgage rates plummet - Mortgage rates fell sharply yesterday after the administration announced that it will pump another $800 billion into credit markets to free up frozen consumer and mortgage lending.
- New home sales near 18-year low - Sales of newly constructed homes slumped in October to an annual rate not seen since 1991, according to government figures released Wednesday.
- Home prices in record decline - The home price plunge stayed on a record pace this summer, according to a widely watched gauge of national real estate markets released Tuesday.
- Record number of borrowers get mortgage help - Mortgage lenders helped save a record 225,000 at-risk mortgage borrowers from losing their homes during October, according to a report issued Tuesday by a coalition of lenders, mortgage servicers, investors and counselors assembled to fight the foreclosure plague.
- Latest home prices - first quarter - Single-family home prices dropped 7.7% in the first quarter in the largest year-over-year decline since the National Association of Realtors began reporting prices in 1982.
- Where home prices are headed next - The housing implosion is nowhere near over. In 75 of the 100 top U.S. cities, prices are expected to fall in the next 12 months according to Fiserv Lending Solutions.
- Existing home sales tumble - Sales of existing homes fell in October and prices continued to decline as potential buyers remain sidelined by the weak economy, according to a real estate group's report issued Monday.
- Beauty without utility bills - Few homeowners can get excited about a costly maintenance project. But when John and Anne Harrison needed to put a new roof on their 50-year-old Oahu, Hawaii home four years ago, they saw an opportunity.
- No job, bad mortgage - out of luck - All the foreclosure prevention plans announced to date will do little to help the next wave of delinquent homeowners, who can't make their monthly payments because they've lost their jobs.
- U.S. tries new tack on housing - The Bush administration said Wednesday that it was changing its nearly-moribund mortgage rescue plan in an effort to spark more lenders and homeowners to participate.
- Fannie and Freddie suspend foreclosures - Mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have directed their network of servicers to halt all foreclosure and eviction proceedings between Nov. 26 2008 and Jan. 9, 2009, meant to give a recently announced rescue plan time to work.
- Mortgage rescue or rip off? - If mortgage lending was the Wild West during the boom years, foreclosure-prevention counseling is the lucrative new frontier of the bust.
- Builders' confidence sinks - Homebuilders' confidence in the housing market again plunged to a record low, dragged down by poor financial market conditions, rising unemployment and consumer anxiety, a trade group said Tuesday.
- Home prices in record 9% decline - National home prices, driven lower by a flood of foreclosures, plummeted by a record year-over-year 9% in the third quarter, according to a report issued Tuesday.