Home prices are rising at double digit rates. Inventories are at historic lows. Two out of five applicants for a purchase mortgage are rejected. Yet nearly three quarters of Americans say it’s a good time

Many residents in rural America would have reduced access to mortgage credit despite accommodations included in new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) mortgage rules, according to survey results released recently by the Independent Community Bankers of America® (ICBA). ICBA’s Community Bank Qualified Mortgage Survey found that provisions for balloon-payment mortgage loans and rural community banks in the CFPB’s ability-to-repay and qualified mortgage regulations need to go further to adequately protect the customers of many Main Street community bank lenders.

Homeowners with positive equity in their homes have fewer problem loans and are outperforming the national average for defaults. Their default rates are close to pre-crisis norms.

Realogy Holdings Corp., a global leader in residential real estate franchising and provider of real estate brokerage, relocation, and title and settlement services, recently reported financial results for the first quarter

CENTURY 21 Redwood Realty has announced that it has released its third generation Redwood Home Search on c21redwood.com, expanding the reach of its “Search By School” technology throughout the D.C. area.

Buying a house is the biggest investment most people will make in their lifetime, and the complex process can be intimidating to many homebuyers. Knowing the right questions to ask and receiving professional advice

Freddie Mac recently announced Loan Quality Advisor(SM), a new online loan tool that gives lenders an automated way to identify credit, data and purchase eligibility issues before they deliver loans to Freddie Mac.

To meet the nation’s growing need for affordable rental housing and homeownership opportunities, the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) recently called on Congress to maintain its support for vital housing tax incentives, including the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, the mortgage interest deduction and real estate tax deductions. “Home building is an industry dominated by small businesses, so the idea of simplifying the complicated tax rules related to business has great appeal. At the same time, our industry remembers painful lessons from the 1986 Tax Reform Act, when the commercial and multifamily sectors experienced a downturn due to unintended consequences,” said Robert Dietz, an economist and assistant vice president for NAHB, in testimony during a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on tax reform and residential real estate.

Attention from foreign consumers searching U.S. properties increased for Miami in March, according to the 26,000-member MIAMI Association of REALTORS® (MIAMI).

In traditional housing recoveries, individuals and households provide the bulk of the demand the market needs to rebound. This time, though, a different kind of buyer has been powering the housing recovery: investors looking for valuable rental property. Along with individual investors, institutional investors have poured into the single-family home market, buying enough foreclosed and unsold homes to reduce inventories, drive up prices and encourage new construction. All-cash home purchases – many of which are made by investors – made up about 32.0% of sales nationally in March 2013, a stark rise from about 20.0% in 2009, according to the National Association of REALTORS®.

CoreLogic®, a leading residential property information, analytics and services provider, announced the acquisition of Case-Shiller® from Fiserv, Inc. in conjunction with first quarter 2013 CoreLogic earnings results on April 24, 2013. The acquisition closed on March 20, 2013. ...

Luxury Portfolio International® has expanded its global footprint with the addition of 15 new member firms in the first quarter of the year, with extended coverage throughout Europe, as well as the U.S. and Canada,

As Congress pursues comprehensive tax reform it should focus on doing no harm to housing and America’s 75 million homeowners by maintaining current tax laws for homeownership and real estate investment, the National Association of REALTORS® said in a recent testimony. NAR President Gary Thomas testified before the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee concerning Federal tax provisions that affect residential real estate.

Nationally, house prices continued to rise in February, contributing to the overall recovery in U.S. house prices. According to the most recent release  by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, U.S. house prices rose by 0.7 percent

Sales of newly built, single-family homes rose 1.5 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 417,000 units in March, according to newly released figures from HUD and the U.S. Census Bureau. “This is the second-best sales number we’ve seen since early 2010, and a good sign of the continued, gradual headway that our industry is making toward recovery as more buyers jump off the fence in time to take advantage of today’s low interest rates and prices,” said Rick Judson, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and a home builder from Charlotte, N.C. “The latest sales report is right in line with our forecast for continued, modest increases in home prices and sales through 2013,” said NAHB Chief Economist David Crowe. “At this point, we are about half-way back to what would be considered a ‘normal’ level of sales activity