The 2012 outlook is improving modestly from a disappointing 2011. Economic growth picked up in the fourth quarter of 2011 to 2.8 percent and is expected to come in at 2.3 percent for 2012, up from 1.6 percent growth for all of last year, according to Fannie Mae’s (FNMA/OTC) Economic & Strategic Research Group. However, [...]

Finding a new place to live just became easier for consumers—who can now browse homes on their smartphones. The Real Estate Book recently launched an additional mobile tool—a free Android app to make looking through photos, maps, and more information a better experience for home shoppers. Consumers may download the app for free from the [...]

(MCT)—Residential contractors are hoping that tight-fisted consumers will decide they need a new bathroom. Or maybe it’s time for those old kitchen counters to go. Perhaps it would be better to add another bedroom than move? After three years of slumping business, builders anticipate that the home remodeling and improvement sector will pick up in [...]

While delinquencies and defaults slowly improve in the housing economy as a whole, FHA’s portfolio has not shared the same good fortune, creating increased pressure on the agency to reduce risk and increase costs to its borrowers, most of whom are first-time buyers. In December, about one out of every 10 FHA mortgages, 9.73 percent, [...]

Building on significant upward revisions to numbers for the previous two months, nationwide production of new single-family homes and apartments increased 1.5 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of nearly 700,000 units in January, according to newly released figures from the U.S. Commerce Department. This marks the second-best pace of overall housing production since [...]

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke made the following speech at the 2012 National Association of Homebuilders International Builders’ Show, held in Orlando, Fla. on February 10. Housing Markets in Transition The economic recovery began more than two years ago, but it doesn’t feel like much of a recovery for many Americans—certainly for those of [...]

We, the little people, are not alone. Or so say the gossip rags. The country is riddled with houses in foreclosure—people from all walks of life have been hit hard, regardless of whether they are paid millions to throw a ball around or prance around on TV while spending money and acting catty. Celebrity foreclosures [...]

In the fourth quarter of 2011, fixed-rate loans accounted for more than 95 percent of refinance loans, based on the Freddie Mac (OTC: FMCC) Quarterly Product Transition Report released recently. Refinancing borrowers clearly preferred fixed-rate loans, regardless of whether their original loan was an adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) or a fixed-rate. An increasing share of refinancing [...]

(MCT)—Dropbox is the most deceptively simple of services. Place a Dropbox folder on each computer or gadget you own. Drag any file into that folder. A copy of that file automatically appears on every device where you put a Dropbox folder. It’s idiot proof. But don’t let that simplicity fool you. Dropbox also epitomizes a [...]

Has this ever happened to you? You’re talking to a client, or perhaps your boss, and you realize the conversation has gotten off on absolutely the wrong foot. You may have learned new and unexpected information from the other person that renders everything you’ve said irrelevant. You may have walked in with an assumption that [...]