Bucking conventional wisdom, a trade group for real estate agents on Monday said the battered housing market is on the verge of stabilizing and inched up its outlook for 2007 and 2008 home sales. ...more

December 11, 2007

Fannie Mae warned investors Wednesday that its losses would mount next year from bad home loans, even as the mortgage finance company took steps to stabilize its finances. ...more

December 6, 2007

President Bush is expected to announce today an agreement with major mortgage companies to freeze interest rates for five years for financially troubled homeowners - a plan advocates say will help forestall a major foreclosure crisis but some conservatives say amounts to a bailout of people who made bad financial decisions. ...more

December 6, 2007

The Bush administration agreed to delay enforcing a new rule that will let the government charge higher premiums on mortgages it insures for borrowers with poor credit. ...more

December 5, 2007

Recent efforts to hammer out a proposal to temporarily freeze interest rates on certain troubled subprime mortgages have brought up an interesting quandary. Is it the government's job to intervene in what is in part a crisis wrought by greedy lenders and naive and imprudent borrowers? Agreed, the government should not bail out financial irresponsibility, but sometimes there's no alternative. Those opposed to any government initiative to rescue the market before 2 million loans adjust to a higher interest rate –– and borrowers are stuck with payments they cannot afford –– are forgetting that the ripple effect of not doing anything could seriously hurt the general economy. ...more

December 3, 2007

For the second month in a row, Florida's foreclosure rate ranked third highest in the nation, the latest sign many homeowners are falling behind on mortgage payments and increasingly losing their homes, according to California-based research company RealtyTrac. ...more

November 30, 2007

U.S. home builders continue to be pessimistic about the housing market, as November's reading of an index that tracks their sentiment remained stuck at a record low. ...more

November 20, 2007

With home foreclosures skyrocketing, the House on Thursday voted to crack down on mortgage lenders by forcing them to get licenses, making them responsible for discovering whether borrowers can really repay and fining them for steering people toward risky subprime loans. ...more

November 16, 2007

loans extended to those with no credit or bad credit - many are calling for the government to do something to stop the suffering. At the same time, many recognize that a bailout of struggling homeowners would be wrong. Thus, we see a growing list of proposed solutions that purport to save the day without a bailout: "borrower assistance" programs to refinance defaulting mortgages, crackdowns on "predatory lending" practices, or laws restricting mortgages the government deems too risky. ...more

November 12, 2007

More banks have tightened lending standards on home mortgages, the Federal Reserve said Monday in the latest sign of fallout from a spreading credit crisis. ...more

November 6, 2007