Housing Market, Renters | featured news

With U.S. unemployment at a lofty 8.6 percent, home foreclosures rising and property prices under pressure, more and more Americans have given up the dream of owning, opting instead to rent, a shift that is remaking the face of the U.S. housing industry.

For generations now, our national values have placed an emphasis on home ownership. Renters were the people who were rootless or just not being quite ready to "settle down." As home ownership has become less of a financial asset and more of a liability over the last few years, there has been a shift in the very fabric of what renting means in our society.

Apartment vacancies hit a 30-year high of 8% last year, and landlords cut rents 3% to attract tenants.

U.S. officials are weighing a plan to let borrowers who have fallen behind on mortgage payments avoid eviction by renting their home instead, sources familiar with the administration's thinking said on Tuesday.

When Lisa Brown moved into her rental house on Long Island last summer with her three daughters, she says, it felt like a new beginning.

A landlord was fined nearly $10,000 for removing the toilet and other fixtures from a basement apartment to get his tenant to move out.