Housing Market, Real Estate | featured news

Construction of new homes and apartments surged 10.5 percent in August from a month earlier, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. That's the highest level since April.

The GOP gubernatorial candidate promises to cut spending and suggests that lower taxes and less regulation will spur business. But experts say the bleak economy is mostly due to the real estate crisis.

Federal Housing Finance Agency is seeking billions in repayment from banks that sold bad loans to the mortgage giants to help offset taxpayer losses, but some financial institutions are balking.

Lenders took back more homes in August than in any month since the start of the U.S. mortgage crisis.

Permanent modifications, which lower mortgage payments to 31% of a borrower's pretax monthly income for five years, have been given to only about a third of the 1.3 million borrowers in trial plans since the program's launch in April 2009. Most of the lawsuits allege that the three- or four-month trial payment plans are contracts, and that Bank of America and other servicers broke them by not giving permanent modifications to homeowners who made their trial payments on time and provided the necessary documentation.

Florida has set up foreclosures-only courts to reduce the state’s huge backlog of cases, but borrowers’ lawyers are critical of the process.

Michael Feder, chief executive officer of Radar Logic Inc., talks about US home prices and the outlook for the housing market. US home prices fell 1.6 percent in the second ...

Foreclosures could head higher in coming months, as the percentage of borrowers at least one payment behind resumed its rise, new data suggest.

Buying activity in the residential real estate market slowed dramatically in July, according to a report released Tuesday by the National Association of Realtors. The dramatic plunge is yet another sign the U.S. economy may be heading toward a slowdown or double-dip recession.

The tone for Wall Street’s retreat was set before the opening bell with markets in Asia and Europe also falling.