HouseSales

Fewer people bought new homes in December, making 2011 the worst sales year on record. The Commerce Department said Thursday new-home sales fell last month to a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 307,000. The pace is less than half the 700,000 that economists say must be sold in a healthy economy.

Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) is handing over its listings of homes for sale and local real estate advertising to Zillow.com, a real estate website. Zillow will oversee a network that will place homes-for-sale listings and real estate advertising on both Yahoo and Zillow.com, The Associated Press reported....

Applications for mortgage loans jumped last week, as homeowners took advantage of historically low rates to refinance their homes. In the week ending July 2, the total number of applications for loans rose 6.7 % on a seasonally adjusted basis from a week earlier.

For women, it's about emotion. Men? Size, of course. No, we're not talking about that. We're talking about home buying. And the male-female approach to that activity is about as similar as football and crocheting. To be fair to the less-fair sex, size isn't the whole picture, although men do...

Economists and financial analysts watch the housing market carefully for clues about how the American economy as a whole is faring. The latest headlines are about falling home prices, and the hysteria is building. Yes, it's the 23rd month in a row that home prices either fell or didn't increase...