Two government mortgage bodies, Fannie Mae and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), are revisiting their policies regarding condominiums, though their approaches could have contradictory effects on the condo

The Conference Board, the non-profit research group that is responsible for some of the world’s most closely-watched economic indexes, announced yesterday that consumer confidence rose 9.3 points in February in what is perhaps the strongest indication yet that the economy

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) slapped Bank of America (BofA) on Monday with a housing discrimination suit claiming that the bank unfairly treated homebuyers with disabilities. According to a press release released by HUD, BofA violated

The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has officially announced that, in an effort to boost its Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund (MMI), it will raise its insurance premiums in April. Confirming statements made last week by the agency’s Acting Director Carol

The principal modification just earned a new player in the form of Earl Blumenauer, a Democratic congressman from Oregon who is backing a bill that would allow bankruptcy judges to force write downs on loans during bankruptcy proceedings. The

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) yesterday announced the pilot transaction for its new REO Initiative, a program that targets some of the hardest-hit metropolitan areas with the intention of converting vacant and distressed properties into rental units. Now, pre-qualified

Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller Home Price Index for the 20-City Composite fell 1.1 percent from November to December, capping off a 3.8 percent decline in the fourth quarter of 2011 and 4.0 percent year-over-year decline that pushed the rate

Bank of America’s long-running relationship with Fannie Mae ended late last week, when the bank announced that it would no longer sell new mortgages to the GSE. According to a New York Times overview of the split, tensions were running

The Pending Home Sales Index (PHSI), a monthly measure of pending home sales activity from the National Association of Realtors (NAR), posted both monthly and yearly increases for January, evidence of continued gains in housing for the next two

For nearly four years now, the narrative in housing has been essentially unchanged – as soon as inventories go down, and the vast number of vacant, excess homes are cleared from the market, prices will increase and a housing

Do real estate’s top 1 percent of agents sell faster? LeapRE researched which agents had the highest amount of list-side transaction volume during 2011. The top 1 percent of agents listed 27.7 percent of all listings closed in 2011.

The housing market is expected to make a positive contribution to gross domestic product for the first time in seven years in 2012, albeit a very modest one, according to Fannie Mae. The government-sponsored enterprise reported gross domestic product

By Stephanie Becerra Real estate photography has flourished into a powerful and lucrative industry despite the economic state, because selling houses is no different than selling products. Today, Realtors are highly cognizant that high-quality images not only sell homes,

Q: What should I be educating my condo sellers about as it pertains to a potential buyer qualifying for financing? A: One misconception that both condo sellers and buyers have is that they believe the buyer’s credit approval – the

How did existing-home sales look in January? Is Quicken Loans preparing to take the stand in the nation’s highest court? And could Illinois become even more smoke free? We look at the week’s top news (Feb. 20 – Feb.

A new Center for Housing Policy study on housing affordability puts an interesting twist on the endlessly contentious debate of renting and homeownership, looking at the topic not from the perspective of one versus the other, but with the reality