The Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA), who claims to be the largest homeownership organization in America is criticizing President Obama and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development claiming both have been ineffective in helping the American homeowners.

via  agentgenius 

Last fall, New Jersey-based Loan Value Group launched a new business model, offering lenders and mortgage investors a way to keep their current, but underwater, borrowers current through cash incentives.

via  bubbleinfo.com.

Where is the boom that inevitably follows a deep bust, such as we experienced in 2008 and 2009?

But there is no mystery. What other result would you expect from the financial ruin of the once-great American middle class?

via  News from Yahoo! Finance.

Donovan take[s] an anti-investment position as he separates them from homes of primary residence and alludes to homeownership almost as a right, also alluding that real estate investment homes are subject to being rejected as less than worthy.

via agentgenius .

Mary Myss never has to paint her Chaska, Minn., home, mow the lawn or shovel her driveway. That’s because her walkout rambler is in Pioneer Point, a subdivision of single-family homes that are maintained by a homeowners’ association.

via RISMedia.

Interest-free loans worth up to $50,000 should soon be available for many borrowers at risk of losing their homes because of unemployment or medical disability.

via Property Trax

So you’ve had your property up for sale and you just cannot get it sold. And while you prefer not to become a landlord, you are thinking that renting it out for a while may be the best option – at least you would have some money coming in. You have become an “accidental landlord.”

via Zillow News.

Hindsight being what it is, then, why should it have surprised anyone that the housing market — and its rapidly inflating bubble — ultimately faltered? Given that prices so rapidly outpaced income, shouldn’t it have been obvious the center wouldn’t hold?

Apparently not.

“Everybody got caught up in the excitement,” said Paul Semanek, president of the Greater Capital Association of Realtors, a trade group.

via Times Union.

A growing number of Americans can’t afford a home or don’t want to own one, a trend that’s spawning a generation of renters and a rise in apartment construction.

via msnbc.com.

I dont think we have to choose between real prices and price-to-rent graphs to ask “how far out of line are house prices?” I think they are both showing that prices are not far above the historical lows. Prices might overshoot to the downside because of supply and demand issues; there is a large overhang of vacant housing units and many distressed properties still coming on the market, plus demand is soft with weak employment, fairly tight financing, negative home buying sentiment and some usual buyers excluded because of credit issues. But I dont think national real prices are that far out of line.

via Calculated Risk