REO inventories, and the supposed plan on what to do with them, have attained a near-mythical status in recent months. Every month or so, we publish a story on recommendations from the National Association of Realtors, local attempts to

News flash: homebuyers care about the perceived quality of a property. Though hardly news to agents, the 2011 National Association of Realtors Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, just released in November, found that 67 percent of homebuyers decided

Down payments can make or break a housing contract, and recent data from LendingTree, which reports that the average down payment on homes is just 12 percent, would appear to be welcome news. After all, high down payments and

Everyone has a hypothesis on what specific factor is prohibiting housing from a true, sustainable recovery. Typically, such hypotheses feature a stock list of usual suspects – excess inventory, REOs and foreclosures, vacant properties, unreasonably tight financing and contract failures. An academic

Construction spending in November exceeded economists’ predictions and rose 1.2 percent from October to $807.1 billion, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce. All in all, construction spending was positive across the

Numerous disagreements swirled around Congress’ passing last month of the payroll tax cut extension, but none proved more controversial with real estate professionals than the agreed funding method for the tax cut – and now a date has been

After a strong summer, home values have been charting a rough course in recent months. Between CoreLogic’s HPI, LPS’ home price index and Radar Logic’s RPX, home values in the most recent data sets declined between 1 and 2

The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has renewed a waiver for an anti-flipping regulation through 2012, according to a press release just issued by the agency. Originally passed to limit home flipping – the housing strategy of buying cheap properties

The National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) Pending Home Sales Index, a measure of housing contracts for pending sales, rose 7.3 percent in November to its highest level in 19 months, according to a new press release from the association. Increasing

Standard & Poor’s released the latest resultsof its influential Case-Shiller Home Price Indices just moments ago for the month of October, and like the previous collection of data, it shows both monthly and year-over-year declines for housing values in

Houston Agent will be taking a brief break next week, but we’ll be back the first week of January to continue bringing you the most timely, invaluable real estate news around. Happy

Standard & Poor’s will release the latest batch of Case-Shiller Home Price Indices next Tuesday, and several of the other competing price indices have some analysts projecting the second negative month in a row for the Case-Shiller, which remains

Affordability is a main feature of today’s market, as depressed prices have produced one of the most accommodating buyer’s markets in recent

After a period of considerable debate, the Houston City Council has adopted new regulations to govern the construction of high-rise buildings near residential, single-family

New single-family home sales in November rose 1.6 percent from October, a seven-month high that still continues a 19-month trend of mostly sideways growth at a low level. According to new data jointly released by the U.S. Census Bureau and

After a nearly three-point jump in October, the Architecture Billings Index, a forward-thinking measure of future construction activity, increased by 2.6 in November to 52.0, the first positive level for the index since August. Additionally, the new projects inquiry, a