Real Estate | featured news

A housing renaissance has begun. This may be hard to believe after the dizzying, six-year-long crash in home sales, construction and house prices. But housing turned the corner last year, and it will take off in 2013.

While malls appear to be past their peak in the United States, in Russia they are luring shoppers with money to spend, and investors like Morgan Stanley... Shoppers who find that 250 stores aren’t enough can go ice skating, watch movies or even ride a carousel, all under a single roof.

Mortgage rates, which took some dramatic dips in 2012, were among the lowest on record this year, according to data released by Freddie Mac on Thursday. The 30-year fixed-rate average dropped to 3.35 percent, down 0.7 from the week before. It is substantially lower than the 3.95 percent level it reached during the final week of 2011.

Home prices posted their biggest annual jump in more than six years in October in a sign the housing sector continues to recover, data analysis firm CoreLogic said on Tuesday.

An index measuring the number of Americans who signed contracts to buy homes in October jumped to nearly its highest level in almost six years.

New single-family home sales fell slightly in October and the prior month's pace of sales was revised sharply lower, casting a small shadow over what has been one of the brighter spots in the U.S. economy.

Zillow has agreed to acquire rental and real estate search startup HotPads for $16 million in cash. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter. The deal is the online real estate company’s first acquisition of a consumer-facing and its sixth acquisition overall in the past two years.

A housing comeback is now underway; that much is clear. Adding to a steady drumbeat of positive data for the sector, new data on Tuesday showed a surprising 3.6 percent gain in housing starts in October, which came on the back of a 15.1 percent rise in September.

U.S. builders started construction last month on the most single-family homes and apartments since July 2008, more evidence that the housing recovery is gaining momentum.

Among first-lien mortgages that received a principal reduction, borrowers had their loan balances cut by an average of $117,000, according to the independent monitor established to ensure that banks were meeting the terms of a settlement agreed to in March.