As Southern California faces the clean up of the new home market crisis, Capitol investors are looking for opportunities to invest. MarketPointe Realty Advisors, Inc. analysts went back to January of 2006 to identify all Southern California distressed projects, those whose initiative to complete their original plan didn’t come to fruition. The second quarter update [...]

A recovery in the U.S. housing market from the worst slump since the Depression is unlikely until “well into 2009,” Housing and Urban Development Secretary Steve Preston said today.
“I think we’re right in the middle of it, and I think we have a ways to go before we start seeing a turnaround,” Preston said today [...]

Florida’s existing-home sales held steady last month for the first time in years, as lower prices appeared to help the statewide market stabilize.
Metro Orlando accounted for more than one of every 10 resales across the state in July, according to the Florida Association of Realtors, which reported 11,498 single-family home sales on Monday — just [...]

There were predictions as recently as last autumn that the slowdown in home buying and home building would benefit the remodeling industry.
So far, that hasn’t happened. The latest word is that it probably won’t.
“The slumping economy and struggling housing sector continues to drag down spending on home improvements,” said Nicolas P. Retsinas, director of the [...]

Economists say the larger-than-expected rise in July U.S. existing home sales doesn’t necessarily point towards stabilization, since more than a third of the sales are related to foreclosures. They also note that a record high inventory level will put downward pressure on prices going forward.The annualized pace of sales in the National Association of Realtors [...]

Divorce is rarely an easy process, and falling home values and sluggish real-estate sales are combining to make it particularly difficult right now.
Couples aren’t fighting over who gets to keep the house. They’re scrambling to get away from the burden of it. It’s too soon to see the trend in official statistics; the most recent [...]

With little relief this summer, Maryland’s home foreclosure rate continued at a rapid clip through July, with Frederick County showing the biggest jump from June, according to the latest data.
Last month, 3,104 homes were in various stages of foreclosure in Maryland, or one per 741 households, according to RealtyTrac of Irvine, Calif., which monitors foreclosure [...]

For the past year, apartment buildings have been one of the few bright spots in the real-estate industry as people forced out of the home-buying market by foreclosures or the credit crunch have turned to renting.
But now the specter of job losses is beginning to spread the gloom into that sector as well. As would-be [...]

Construction of homes and apartments fell in July to the lowest level in more than 17 years, but some economists said the drop could aid the slumping housing sector by helping reduce a glut of unsold properties.
The Commerce Department on Tuesday said builders broke ground on 965,000 housing units on an annualized basis, down from [...]

There’s a silver lining in San Diego’s slumping housing market: improved affordability.
The National Association of Home Builders yesterday ranked San Diego County as the nation’s 20th least affordable metro area, a major improvement from four years ago, when the region was ranked the most unaffordable market in the nation.
It was the best ranking San Diego [...]