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A group of Sacramento-area property owners and land managers on Wednesday threatened to sue the federal government if it does not proceed with removing a native beetle from the endangered species list. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service initially proposed removing the valley elderberry longhorn beetle from the endangered species list in 2006. But the process has dragged along and the beetle remains protected. On Wednesday, the Pacific Legal Foundation, a Sacramento-based nonprofit law firm, said the delay may have cost its clients millions of dollars over the past five years. Those clients include land owners, levee maintenance districts and...

“I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes,” President Obama, September 12, 2008 Beginning January 1, 2013, ObamaCare imposes a 3.8% Medicare tax on unearned income of “high-income” taxpayers which could apply to proceeds from the sale of single family homes, townhouses, co-ops, condominiums, and even rental income, depending on your individual circumstances and any capital gains tax exclusions. Importantly, the “high income” thresholds are not...

Made In America (Video of home built entirely of American made products)

How do you foreclose on a home that doesn't exist? That's the question KRPC-TV in Houston asked Texas homeowner Brad Gana, whose home was destroyed by Hurricane Ike in 2008 while he was overseas (via AGBeat). Despite the the destruction, Gana continued to make mortgage payments on the property. Then, two days before Gana planned to sell the property, he learned the bank was foreclosing on it. What happened? Apparently, while Gana was making his regular payments, Bank of America had incorrectly placed a homeowner's policy on the non-existent property and additionally, increased his monthly mortage payments. Bank of America...

Representatives of “the 99 percent” have been camping out in lower Manhattan to protest economic inequality since late September, but the riches on display at some of their home addresses clearly came from “1 percent” families. We searched Google Maps and the real estate Multiple Listing Service for the home addresses police collected during the arrests of less-than-law-abiding New York City “occupiers,” and found dream homes aplenty. These opulent houses include in-ground swimming pools, manicured lawns, and golf course access.

Many “Occupy Wall Street” protesters arrested in New York City reside in more luxurious homes than some of their rhetoric might suggest, a Daily Caller investigation has found. For each of the 984 Occupy Wall Street protesters arrested in New York City between September 18 and October 15, police collected and filed an information sheet recording the arrestee’s name, age, sex, criminal charge, home address and — in most cases — race. The Daily Caller has obtained all of this information from a source in the New York City government. Among addresses for which information is available, single-family homes listed...

Sex offenders found at 39 California foster homesMarisa Lagos, Chronicle Staff Writer Thursday, October 27, 2011 Lax state oversight has resulted in sex offenders living, working or being present in at least 39 California homes where foster children are also authorized to live, including several in the Bay Area, a state audit released Thursday concluded. The audit compared the addresses of registered sex offenders with the addresses of licensed facilities and homes where foster children were placed, and found more than 1,000 instances where the addresses matched. When state and county officials investigated those addresses, they found 39 instances where...

The S&P/Case-Shiller 20-city composite rose 0.2% on the month to narrow year-on-year declines to 3.8%. Though MarketWatch doesn’t tabulate a consensus, stock futures turned lower in reaction as Bloomberg pegged estimates for a 3.6% annual drop. A separate report from the Federal Housing Finance Agency, using prices on transactions backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, showed a 0.1% monthly fall on a seasonally adjusted basis and a 4% year-on-year decline.

Housing starts surged 15% in September to the highest level in 1 1/2 years, according to government data... ...The Commerce Department said starts rose to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 658,000, which also is 10.2% above the September 2010 reading and the best level since April 2010 — the month the homebuyer tax credit expired. The figures were well ahead of the 590,000 forecast in a MarketWatch-compiled economist poll. The rise was led by a 53% surge in starts of buildings with five or more units to 227,000, the best reading in three years; single-family starts rose a more...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The percentage of Americans who owned their homes has seen its biggest decline since the Great Depression, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The rate of home ownership fell to 65.1% in April 2010, 1.1 percentage points lower than it was in 2000. The decline was the biggest drop since the 1930s, when home ownership plunged 4.2%. The most recent decade-over-decade drop, however, only tells half the story. Home ownership during the 2000s "was really high in the middle of the decade, up to almost 70% at one point around 2004," said Ellen Wilson, a survey...

