Home Resales Down For Fifth Straight Month

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• Forget Renting: Friends Now Buying Homes Together

  Aug 27, 08 8:34 AM CDT
  The cooled-down housing market and lower prices are attracting new buyers: groups of young professionals who want to invest but don’t quite have the dough to buy their own place. Instead, they’re buying homes with friends and splitting the mortgage, maintenance costs—and the tax break, Time reports. “You have to do this with a person you trust,” said one “co-ho”— short for “communal homeowner."
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• Home Sales Climb, but Prices Keep Falling

  Aug 25, 08 10:19 AM CDT
  Existing home sales were better than expected in July, rising 3.1% to an annual rate of 5 million, the Wall Street Journal reports. But inventories continued their steady expansion anyway, driving prices further downward. The median home price for July was $212,400, down 7.1% from July 2007. The downward price trend is in turn keeping buyers on the sidelines, waiting for better deals. More »

• Housing Crash Spawns Ghost Subdivisions

  Aug 2, 08 6:46 AM CDT
  The housing bust has left ghost towns scattered across the nation, the Wall Street Journal reports. In a tour of half-built or largely empty developments, the paper finds residents who moved in early, only to find themselves leading lonely lives surrounded by eerily deserted homes and weed-strewn lots. One woman who lives on a street with 30 empty houses outside Atlanta notes the upside: she usually has the community swimming pool to herself.
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• Retirees Scoop Up Bargains in Housing Slump

  Jun 27, 08 2:05 AM CDT
  Retired Americans who can afford new bargains are enjoying the drop in housing value in once-exorbitant sun havens where prices have plunged as much as 25%. Miami, Phoenix and Las Vegas—formerly at the forefront of soaring prices—are now leading the decline, the New York Times reports. Homebuyers who waited to purchase took a risk because prices could have surged, but were rewarded with more than $100,000 in savings. More »

• Rise in Renters Wiping Out Gains in Homeownership

  Jun 21, 08 7:29 AM CDT
  Americans are shifting from being homeowners to renters in rising numbers, the New York Times reports, all but wiping out gains made during the boom. The percentage of homes headed by homeowners dropped from 69.1% to 67.8% this year, which sounds modest, but is, in fact, the biggest decline in 20 years. President Bush's ambitious "ownership society" plan hoped to see more low-income and minority families own their own homes, but these groups have been hardest hit by the subprime crisis. More »