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After months of low rates some of which broke long-time records, mortgage interest rates shot up drastically during the week ended June 4. Freddie Mac released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market survey this morning, showing that the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) for the week averaged 5.29 percent with 0.7 point. This is the highest rate for the 30-year FRM since the week ended December 18, 2008 when the average was 5.19 percent. The new number is an increase of 37 basis points over last...

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said that additional measures announced by the Federal Reserve and Treasury Tuesday morning are aimed at aiding the U.S. housing market and restoring affordable bank lending to consumers and small businesses. It was announced...

More evidence of a well-known trend emerged on Thursday when it was reported that U.S. house prices across the country continue falling as a result of foreclosure sales. Yet traditional logic in buying and selling is also taking its toll on prices, suggests...

August recorded a substantial decline in the pace of new home sales , even with the median price for a home falling 5.5% in the month. The pace of sales fell 11.5% over the month, pushing the annual rate of sales down to 460k from the 520k pace in July...

In spite of the beating the stock market took on Monday with the Dow Jones down 242 points and even though financial stocks were among the biggest losers, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae shares came roaring back from their awful performance on Friday.

Jim Cramer said on NBC news Tuesday morning that Wall Street was actually anticipating that Freddie and Fannie would be taken down by regulators over the past weekend. When that didn't happen, investors came flocking to the GSE stocks...

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Despite coming in slightly higher than was expected, housing starts still slid 11% to 965k in July, though economists say the drop is misleading given the artificially high reading in June.

Last month, economists unanimously agreed that the headline index was misleading due to a change in the housing code of New York City which propelled the jump.

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It seems hard to believe, but there appears to be yet one more thing for which we can blame the mortgage crisis. And this is not a financial problem; it is a public health concern.

Several cable networks have reported over the last few weeks that the hundreds of foreclosed houses covering suburban neighborhoods may be contributing to the spread of the West Nile virus.

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