By Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine

President Barack Obama has signed legislation extending the $8,000 first-time-homebuyer tax credit beyond its scheduled Nov. 30 expiration and creating a $6,500 credit for longtime homeowners who buy new homes. With thousands of dollars at stake, it’s not surprising that potential homebuyers have lots of questions. We have the answers. Read the full story

 By Jason Hanna,

Courtesy of CNN

(CNN) — Officials are looking into claims that Chinese-made drywall installed in some Florida homes is emitting smelly, corrosive gases and ruining household systems such as air conditioners, the Consumer Product Safety Commission says. Read the full story

By Alan Zibel
Courtesy of Associated Press

August 26, 2009

WASHINGTON-Sales of new homes surged 9.6 percent in July, another sign the housing market is climbing back from the historic bottom it reached early this year. Driven by falling prices, the fourth-straight monthly increase was greater than expected.

The Commerce Department said Wednesday that sales rose to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 433,000 from an upwardly revised June rate of 395,000. Sales are now up more than 30 percent from the bottom in January, but are still off nearly 70 percent from the frenzied peak four years ago.

The median sales price of $210,100, however, was down slightly from $210,400 in June and was off 11.5 percent from year-ago levels. Prices are still up from March’s low of $205,100.

Last month’s sales pace was the strongest since September and exceeded the forecasts of economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters, who expected a pace of 390,000 units.

In a kind of Cash for Clunkers effect, homebuyers are rushing to take advantage of Read the full story

By Annys Shin and David Cho
Courtesy of Washington Post

August 18, 2009

The Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department said Monday that they will extend a key lending program aimed at freeing up credit including loans to build offices, apartment buildings and other types of commercial real estate.

The extension comes as the Term Asset-Backed Loan Facility, or TALF, has so far made little headway in reviving the ailing commercial real estate market, industry officials and analysts said.

According to analysts, the TALF is simply too small to stimulate the lending needed to boost the sector. For now, Obama administration officials have no plans to pour additional federal resources into the effort, said government sources familiar with their thinking.

Though the recession has shown signs of letting up and the housing slump appears to be nearing a bottom, the commercial real estate market remains mired in problems. Rising vacancies and falling rents have left commercial property owners unable to make mortgage payments, and the credit crunch has Read the full story

Courtesy of AP

NEW YORK – Actor Stephen Baldwin’s foreclosed home in the suburbs north of New York City will be publicly auctioned.

Baldwin paid $515,000 for the 1.4-acre home in Rockland County in 1997. In 2006, he tried unsuccessfully to sell it.

County filings show Baldwin and his wife Kennya defaulted on more than Read the full story

By Carl Gutierrez

Courtesy of Forbes.com

May 28, 2009

There’s a long and treacherous road ahead for the U.S. real estate market and financials.

On Wednesday, the National Associ-ation of Realtors reported sales of existing homes rose 2.9% in April, to an annual rate of 4.7 million, compared with a downwardly revised pace of 4.6 million in March.

The report comes a day after the S&P Case-Shiller 20-city Home Price Index fell 18.7% in March over the last 12 months, slightly wider than the 18.4% decline economists expected and larger than the 18.6% drop in the year ended February. The 10-city HPI was down 18.6% over the last year.

Continuing declines in the first three months of 2009 led to a 19.1% decline in the first quarter compared with last year’s corresponding period, which is the largest quarterly decline in the 21-year history of the series. Average home prices in March 2009 are the same as they were in fourth Read the full story

By Sarah Morgan

Courtesy of SmartMoney.com

Home buyers looking for a bottom in the real estate market may have been encouraged by housing data released earlier this week. Sales of existing homes rose 2.4% in May, according to the National Association of Realtors. The increase was a little less than most analysts had expected, but it represented the second straight month of improvement. Meanwhile, sales of new homes dipped 0.6% in May, continuing a trend of fairly flat months so far this year, according to data released by the Commerce Department.

Don’t get too excited – it’s still too early to say the housing market bottomed out, analysts and economists say. Distressed properties still account for about a third of all sales, and 29% of sales were to first-time home buyers, who are currently benefiting from an $8,000 tax credit.

The sales trends are telling. “You’re not really seeing a lot of move-up buying,” says Richard F. Moody, chief economist and director of research at Forward Capital, LLC. “There are so many vacant homes and so many foreclosures that [there's] not the normal trade-up pattern that you would have traditionally seen,” Moody says.

Housing prices fell nationwide during the first quarter, according to Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller Index. The decline appears to be slowing: in February and March, the annual rate of decline did not set a new record, but home owners should take little solace in those numbers. “Based on the March data… we see no Read the full story