Commercial & Residential Property Blog

The Obama administration, battling a foreclosure crisis that shows no signs of relenting, will step up pressure on mortgage companies to do more to help people remain in their homes, officials said Saturday.

Nearly one in four U.S. borrowers owe more on their mortgage than their home is worth, a worrisome sign that the housing recovery could be threatened by a wave of defaults, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

Some U.S. cities with stable housing and diversified employment have been virtually untouched by the Great Recession.

More than 23 percent of people with mortgages owe more on their properties than they are worth, according to a report released Tuesday by research firm First American CoreLogic.

Falling prices for real estate and the declining value of the dollar are luring investors from all over the world to purchase properties for as little as half what they might have paid four years ago.

Fannie Mae announced a program aimed at helping ordinary home buyers compete with investors for foreclosed homes.

Under the program, dubbed First Look, Fannie plans to consider offers only from potential owner-occupants and certain public-housing entities during the first 15 days in which a foreclosed home is on the market.

Home sales surged for the second month in a row in October, climbing to the highest level in 2 1/2 years as first-time buyers rushed to take advantage of an expiring tax credit.

Home sales nationwide are now up nearly 36 percent from their bottom in January, data Monday showed, though they are still 16 percent below the peak in autumn 2005. At the current sales pace, there is only a 7-month supply of homes on the market and in some areas there are bidding wars.

New figures show that sales of previously-owned US homes rose in October at a faster than expected pace as buyers rushed to take advantage of a tax break. Property industry group the National Association of Realtors said sales surged a record 10.1% to an annual rate of 6.1 million units, the highest since February 2007. This compared with a downwardly revised 5.54 million units in September.

Got questions about where real estate is headed? Here are informed answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about today’s housing market.

The Federal Reserve isn’t going to go cold turkey from its program to buy mortgage-backed securities, said James Bullard, president of the St. Louis Fed, on Sunday.