January Existing Home Sales Fall by 5.3 Percent
Lawyer Outwits Banks in Foreclosure Battle
New York Post
While the Obama administration battles to keep people from losing their homes, one Florida lawyer said she has a better answer to the toxic mortgage epidemic sweeping the country — fight back against the loan servicers and banks that are improperly pressing the foreclosure actions.
In essence, Charney has forced scores of plaintiffs in foreclosure actions in Jacksonville to admit they don't have legal ownership of the securitized mortgage they are trying to foreclose upon - stopping the home takeover battle in its tracks.
January Existing Home Sales Fall by 5.3 Percent
The Associated Press
A real estate group says sales of existing homes took an unexpected plunge from December to January, falling to the lowest level in nearly 12 years as buyers waited for the government to boost the U.S housing market.
The National Association of Realtors said Wednesday that sales of existing homes fell 5.3 percent to an annual rate of 4.49 million last month, from 4.74 million units in December. It was the weakest showing since July 1997.
Recession Could End This Year, Fed Chief Says
Washington Post
The nation's top economic policymaker yesterday offered a sliver of optimism in a time of gloom, saying in carefully hedged comments that growth could return next year if the financial system is put in order.
In congressional testimony, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke depicted an economy undergoing a "severe contraction." But Bernanke said the recession could end in 2009, paving the way for a "year of recovery" in 2010.
Links, Lawsuits and Privacy in the Age of Real Estate 2.0
Inman News
In an important case for bloggers and real estate sites in general, real estate aggregator BlockShopper got its hand slapped heavily this month for doing what many of us do ... that is, publishing and linking to publicly available sources on the Internet. (Read related article: BlockShopper Settles Suit With Law Firm).
BlockShopper, a site that was launched in 2006, was built to aggregate real estate data in a number of metro areas around the country. One of the main features on the site is a daily news summary of real estate transactions in each city. ("Italian anesthesiologist drops $1.3M in Riverdale" serves as an example.)
Renters Lose Edge on Homeowners
Wall Street Journal
The relative cost of owning versus renting is swinging back in favor of homeownership in some U.S. markets, buoyed by several quarters of sharp declines in home prices.
At the height of the housing boom, as home prices surged, demand for rentals started to rise as the gap between owning and renting widened significantly. Even after the housing market soured, apartment demand grew as former homeowners became renters, allowing landlords to push healthy rent increases.
Now, after two years of rapid home-price depreciation, the relationship between the cost of rental payments versus after-tax mortgage payments is tilting toward ownership in a number of metropolitan areas.