While there is still debate over whether now is the right time to buy a house, there are other opportunities to make a profit in real estate.

General Electric's decision this week to no longer lend consumers money to buy motorhomes and boats was more bad news for the recreational vehicle and boat industry.

Lenders would be required to tell consumers when they are being offered less favorable terms based on poorer credit scores under new rules proposed on Thursday by the Federal Reserve and the Federal Trade Commission

The battered housing market has steadied and is ready to bounce back off an inevitable pullback from its boom times in the earlier part of the decade, said Ron Peltier, the CEO at Warren Buffett's Homeservices of America real estate company.

The chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said the agency plans to require the top investment banks to publicly disclose their current liquidity and capital positions.

Wall Street seems to have concluded that the worst of the credit crisis is over and investors are looking to better economic times ahead, but Main Street is sending the opposite signal.

Pending sales of previously owned homes fell 1 percent in March, as expected, as turmoil in the housing and mortgage markets continued, a real estate trade group report Wednesday showed.

Financial markets expect Fannie Mae, the biggest provider of funding for U.S. home loans, can reverse losses by applying $6 billion in fresh capital toward profitable investments, the company's federal regulator told CNBC on Wednesday.

Applications for mortgages rose, fueled by a jump in demand for refinancing and home purchase loans as interest rates dropped.

The U.S. dollar's slide against the euro could make it attractive for U.S. investors who bought real estate in Germany three or four years ago to start offloading some of those properties.

Target says it is selling an interest in its credit-card receivables business to JPMorgan Chase for about $3.6 billion.

US banks kept tightening lending standards and terms for both business and consumer loans over the past three months out of concern about a weakening economic outlook.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, reeling from the deterioration in the housing market, will likely post steep losses for the first quarter, but the two largest home funding companies are expected to escape previous record losses.

Big Wall Street investment companies are pulling back on their borrowing from the Federal Reserve's emergency lending program.