Recent Articles

A survey by mortgage finance company Freddie Mac showing that U.S. mortgage rates have gone up for three weeks in a row and now top 5% is already setting off some alarm bells over fears that any possibility of a recovery of the nation's real estate market might now be doomed because the Federal...

If your house smelled like, say, a giant lemon or, perhaps, a cinnamon stick, might it be a lot easier to sell in this depressed and distressed real estate market? Apparently, some real estate brokers think so and have come up with all sorts of ways to create the "perfect" scent to make a property...

Predictions of an imploding commercial real estate market in the U.S. are hardly new. But almost all the previous gloomy predictions came from analysts or folks in the commercial real estate business. So, when the government's own watchdog for the Troubled Asset Relief Program says things could get...

We are used to hearing stories of police fighting the war on drugs, terrorism and crime in general. But how about the police fighting -- alongside homeowners -- the war on foreclosures? In what has got to be one of the more unique uses of an urban police force in recent memory, on-duty members of...

You'd have to be out of your mind to open a new hotel in this economic environment, right? Apparently not if the location happens to be South Beach, the trend-setting (ie., expensive) southern tip of Miami Beach, Fla. In fact, the hotel market is actually expanding not only in South Beach, but...

We've come to this: An ordained Orthodox-Catholic priest in Indiana has pleaded guilty to federal charges of defrauding real estate developers and even churches of almost $3 million, according to the Courier-Journal of Louisville, Ky. "Father Barney", aka Byron Canada, apparently ran two South Bend...

Looks like low cost, low down-payment FHA-backed loans will be around for some time to come -- good news for potential home buyers, not such good news for those who argue that the more money borrowers invest upfront, the less likely they will be to walk away when threatened with foreclosure. Right...

Could a mere county government accomplish what the mighty federal government has seemingly been unable to do these past several months: Bring "too-big-to-fail" banks to their knees because of their failure to come to the aid of underwater homeowners seeking some sort of mortgage relief? Maybe. It's...

When it comes to trying to fix the still very much ailing real estate market in this country, it really doesn't seem as if the government can do anything right. We've known for a long time now that its mortgage modification scheme has pretty much fallen flat with nowhere near the number of...

It's a variation of "you can run, but you can't hide," in the case of underwater homeowners (those whose homes are now worth less than the remaining mortgage). In increasing numbers, according to reports, people are simply walking away from their homes. Now banks and other lending institutions are...