WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service has paid out more than a half-billion dollars in home buyer tax credits to people who probably didn’t qualify, a government investigator said Friday.
Most of the money — about $326 million — went to more than 47,000 taxpayers who didn’t qualify as first-time home buyers, said the report by [...]

In a March 23 NAHB webinar on “Consumer Preferences for a New Generation of Renters,” panelists Jack Kern, of Kern Investment Research, Washington, D.C., and Mark Humphreys, of Humphreys and Partners Architects, Dallas, identified several trends that apartment builders will want to follow:

Members of Generation Y — the 81 million young [...]

The road to bad remodeling is paved with good intentions. Anyone tackling a major project wants his home to look and work better — and to get a reasonable return on investment. But renos are packed with so much stress and emotion that it’s easy to go wrong.
“I see homebuyers discount brand-new kitchens and bathrooms [...]

(WASHINGTON) — The federal government on Wednesday ordered 16 of the nation’s largest mortgage lenders and servicers to reimburse homeowners who were improperly foreclosed upon.
Government regulators also directed the financial firms to hire auditors to determine how many homeowners could have avoided foreclosure in 2009 and 2010.
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You might have heard of the TV show “Flip That House.”  Buyers snag a run-down house and remodel, or “flip,” it.  They then sell it for a profit.  Buyers across the country have tried this method to earn a little extra profit – some are successful and some are not.
How it works is I buy [...]

Old Man Winter may have finally blown out of town, but the evidence of his foul temper remains. The harsh storms that battered much of the country — even places as far south as Atlanta and Dallas — have left millions of homeowners staring not at the fresh new growth of spring [...]

New rules are expected soon for the nation’s top 14 mortgage servicers, but consumer groups fear they won’t be tough enough to halt foreclosure abuses.
The changes could be announced this week, say two people with direct knowledge of what federal banking regulators and the mortgage servicers are discussing. They would not agree to be named [...]

The U.S. housing market looks like a scorched landscape.
Nationwide, home prices are down almost 32% from their 2006 peak. Many economists expect them to fall at least 5% more this year. Some predict even steeper declines.
Even if home prices bottom later this year — a big “if” for many markets — they’re not likely to [...]

Four-dollar gasoline is just a part of it. As most any shopper knows, prices are climbing for everything from coffee and chocolate to tires and toilet paper.
The Consumer Price Index has climbed 2.7% in the past 12 months, according to government statistics released Friday. That’s the largest rise since 2009.
Price increases will continue in the [...]

Even in these down times, there’s money to be made buying and flipping houses.
One might think this would be a most dangerous game — after all, home prices are down more than a third from their peak in most areas. But plenty of investors are taking the risk in exchange for big profits.
In [...]