Sales dropped 2.3% last month to an annual rate of 295,000, the lowest level since February, the Commerce Department said Monday. After peaking in 2011 at 316,000 in April, new-home sales have gradually declined... The average sales price of a new home, meanwhile, sank 8.7% to $246,000, the lowest level since January 2009.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Confidence in the market for newly built single-family homes dipped slightly in September to remain in very low territory, according to an index released Monday. The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index fell by a point to 14, on a seasonally adjusted index where readings above 50 are considered good. The index, which correlates closely with single-family housing starts, has held between 13 and 16 for the last six months.

The Labor Department is investigating possible minimum wage and overtime violations in the residential construction industry, The New York Times reports. The government is asking numerous builders to produce records on wages and hours of its employees and contractors. The government has targeted the residential construction industry for its investigation because of its high number of immigrant workers that it employs and after recent investigations have found some construction contractors have been misclassifying workers as independent contractors to get around wage laws, says Nancy J. Leppink, acting director of the department’s wage and hour division. The Labor Department had uncovered...

You and your fellow U.S. taxpayers own 248,000 homes, the result of record numbers of people defaulting on government-backed mortgages, according to a Bloomberg Businessweek story that quotes a Cleveland housing expert. With even more homes moving toward default, the magazine says, “Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration are looking for a way to unload them without swamping the already depressed real estate market.” They've even issued a public plea for ideas to help do this; you have until Sept. 15 to send ideas to reo.rfi@fhfa.gov. Bloomberg Businessweek says the government's call for ideas is a sign...

Just as students head back to college and families finish summer vacations comes the latest bad news from pest control companies: Bedbug infestations are getting worse and becoming more common in some places, including dorms, hotels, nursing homes, hospitals, office buildings, and schools and day-care centers. According to a survey released Wednesday by the National Pest Management Association and the University of Kentucky, pest control companies say there has been double-digit growth in infestations in the past year. About 54 percent of pest companies reported treating bedbugs in college dorms, compared with 35 percent in 2010; 80 percent reported treating...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Housing starts slipped 1.5% in July, according to data released Tuesday that highlight the lack of demand for new homes. Starts fell to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 604,000, down from a downwardly revised 613,000 rate in June, the Commerce Department said. Economists polled by MarketWatch had anticipated an annualized rate of 600,000 for July, and many had thought June’s initial reading of 629,000 was too strong. Single-family starts slipped 4.9% last month to 425,000 from a downwardly revised 447,000.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Housing markets struggled through another tough quarter, this time during the spring buying season, the strongest time of year for home sellers. Prices of existing homes fell 2.8% in the three months ended June 30 compared with the same period in 2010, according to a report issued Wednesday by the National Association of Realtors (NAR). For Lawrence Yun, NAR's chief economist, the report was a continuation of a trend that began in 2009. "Median home prices have been moving up and down in a relatively narrow range in many markets, which shows a stabilization trend," he...

It used to be that, to live in Chatham, you practically had to know someone. As a mother with no husband — despite having a 9-to-5 — my chances of finding a landlord who’d rent me an apartment in one of Chatham’s immaculate three-flats were slim. The landlords there could afford to be picky. Few of them would rent to you just because you told them you were a mom desperate to move to a neighborhood where you didn’t have to worry about gangs and guns. That’s another thing that’s different about Chatham these days. Looking for the new Chatham,...

~ EXCERPT ~ Well, that’s not good — The National Association of Realtors says pending home sales plunged 11.6% To 81.9 in April. Expectations were for a smaller drop, to 92 from 94.1 in March. **snip** “This terrible report should shock all of those optimists in the housing market back into being realists,” writes David Semmens of Standard Chartered. “Falling prices should be tempting buyers slowly back into the market, but while the price declines appear to be entrenched, consumers will continue to hold off from signing contracts.”

