Housing Market | featured news

Daverena White took a chance on the American dream of homeownership -- and lost big.

Home sales far exceeded expectations last month, surging to the highest level in two and a half years as first-time buyers rushed to take advantage of an expiring tax credit.

That's 30.7% down from the same month last year. Analysts had recently forecast a 1.7% rise in housing starts.

Third-quarter earnings at the retailer fell 8.9 percent amid weak housing and renovation markets, but the retailer raised its full-year outlook.

The U.S. housing market welcomed a bigger share of first-time buyers and single women this past year.

Home prices fell in the third quarter from year-ago levels in about 80 percent of U.S. metropolitan areas, the National Association of Realtors said on Tuesday.

After a slow start, the Obama administration's mortgage relief program has reached one in five eligible homeowners, a government report says.

Fannie Mae plans to allow homeowners facing foreclosure to stay in their homes and rent them for up to one year in a new program to help troubled borrowers.

The Senate vote unanimously on Wednesday to extend aid for jobless workers and broaden tax breaks for homebuyers and businesses in a bid to breathe life into the struggling US economy.

Frustrated by the banks' inability or unwillingness to stop an avalanche of foreclosures, the states are considering lawsuits over the creation and marketing of millions of bad loans as well as the dismal pace of mortgage modifications.

Such cases would have been impossible until recently, because federal regulators had exclusive oversight of national banks. But a 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision in June allowed the states to exercise their own supervision, giving them significant leverage.