The Houston City Council voted last Wednesday to adopt recent Construction Industry Council recommendations to raise the city’s energy standards to 5 percent more than the Texas state minimum. In addition to the 2012 standards, the council also established

At the close of the summer, appraisals were a hot topic, with builders and Realtors alike criticizing the shoddy documentation and lackluster criteria that often defined the appraisal experience. Though news about government assistance and foreclosures quickly overtook appraisals,

For most of 2011, housing has been on a sidewayspath, neither faltering nor rising above the sleepy market that took over after the immediate losses following 2007. A new piece by CNBC’s Albert Bozzo, though, suggests that 2012 will

Houston Realtor Traye Wise had no idea the photos taken for one of his listings, 5304 Michaux St., would cause such a stir. But with interior photos like the one pictured here (brought to our attention via Swamplot), how

New legislation introduced in the Senate yesterday would place Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on a 10-year timeline, liquidating the two GSEs and turning its components over to the private sector. According to a HousingWire report, the Mortgage Finance

The National Association of Realtors (NAR)has zeroed in on the secondary mortgage market, calling for reforms to what it sees as a major contributor to a sustained housing recovery. In testimony before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets and Government-Sponsored Enterprises,

Typically, income and credit scores are main factors in determining mortgage rates, but a new study from the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economicssuggests that gender plays a substantial role. Brought to light by an AOL Real Estate piece

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the U.S. Department of the Treasury released the White House’s latest Housing Scorecard, a cumulative report that assesses a wide number of factors in the housing market. Like most

We all saw the headlines; CoreLogic’s Home Price Index (HPI) fell 1.3 percent from September to October and 3.9 percent from last year, while LPS reported a 1.2 percent drop from August and the Case-Shiller, the granddaddy of them

The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) added 20 more cities to its Improving Markets Index (IMI), further evidence that though housing remains tough in some markets, it is not only improving, but showing positive signs of growth in

“Squatters,” a term for people occupying an abandoned home they do not own, rent or have permission to use, are sweeping across Texas in droves to exploit an incredible loophole in Texas state law that allows them to claim

Why do consumers make the choices they do? Why buy one jacket, but pass on another? Why invest in one bond, but not the latest Silicon Valley IPO? In the end, what governs reckless financial behavior, even at the

There were many outcomes of the housing boom and bust cycle, but one of the more implicit has been lowering consumer credit scores, a detail that has posed problems for prospective homebuyers seeking a mortgage for their transactions. According

Two home price indices from CoreLogic and Lender Processing Services(LPS) both showed small declines in home prices for October, indications that the summer buying boom has concluded and home values are entering their seasonal lull. CoreLogic’s Home Price Index (HPI), which

Real estate website HomeGain recently surveyed Realtors on a number of economic topics, and though most of the questions dealt with prices and home values, a question on political support yielded interesting results, according to a HousingWire piece on

New stories from KUHF and the Houston Business Journal are reporting that Washington is dispatching a team of housing experts to Houston to whip the city’s Housing and Urban Development (HUD) office into shape. According to KUHF’s story, Mayor Annise Parker