AOL News has a new home! The Huffington Post.
Click here to visit the new home of Politics Daily!Hot on HuffPost:
Controversial Book On Obama Appears To Have Lifted Key Quote
Walker Recall Effort Struggles To Gain Momentum
housing market
Obama Plan Would Shrink Government 'Footprint' in Housing Market
By Politics Daily Staff - Politics DailyLending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be phased out under an Obama administration plan that would dramatically shrink the federal government's role in the housing market. Fannie and Freddie, federally chartered enterprises that buy and guarantee mortgages, are in hock to taxpayers for some $145 million. Critics say the two companies were among the culprits in the 2008 financial crisis brought on, in part, by a wave of home foreclosures. Some Republicans want to get rid of both companies. Related Stories Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Get the Boot from Stock ...
Oakland Housing Authority's Section 8 Wait List Opens: An Overview of the Program
By Mary Phillips-Sandy - AOL NewsAt 8 a.m. today, the Oakland (California) Housing Authority began accepting applications for Section 8 assistance. People who want to request help through the rent-subsidy program need to act quickly: The list closes at 5 p.m. Saturday. Earlier in the month, Oakland Housing Authority director Eric Johnson told a local newspaper that he expected as many as 100,000 applicants. "We know that our families have been hard hit. We know there is a large need out there," he said. Indeed, this afternoon the Oakland Housing Authority website went offline briefly, perhaps because of heavy traffic. In ...
From Houses on Sticks to Cabins on Wheels: The Wide World of Tiny Living
By Dave Thier - AOL NewsForget walk-in closets, indoor pools and multiple dens. In the world of the great recession, it's the little things that are making the biggest splash in the housing market. Tiny housing is going through a renaissance, and for many architectural experimenters, whether it's a 65-square-foot cabin loaded onto a trailer, an ultra-efficient cube or a repurposed shipping container, small is beautiful. Many tiny living units are simple, practical attempts at maximizing efficiency in housing, from small cabins in the country to city apartments that do their best not to feel cramped. Other projects ...
HUD Chief: White House Won't Tolerate 'Business as Usual' in Mortgage Market
By Alex Wagner - Politics DailySpeaking to the controversy surrounding possibly illegal foreclosures, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan said Wednesday that the White House would "not tolerate business as usual in the mortgage market." Donovan said the results of an ongoing, multiagency review had found "significant differences" in the performance of mortgage lenders, but that the Federal Housing Agency (FHA) had not yet found any evidence of "systemic issues," in the foreclosure market. Asserting that the Obama administration was "committed" to resolving issues surrounding the mortgage market, ...
Banks to Underwater Homeowners: Don't Get Comfy
By Robert and Donna Trussell - Politics DailyFollow the Trussell cartoons on Twitter at ChaosTheoryPD ...
From Bad to Worse? A Foreclosure Crisis Primer
By Joseph Schuman - AOL News
(Oct. 15) -- The American housing mess just keeps getting messier. Even as federal and state governments ratchet up investigations into the way banks and the mortgage-servicing industry move to seize the homes of owners who failed to make payments, the pace of foreclosures is picking up. And just over two years after a meltdown in the subprime mortgage market cascaded into a full-blown global financial crisis, a wave of bad news on the real estate front is adding to an already bleak outlook for an economic recovery that has been faltering and an American housing market that never got back on ...
Cheap Brooklyn 'Studio Apartment' Is Actually Just Rubbermaid Shed
By Paul Wachter - AOL News(Sept. 27) -- Now that Craigslist has shut down its "adult services" section, the only titillation this New Yorker derives from the site comes from the local real estate ads. Though not quite as grand as the Sotheby's listings found in the New York Times, it's still relatively easy to find apartments that I'd like to live in but can't afford. "LIVE like you deserve," tempts one ad for a $13,000 per-month loft in Tribeca, an apartment I can very well see myself living in, deservedly or not. But even better are the cramped absurdities that make you think, "At least I'm not living in that piece ...
Is Montgomery's Demolition Policy a New Form of Civil Rights Abuse?
By Paul Wachter - AOL News(Sept. 20) -- Over the past decade, hundreds of homes in Montgomery, Ala., have been declared blighted and demolished, with homeowners -- disproportionately African-American and impoverished -- unable to do much about it. This is much worse than eminent domain grabs in other parts of the country, where property owners are at least paid market value for their losses. But in Alabama, the law forbids invoking eminent domain for private development. Instead, the city of Montgomery has come up with a much more pernicious backdoor: define a property as blighted, demand repairs, raze the property ...
What to Make of the Grim Home Foreclosure News
By not in system - AOL News(Sept. 16) -- The number of U.S. homes seized by banks reached 95,364 in August, the highest monthly figure on record since analysts began tracking the number in 2005. That's a 25 percent increase from the August 2009 figure. In recent weeks, the housing market has declined so precipitously that some experts have suggested the end of housing as an investment. Here's what journalists and experts have to say about the latest record-breaking bad news. How Foreclosures Make Everything Worse: Bloomberg's Dan Levy writes, "Foreclosures are contributing to a growing housing supply that may add as ...
Are We Out of the Housing Bubble or Not?
By Paul Wachter - AOL News(Sept. 8) -- Is the housing market on the road to recovery? Is real estate about to suffer from a double dip? New York Times economics columnist David Leonhardt weighs in, and while hedging his bets -- "I can't claim to clear up all the uncertainty" -- proposes a layman's approach to sizing up the market: Do "you believe that housing is a luxury good and that societies spend more on it as they get richer? Or do you think it's more like food, clothing and other staples that account for an ever smaller share of consumer spending over time?" he asks. If you consider housing a luxury good, ...
Follow Politics Daily
POPULAR
- Nancy Pelosi Confirms House May Skip Up or Down Vote on Senate Health Bill
- Debrahlee Lorenzana: A Double Take on Those Double D's
- Palin Earnings Estimated at $12 Million
- Campbell Brown Quits CNN With Shockingly Frank Farewell
- The Five Most Racist Obama Cartoons?
- Soraya M., Stoned to Death for Being an "Inconvenient Wife''
- Jimmy Carter Leaves Church Over Treatment of Women
- No posts are available.
News From Our Partners
- Dragon arrives at space station in historic 1st
- Picking new leader, Egyptians search for superman
- Egyptians vote in first free presidential vote
- Moon chips from Vegas casino mogul sent to NASA
- Egyptians vote to rid nation of autocratic rule
- More Stories »
- Rudy Giuliani: Mitt's Great. I'm Just Better
- 'Masters of the Universe' Sure Have Fragile Egos
- Romney: My Mistakes 'Haunt Me'
- Newt Lauds Romney: He's Like Eisenhower
- Irked Senate Panel Votes 30-0 to Cut Pakistan Aid
- More Stories »
- Know Your Enemy
- Obama’s Challenge in Egypt
- The Edwards Waiting Game
- Are Doctors Doing Too Much?
- The Pagan Cult of Reagan
- More Stories »
- Ambition Counteracting Ambition
- Robert Blagojevich Speaks Out
- In Iowa, Obama Calls Romney's Words 'A Cow Pie of Distortion'
- In Iowa, Obama Calls On Congress to Act on Clean Energy Tax Credits
- Romney Has Interesting Morning in Inner-City Philly
- More Stories »
Top News
More News
More on Aol
Local News
More Blog/Sites
Sites and Services
HuffPost Politics