House Speaker John Boehner indicated Tuesday that Republicans will vote on an extension of the federal debt ceiling to allow Treasury to borrow money until mid-May.

Leading housing economists told builders Tuesday that the housing market has struck the long-awaited bottom and is expected to show robust gains, particularly in 2014.

(Reuters) - Wells Fargo & Co on Tuesday increased its quarterly stock dividend by 3 cents, or 14 percent, to 25 cents per share.

Lowe's to Boost Seasonal Hiring 13% on Housing Rebound Bloomberg Lowe's Cos. (LOW), the second-largest U.S. home-improvement retailer, plans to hire 45,000 seasonal workers, 13 percent more than a year earlier, and add 9,000 permanent employees as the housing rebound spurs remodeling. All of the positions are ...

WASHINGTON – In a letter today, U.S. Senator Bob Corker, R-Tenn., a member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, urged federal banking regulators to simplify and synchronize underwriting standards for new mortgage lending rules to avoid permanently regulating the private sector out of the housing finance business. The qualified residential mortgage (“QRM”) being implemented under the Dodd-Frank Act currently exempts loans sold to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Housing Administration. If these standards do not match those defined in the qualified mortgage (“QM”) recently established by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, many lenders may only make loans that could be sold to Fannie, Freddie or the FHA, which would effectively regulate private capital out of the system for years to come. “Forcing lenders to comply with two separate sets of rules isn’t good policy, and in this case, it would set back the timetable on doing what we absolutely must do – begin to move away from a complete dependence on the government for mortgage credit in our country,” said Corker. In his letter to the Treasury Department, FDIC, Federal Reserve, Federal Housing Finance Agency, Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the SEC, Corker said: “I am writing to you today regarding the Risk-Retention and Qualified Residential Mortgage (QRM) standards being developed pursuant to Section 941 of the Dodd-Frank Act. Regardless of how one may feel about Congress telling federal agencies to draft both “qualified mortgage” underwriting standards and rules around so-called “risk retention,” the reality is that the joint federal regulators now responsible for the QRM rules are in a position to materially impact what the system of housing finance in the United States will look like for years to come. “To that end...

"The greatest concern in the market is the inventory situation," said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Associate of Realtors. As a result, home prices are now rising more and faster than most analysts predicted.

KB Home Forming Mortgage Firm for Buyers With Nationstar Businessweek KB Home (KBH), a Los Angeles-based homebuilder, is forming a home-loan company for its buyers with Nationstar (NSM) Mortgage LLC. The entity will be known as Home Community Mortgage LLC, the builder said today in a statement. KB Home made ... and more »

One of the great economic success stories of 2012 was that the housing market finally found a bottom, and even began to show signs of a nascent recovery. But even as positive data on the real estate market began to trickle in early last year, not everyone was convinced. The main reason for skepticism were millions of homes that had not yet hit the market, but probably would soon — either because they were already in foreclosure or because the homeowners were so far behind on payments that foreclosures were imminent. These properties, which last year were estimated to range anywhere from 3 million to 10 million in number, were dubbed the “shadow inventory” of homes. (MORE: Oh No, Canada! Are We Watching Another North American Financial Crisis Unfold?) The reason the shadow inventory was thought to be bad news for the housing market was that when these homes finally did go up for sale, they would overwhelm the demand for housing, which had slowed in recent years due to the poor economy and sluggish population growth. But a recent report from analytics firm CoreLogic says that the shadow inventory as of October 2012 has fallen to 2.3 million, a 12.3% drop year-over-year. In other words, this catalog of homes has been reduced significantly without the detrimental effect on nationwide home prices that some had feared. So what happened, and why has the dreaded shadow inventory not yet sunk the convalescent U.S. housing market? I asked Sam Khater, a Senior Economist at CoreLogic, and he outlined three key reasons: Investors Got in on the Game The housing recovery was prevented for so long in part because of tight credit standards and because so many homeowners owed more on their mortgages than their homes were worth. This left many homeowners unable to take advantage of increasingly cheap prices. But by 2012, home prices had fell so far that it became lucrative for investors — either investment vehicles like real estate investment trusts...

House GOP leaders have scheduled a vote on Wednesday on a nearly four-month extension of U.S. borrowing capacity.

Regions Financial Corp. (RF) swung to a fourth-quarter profit as the regional lender benefited from comparison with a year earlier-period weighed down by a hefty write-down following a deal to sell its brokerage unit, while revenue was flat.

By SVP Tracy Mooney Faster. Easier. More transparent. These are only some of the benefits borrowers are experiencing with the new Freddie Mac Standard Short Sale program that became effective on November 1. Because of their complexity, short sales have traditionally taken months to complete. We worked with our regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, to remove obstacles and streamline the process so we can help more borrowers and reduce costs for the company and taxpayers. Read More