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Sales of new homes rose 11.1% in March, the Commerce Department said Monday, marking a mild improvement from the worst-ever showing as the dampening effect of winter storms and an expiring California tax credit wore off. The still-bleak reading of a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 300,000 represented a 21.9% nosedive from March 2010 levels. However, the level beat a MarketWatch-compiled economist estimate of 290,000. February’s low reading of 250,000 was revised up to 270,000. Analysts had attributed February’s weakness in part to winter storms that depressed figures in the East and the Midwest, as well as...

~ EXCERPT ~ The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of American Adults shows that 51% now believe buying a home is a family’s best investment. That’s down from 55% in March and from 73% in February 2009. Only once before - in August of last year - has the belief in home ownership been this low. Twenty-five percent (25%) of adults do not think a home is the best investment for families, while another 23% are not sure. Just 11% of all Americans say now is a good time for someone in their area to sell their house, showing...

Online retail sales keep climbing, big box retailers keep wondering what to do with all their space, and small stores struggle to survive at all. As a result of that nasty brew, Malls Face Surge in Vacancies. Mall vacancies hit their highest level in at least 11 years in the first quarter, new figures from real-estate research company Reis Inc. showed. In the top 80 U.S. markets, the average vacancy rate was 9.1%, up from 8.7%. The outlook is especially bad for strip malls and other neighborhood shopping centers. Their vacancy rate is expected to top 11.1% later this year,...

New York - High residential vacancies are killing many housing markets, as foreclosed homes sit on the market and depress sale prices and property values. And it's only getting worse: The national vacancy rate crept up to just over 13% according to last week's decennial census report. That's up from 12.1% in 2007. "More vacant homes equal more downward pressure on home prices," (Snip) Maine had the highest proportion of empty housing stock, at 22.8%. Other states with gluts of empty houses included Vermont (20.5%), Florida (17.5%), Arizona (16.3%) and Alaska (15.9%).

Reporting from Tokyo — At the seemingly fragile age of 76, his story is the stuff of Hollywood legend (Well, maybe the seamier side of the San Fernando Valley), a tale made more outlandish because it happened to a buttoned-down salary man in hyper-conservative Japan. For years, a Tokyo grandfather kept a dirty little secret from his family. Longtime travel agent Shigeo Tokuda, who resembles countless older men who ride the Tokyo subway each day, admitted to his wife and daughter that he sometimes performed cameos in small-budget films. But what this senior citizen didn't say was that those scenes,...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The new year has brought little cheer to new-home builders: Their sales fell a shocking 11.2% between December and January and 18.6% from 12 months earlier. The total number of new homes sold in January was a seasonally adjusted 284,000, down from 325,000 in December, the government said Thursday. In total, the market is down 80% from its peak, which was set in July 2005, when the annualized rate of sales hit nearly 1.4 million. The big problem facing developers is that they face significant competition from foreclosed homes, which sell at bargain-basement prices. In fact,...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Buyers purchased the fewest number of new homes last year on records going back 47 years. The Commerce Department says sales for all of 2010 totaled 321,000, a drop of 14.4 percent from the 375,000 homes sold in 2009.

The devastation in some regions will never be repaired. Parts of Oregon, Georgia and Arizona have become progressively more deserted. Since jobless rates may never recover, there is little reason to hope that the populations in these areas will ever rebound.

Executive Summary: The “Great Recession” of 2007 to 2009 has taken a great toll on housing markets in most cities and metropolitan areas in all parts of the country. Though the pace and extent of the overall economic recovery of these markets is still far from certain, many places will likely resume growth and fully recover within the next decade or so. This is almost certainly not to be the case for all metropolitan areas. In fact, a number of large metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) experienced severe recessions during the latter half of the 20th century and prior to the...

The housing market has remained at the center of the nation's economic troubles throughout 2010. The housing market started the year flat on its back, and it's ending the year in nearly the same condition. Home sales are still depressed, home-building remains near a 50-year low, and home prices are still about 30 percent below their peak. Part of the problem this year has clearly been high unemployment. But the ongoing foreclosure crisis also keeps glutting the market with unsold homes. Meanwhile, the government's efforts to prevent foreclosures over the past year were a pretty big disappointment to many people....

