I’m doing a story on jumbo loans today and how their price and availability are affecting the million-dollar home buyers. In the course of my research, I decided to take a look at Greenwich, CT, one of my favorite enclaves of multi, multi-million-dollar homes.   Read More

Before Democrats could even utter the words, “housing,” “rescue,” “FHA” or “predatory,” President Bush had already let the threat fly: “I will veto the bill that's moving through the House today if it makes it to my desk.” Nuff said, Sir.    Read More

I have to say I never really bought the so-called “recovery” in the homebuilder stocks that we saw at the beginning of the year. There was a lot of talk of a “bottom” in the stocks, despite the fact that nobody is ready to call a bottom in the housing market.    Read More

Analysts this morning began raising some red flags over the Bank of America/Countrywide deal, citing deterioration in the mortgage market that could lead BofA to walk away, or at the very least lower its asking price.    Read More

I want to talk about a huge number: 457,000. That’s the number of construction jobs that have been lost since the sector peaked in September of 2006. What’s interesting to me about this number is that at the beginning of the downturn in housing we didn’t see a huge drop in construction jobs, primarily because workers moved from residential into commercial.    Read More

Yesterday I wrote about the rather uncomfortable situation of hundreds of home builders on Capitol Hill, asking lawmakers for help, after their association had brashly cut off Congressional contributions.    Read More

I went up to Capitol Hill this morning because about 1,200 members of the National Association of Home Builders are taking their annual day of action up here. It couldn't be more timely, as several bills are working their way through Congress to help builders and borrowers alike and to right the housing market.    Read More

I want to bring your attention to a disturbing little sub-number in today’s quarterly foreclosure report from California-based RealtyTrac. RealtyTrac reports “foreclosure activity,” which covers default notices, auctions sale notices and bank repossessions.    Read More

Tomorrow the folks at S&P/Case Shiller will report the monthly prices in the nation’s top ten and top twenty metro markets. Every time I report these numbers I get any number of critics arguing that the fall in home prices is really concentrated in only a few large cities in the nation, most of them in California and Florida.    Read More

It makes a whole lot of sense. When food prices soar, seed sales begin to grow. Harold Stone is hearing it from a whole new crop of gardeners at a Washington, DC community garden that he runs. “Food is just becoming astronomical and they really want to get an edge on that and be able to create some of their own food.”    Read More