The Architecture Billings Index (ABI), one of the leading economic indicators of future construction activity, reported positive numbers yet again in January, marking the third straight month that the index has been in such territory, according to the most recent press release from

Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Acting Director Edward DeMarco offered a long-awaited vision for the U.S. mortgage market, sending Congress a new plan detailing a secondary mortgage market without the presence of Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. In his

Things have been pretty good for builders the last couple months. After two years of sideways growth, construction activity has been charting upward, builder confidence has been rising, and, in the most positive news of all, there have huge increases in multifamily originations,

Existing-home sales rose by 4.3 percent from December to January, marking the third time in the last four months that the key housing measure has shown monthly gains, according to the latest data from the National Association of Realtors

A lawsuit involving lender Quicken Loans began its arguments before the Supreme Court today, with the future of closing fees that lenders charge hanging in the balance. Officially called Freeman v. Quicken Loans Inc., the case originated in 2007, when

The state attorneys general mortgage settlement received almost immediate criticism from homeowner and housing advocates alike after its Feb. 9 announcement, with common complaints being the limited reach of the settlement and the numerous consumer groups that were either

Short sales have rightfully earned a reputation of being slow, plodding and, in some occasions, maddening, but a new bill introduced in the Senate yesterday seeks to cut through all the red tape and simplify the process. Brought before

Throughout 2011, housing inventory had been on a steady decline, a development that should be welcome, given the constant analyses on the excess housing supply as a result of boom-era overbuilding. As details emerge over the nature of those

The White House and the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) are hard at work on a distressed housing program that would convert REO properties into investor-managed rental homes, and though the program seems to be going well in its initial

The White House’s REO conversion plan got a huge endorsement yesterday from analysts at Morgan Stanley, who predicted that the program could create more than one million new jobs. According to a HousingWire summary of the analysts’ findings, the

Hope Now recently released its State Loss Mitigation Data for December 2011, a wide-ranging report that studies the various components of the U.S. first-lien residential mortgage workout, such as delinquencies, foreclosure starts, completed foreclosure sales, loan modifications, and other

The $26 billion mortgage settlement, despite its hefty price tag and extensive (if not laborious) composition, received its fair share of criticisms almost immediately after being issued, with housing advocates and community organizers railing against the settlement’s perceived shortcomings.

Mortgage delinquency rates in the fourth quarter showed improvement in the latest Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) National Delinquency Survey, with a number of the nation’s home loan market offerings reporting some of the healthiest data in years. Jay Brinkmann, MBA’s chief

The U.S. foreclosure markets spent much of 2011 on hiatus, cowering in the corner while banks handled the robo signing controversy and settled the substantial lawsuits that resulted from the scandal’s numerous foreclosure-related mishaps. 2012 is a new year, though,

Residential housing construction started off 2012 on good footing, building on December’s gains and rising in nearly every relevant area, according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Housing

President Obama released his 2013 Budget proposal only this week, but housing advocates are already coming out against the measure, citing reductions in services and revenue models that they claim are essential for housing’s future. On the association side,