When big box retailers close, the giant stores are often left to decay. Urban planners consider vacant big boxes a destabilizing factor, depressing property values, attracting vandals, and breeding crime.
Budget Development Partners is turning these buildings into climate-controlled storage facilities, a business that the company’s owner Reade DeCurtins says is growing in the face of [...]

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Six major lenders have agreed to allow seriously overdue home owners to suspend foreclosures for 30 days, giving them time to work out affordable loans.
The plan called Project Lifeline is being announced today by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Initially, the pilot program will involve Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Countrywide Financial Corp., [...]

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Roughly half of metropolitan areas continued to show rising home prices in the fourth quarter of 2007, according to the latest quarterly survey by the National Association of Realtors®.
In the fourth quarter, 73 out of 150 metropolitan statistical areas(1) show increases in median existing single-family home prices from a year earlier, including 11 areas with [...]

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In every county across the sate, the income needed to buy a median-priced home in California has surpassed the median household income, according to the results of a study released earlier this month by the California Budget Project.
According to the report, more than 43 percent of all California households are renters, and nearly a quarter [...]

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The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 0.5 percent in January, the U.S. Dept. of Labor reported today. January’s CPI level of 211.080 represents a 4.3 percent increase from January 2007, an increase largely fueled by a hike in food costs. The CPI for urban wage earners and clerical workers rose 0.5 percent in January to [...]

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The pace of new-home sales across California fell more than 30 percent in 2007 compared with 2006, according to recent data from the California Building Industry Association (CBIA). Its January report showed sales of single family homes dropped by 29.7 percent, with new home and condominium sales during 2007 totaling 61,861 compared with 89,773 the [...]

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Worries about identity fraud and other security issues appear to be impacting e-commerce transaction volume, according to a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. While roughly 70 percent of Internet users polled said they viewed online shopping as a convenience, roughly 75 percent said they do not feel comfortable sending personal or [...]

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The percentage of households that could afford to buy an entry-level home in California stood at 33 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007, compared with 25 percent for the same period a year ago, according C.A.R.’s First-time buyer Housing Affordability Index (FTB-HAI) released Tuesday.
The FTB-HAI measures the percentage of households that can afford to [...]

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Another notable trend in the mortgage market is the current boom in applications for refinance mortgages. "Refinance applications are up 92 percent since the beginning of November, while purchase applications are up 7 percent," said Jay Brinkmann, vice president of the Mortgage Bankers Association. "With tighter credit conditions we don’t know how many of these [...]

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Existing-home sales rose slightly in November, indicating a stabilization in housing in the wake of mortgage disruptions earlier this year, according to the National Association of REALTORS®.
Total existing-home sales — including single-family, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops — rose 0.4 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5 million units in November. That represents a [...]

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