One of the few businesses booming in this recession is lawn painting, which has gotten a huge boost from all the foreclosures — and dead lawns that result when homes are abandoned.
These companies will come in, clean up any litter on the lawn, mow it and trim it — then paint it green.
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Cities in the U.S. Sun Belt states of California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona dominated the record foreclosure spree in the first half of the year, but distress in other regions emerged as joblessness spread, RealtyTrac said on Thursday.
Metro areas with populations of at least 200,000 in those four states accounted for 35 of the 50 [...]
An article in the New York Times today, suggesting that loan servicers would rather collect hefty fees on loans in delinquency and foreclosure than modify those loans, set off a bit of a firestorm in the community that oversees all those modifications.
Folks at the Mortgage Bankers Association, who only yesterday had been defending servicers who were [...]
Interest rates on U.S. 30-year fixed-rate mortgages rose 0.05 percentage point in the latest week, its second consecutive weekly increase, a move that does not bode well for the hard-hit U.S. housing market, according to a survey released on Thursday by home funding company Freddie Mac.
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Foreclosures are easing in some of the worst hit metro areas, but watch out for the next wave of filings to start crashing in unexpected cities.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Sun Belt cities dominated the list of metro areas with the biggest foreclosure problems during the first six months of 2009.
Cities in just four states — [...]
This week, the Obama administration summoned mortgage company executives to Washington to demand they move faster to lower payments for homeowners sliding toward foreclosure. Treasury officials called on the companies to hire and train more people quickly to field applications for relief.
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Federal initiatives to stimulate the housing market have created a shallow and narrow recovery, making it likely that Congressional proponents of an expanded homebuyer incentive program will make another push to make it law following the August recess.
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Three years into the worst housing slump since the Great Depression, a new report is offering more evidence that the residential real estate market is on the mend. New-home sales in June jumped 11 percent from the previous month, marking the sharpest such increase since December of 2000, the Commerce Department said Monday. Although the [...]
U.S. mortgage applications fell for the first time in four weeks, driven by a drop in demand for home refinancing loans as interest rates climbed, data from an industry group showed on Wednesday.
Applications for loans to buy a home, an early indicator of sales, were flat. Lack of interest for purchase loans does not bode [...]
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Senior U.S. housing officials and leading mortgage companies met Tuesday to set explicit goals for preventing evictions and helping struggling borrowers with their home loans.
Officials from the Treasury Department and Department of Housing and Urban Development said they hope to see the terms of 500,000 borrowers eased by November.
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U.S. single-family home prices rose in May from April, the first monthly increase in nearly three years, suggesting prices may be stabilizing, according to Standard & Poor’s/Case Shiller home price indexes on Tuesday.
The index of 20 metropolitan areas rose 0.5 percent in May from April, after a 0.6 percent decline the month before, in contrast [...]
CHICAGO (MarketWatch) — New rules aimed at making home appraisals more accurate are raising costs and prompting longer waits to get to the closing table, some in the mortgage industry say.
The new rules — known as the Home Valuation Code of Conduct and in effect less than three months — have driven [...]
The good news is that sales volumes of new construction are rising; the bad news is they’re doing so despite growing trouble with appraisals.
I can’t seem to talk to anyone in the real estate industry on any topic without hearing something about appraisals. We’ve been over the new appraisal rules, requiring the fire wall between [...]
As the historic housing plunge rumbles on, Uncle Sam is offering a fresh incentive to get first-time home buyers off the sidelines. U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan on Friday unveiled a policy change that would provide home buyers with quicker access to a recently enacted first-time home buyer tax credit. Buyers would [...]
New U.S. home sales rose by the largest amount in more than eight years last month, in another sign the housing market is finally bouncing back from the worst downturn in decades.
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Luxury hotels are defaulting on their loans as the economy kills off business travel. But what is ailing the hotel industry is good for consumers as room rates fall.
Check out 8 Inns across the country offering Super Deals!
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The percentage of empty privately-owned U.S. homes fell in the second quarter to levels last seen in mid-2006, a government report Friday showed.
The vacancy rate fell to 2.5 percent from 2.7 percent in the first quarter of 2009, the Commerce Department reported.
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Business is booming in Greater Fort Myers in Lee County, near the southern end of Florida’s west coast, where realtor Suzanne Sherer is working seven days a week. Sherer says sales at her six-person firm are back at 2005 levels.
“We’re seeing bidding wars on entry-level homes,” says Sherer. “Within three days of listing, we have [...]
