Housing Market | featured news

More than 40 years after the federal government enacted fair-housing legislation and the Great Migration of blacks from the South began to ebb, residential segregation in metropolitan America has been significantly curtailed, according to a study released Monday.

The average 30-year mortgage rate rose to 3.98 percent Thursday, reflecting a 0.10 percentage point jump after setting a new historic low last week, according to Freddie Mac. Despite the jump, the 30-year fixed rate has remained below 4 percent for eight weeks, and the Federal Reserve yesterday indicated it plans to keep interest rates at zero for some time.

More and more, homeowners say that mortgages they thought were dead and buried are springing back to life, sometimes haunting them all the way into foreclosure.

Fewer people bought new homes in December. The decline made 2011 the worst year for new-homes sales on records dating back nearly half a century. The Commerce Department said Thursday new-home sales fell 2.2 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 307,000. The pace is less than half the 700,000 that economists say must be sold in a healthy economy.

An 80-story skyscraper under construction at ground zero will have to stop at seven stories unless the developer can line up more tenants, planners said Monday, adding to problems that have plagued the $11.7 billion World Trade Center project.

Home sales rose in December to the highest pace in nearly a year. The gain coincides with other signs that show the troubled housing market improved at the end of last year

Bank of America made $2 billion in the last three months of last year, reversing a loss from a year earlier. It offset legal expenses over mortgages and losses in its investment...

China's economy grew at its weakest pace in 2-1/2 years in the latest quarter and it appeared headed for an even sharper slowdown in the coming months as export demand fades and the housing market falters.

Federal prosecutors are stepping up their investigation of Standard & Poor's ratings of troubled mortgage securities during the financial crisis, according to former analysts questioned by prosecutors.

Ben Bernanke presided over his first meeting as Federal Reserve chairman in March 2006 believing the nation's economy could pull off a "soft landing" from falling home prices. Three months later, Bernanke had begun to grasp that he and others had underestimated the risk housing posed to the economy....