<p>It's . . . it's perfect," she said, sitting on her new couch in her new D.C. apartment, letting out a sigh....</p>

Following claims that some foreclosure hearings around Florida have been closed to the public, Chief Justice Charles Canady has ordered corrective measures. “The courts of Florida belong to the people of Florida,” the chief justice said. “The people of Florida are entitled to know what takes place in the courts of this state. No crisis justifies the administrative suspension of the strong legal presumption that state court proceedings are open to the public.” Canady acted after the Florida Press Association and other organizations sent letters to him and Fourth Circuit Chief Judge Donald Moran detailing instances where members of the...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Any possible housing market recovery hit a snag during the three months ended September 30, as a government tax credit for homebuyers wound down. Home prices fell only slightly during the quarter, according to a report from the National Association of Realtors (NAR), but the number of homes sold plummeted more than 25%, compared with the previous quarter. The fall-off in sales volume remains a troubling feature of the current housing market scene because there's rarely been a more attractive time to buy. "Given the relationship between mortgage interest rates, home prices and median family income,...

David Cameron today defended the Government's plans to limit housing benefit, saying it was not fair for working people to see their taxes used to fund homes 'they couldn't even dream of'. The Prime Minister dismissed reports there could be a climbdown over the proposals, telling Labour leader Ed Miliband: 'We are going forward with all the proposals we put in the spending review and in the Budget'.

A top White House adviser questioned the need Sunday for a blanket stoppage of all home foreclosures, even as pressure grows on the Obama administration to do something about mounting evidence that banks have used inaccurate documents to evict homeowners.

“I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes,” President Obama, September 12, 2008 Beginning January 1, 2013, ObamaCare imposes a 3.8% Medicare tax on unearned income, including the sale of single family homes, townhouses, co-ops, condominiums, and even rental income. In February 2010, 5.02 million homes were sold, according to the National Association of Realtors. On any given day, the sale of a house, townhome, condominium,...

Like millions of Americans, Delaware Republican Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell has had trouble covering her mortgage and other bills over the years. Her opponents consider this a scandal of disqualifying proportions. But there's a bigger disgrace: It's all the sanctimonious Democrats who have exploited their entrenched political incumbency to pay for multiple manses and vacation homes -- while posing as vox populi. Former senior senator from Delaware and current Vice President Joe Biden has a custom-built house in Delaware's ritziest Chateau Country neighborhood. It is now worth at least $2.5 million and is the Bidens' most valuable asset. Biden tapped...

Nearly half of all Americans who claimed the first-time homebuyer tax credit on their 2009 tax returns will have to repay the government... The confusion comes because homebuyers were eligible for two different credits, depending on when their homes were purchased... Now, the IRS is developing a strategy for separating the 2009 taxpayers who are required to repay the credit from those who are not.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Nearly half of all Americans who claimed the first-time homebuyer tax credit on their 2009 tax returns will have to repay the government. According to a report from the Inspector General for Tax Administration, released to the public Thursday, about 950,000 of the nearly 1.8 million Americans who claimed the tax credit on their 2009 tax returns will have to return the money.

Authorities in Colorado are searching for eight people who didn't leave their homes as a wildfire tore through a canyon in the foothills near Boulder. Sheriff's Cmdr. Rich Brough said Wednesday that 20 people were initially reported missing and 12 have been accounted for. It's unclear whether the remaining eight were in some of the 53 homes that have been reported destroyed. Authorities are following up with family members of the missing people and checking homes in the area. About 3,500 people have been evacuated from about 1,000 homes since the fire broke out Monday.

After a very long search I have been offered a job in southern CT. I'm nowin the process of finding a place to live down there but I am arguing with members of my family about the merits of buying a large house from a distressed buyer at a discount price (more than we need but they argue "a good investment") or a smaller house for very short money perhaps even for cash to reduce housing cost as much as possible. The argument seems to come down to the following: a large house will sell for more than a small...

The home sale slump has left some dwellings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and other architectural luminaries languishing on the Southern California market. Marquee homes by Wright and others like Richard Neutra and Rudolph Schindler, which once sold briskly to Los Angeles design aficionados for stratospheric prices, are now selling at a loss if at all, with the well-heeled increasingly reluctant to buy.

