home sales

Oracle, Discover and Tiffany are all expected to report year-over-year growth for their most recent quarters this week. Meanwhile, many will be looking for an updated snapshot of the housing market, with three sets of real-estate data coming out.

Some recent reports on the real estate market show home prices starting to stabilize in many areas. Other data suggests the housing market has further to fall. But whichever direction the numbers are heading, there are few tenets that smart buyers and sellers should always follow.

More people bought previously occupied homes in January. But sales surged on a rising number of foreclosures and all-cash deals, and not first-time home-buyers. The rising number of distressed sales forced home prices down to their lowest level in nearly nine years, a troubling sign for the...

Once was, you could buy a home without much worry about how long it would take to recoup your upfront investment in the down payment and closing costs. Today, home prices have actually rolled backward to 2004 levels sinse their 2006 peak, according to Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller Home Price...

Buyers purchased the fewest number of new homes last year on records going back 47 years. Sales for all of 2010 totaled 321,000, a drop of 14.4 percent from the 375,000 homes sold in 2009, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. It was the fifth consecutive year that sales have declined after...

Bargain hunters poured money into Chinese shares Friday, sending the Shanghai Composite Index surging 1.4%. In Hong Kong, however, the Hang Seng Index lost 0.5%, and in Japan, the Nikkei 225 tumbled 1.6%.

U.S. mortgage rates have grown for five straight weeks, in the last week hitting their highest levels in seven months. Ten-year Treasury note yields have been climbing on inflation concerns, driving the higher rates.

Aided by an improving job market and comparatively low mortgage rates, U.S. pending home sales surged a record 10.4% in October. Still, the latest new- and existing-home sales reports suggest a sluggish housing recovery at least into early 2011.

Home sales tumbled this summer, and foreclosed properties bore the brunt of the pain. Sales of foreclosed homes plunged 31% from the year-ago period -- and 25% from the previous quarter. Prices for these properties also fell more than other homes.

When it comes to predicting the U.S. economy, who has the best crystal ball? Lou Crandall, chief economist at economic advisory firm Wrightson ICAP, according to Bloomberg Markets magazine's new list of top analysts released Thursday.