Wildlife officials have killed a grizzly bear in Wyoming and a grizzly bear in Montana to head-off potential lawsuits. The Montana grizzly killed and partially consumed Kevin Kammer at a Gallatin National Forest campground near Cooke City, Mont. on July 29. The Wyoming grizzly killed 70 year-old botanist Erwin Evert on June 17 on the Shoshone National Forest near the East Entrance of Yellowstone National Park. The circumstances were quite different, but the decision to kill the bears was undoubtedly influenced by a 1996 court case over the terrible bear mauling of 16 year-old Anna Knochel at a U.S. Forest...

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Banks repossessed a record number of U.S. homes in the second quarter, but slowed new foreclosure notices to manage distressed properties on the market, real estate data company RealtyTrac said on Thursday. The root problems of job losses and wage cuts persist, making a sustained U.S. housing recovery elusive. Banks took control of 269,962 properties in the second quarter, up 5 percent from the prior quarter and a 38 percent spike from the second quarter of last year, RealtyTrac said in its midyear 2010 foreclosure report. Repossessions will likely top 1 million this year. "The underlying...

Israel razed on Tuesday an inhabited Palestinian home in East Jerusalem for the first time in eight months, effectively ending an unofficial freeze of such internationally condemned demolitions. A Reuters photographer witnessed a Palestinian family removing its belongings from the house in East Jerusalem's Beit Hanina neighborhood before an Israeli excavator tore into the dwelling. "They can build hundreds of settlements but I'm not entitled to live in a shack?" asked Linda al-Rajabi outside the demolished dwelling she shared with her husband and their five children.

The Real Story Behind Today's Record Home Sales Collapse Calculated Risk Jun. 23, 2010, 3:23 PM The Census Bureau reports New Home Sales in May were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) of 300 thousand. This is a sharp decrease from the revised rate of 446 thousand in April (revised from 504 thousand). The first graph shows monthly new home sales (NSA - Not Seasonally Adjusted). Note the Red columns for 2010. In May 2010, 28 thousand new homes were sold (NSA). This is a new record low. The previous record low for the month of May was 34...

The Obama administration homebuyer tax credit program granted $9.1 million to 1,295 prisoners who were incarcerated when they said they purchased their home. Many such discrepancies are identified in a report by the Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration and Internal Revenue Service today.

New Home Sales Suffer Enormous Collapse Vincent Fernando, CFA Jun. 23, 2010, 10:03 AM May new residential home sales were just 300,000 vs. 423,000 expected according to Fact Set consensus, based on the reported seasonally-adjusted figure. Census Bureau: Sales of new single-family houses in May 2010 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 300,000, according to estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This is 32.7 percent (±9.9%) below the revised April rate of 446,000 and is 18.3 percent (±13.0%) below the May 2009 estimate of 367,000. The median...

The U.S. Senate approved an amendment sponsored by Sen. Al Franken that would create an office to investigate complaints by homeowners who believe their mortgage handlers are breaking the law. The amendment would create an Office of the Homeowner Advocate using money from the TARP program. “This victory means help for the many Minnesotans who are in danger of losing their homes through no fault of their own,” said Franken. “These families are doing their best in a tough economy that they didn’t create. And they need to know there’s someone who has their back when they’re trying to navigate...

Riding up to homes for sale on her bicycle, Pamela Winegardner allegedly would chat with listing agents about her new business ventures, her career as a six-figure human resources consultant, her dying grandmother, her boyfriend's injured daughter, and her need to move quickly out of her current rental because the owners have new people moving in soon. She'd like to buy this home, she reportedly said, but she first needed to lease it for a couple of months while she waited for some financial matters from a business deal to settle. She came across as poised, friendly, and likable, but...

More tough news for Twin Cities metro homeowners surfaced this morning as home values in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area slid 4.6 percent in March from a year ago. More troubling, the real estate website Zillow.com calculates that more than 268,000 Twin Cities area single-family homeowners with mortgages owe more than their homes are worth. That number is about 41.2 percent of the total. That compares with an estimated national average of 23.3 percent of single-family mortgages with negative equity, according to the report.