Kentucky and Indiana will receive portions of $3 billion in housing aid to assist unemployed homeowners who are nearing foreclosure. The Treasury Department announced recently that 17 states with unemployment rates higher than the national average will receive the funds. Under the plan, Kentucky will receive $56 million, and Indiana will get $83 million. Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear was pleased with...

Real estate industry analysts' cautiously optimistic forecasts last spring of slow, but gradual growth in the country's housing market over the summer have not come to fruition. Sales of newly built homes are stagnant. Foreclosures for the first six months of 2010 are up as much as 75 percent in most urban areas. Pending sales of existing homes are sluggish. Qualified buyers with good credit are still...

The HousingWire.com report provides very welcome news to real estate professionals in most markets across the country. The National Association of Realtors reported that pending home sales on signed contracts were up for the eighth consecutive month in September. The NAR reported that pending sales rose 6.1 percent from August to September and were 21.2 percent higher than the previous September. "What...

DSNews.com reports that billionaire investor, Wilbur Ross, says that the U.S. is at the very beginning of a "huge crash in commercial real estate" and that he would exercise "extreme caution" before investing in this sector of real estate. "All of the components of real estate value are going in the wrong direction simultaneously," Ross said in a Bloomberg interview. "Occupancy rates are going down....

The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis's Burgundy Book—a financial report issued quarterly about economic activity in Louisville, Little Rock, St. Louis and Memphis—said that the health of Louisville's economy was mixed this past summer. Published in September, the report said that car dealerships and general retailers declared some successes that were tempered by low sales in some sectors....

A report released recently said that more Americans signed contracts to buy a home in July than in June, marking the longest streak of increases on record. The National Association of REALTORS® pending home sales index rose 3.2% in July after rising by 3.6% in June, which is 12% higher than July 2008, and marks the sixth straight increase since record-keeping began in 2001. The report vastly improved on...

A report released recently said that more Americans signed contracts to buy a home in July than in June, marking the longest streak of increases on record. The National Association of REALTORS® pending home sales index rose 3.2% in July after rising by 3.6% in June, which is 12% higher than July 2008, and marks the sixth straight increase since record-keeping began in 2001. The report vastly improved on...

Commercial real estate owners and developers will get some much-needed flexibility to rework their mortgages or receive loan extensions under a new federal tax rule that could provide some relief to a deeply troubled sector of the real estate market. The new Internal Revenue Service rule will affect loans that are backed by office parks, office buildings, shopping malls and other types of commercial real...

The U.S. Commerce Department said recently that home building permits, an indicator of future construction trends, fell last September by the largest amount in five months. The decline came at an unfortunate moment while Congress is considering whether to extend the tax credit for first-time homebuyers. The Commerce Department said that new home construction rose a meager 0.5 percent that month to a...

During the second quarter of 2009, some parts of the country saw modest gains in economic recovery, but Louisville's economy still appears to be struggling according to a Metro Monitor study released recently by the Brookings Institute. In a ranking of 100 metro areas in the U.S. measured by the unemployment rate, gross metropolitan product, housing prices and percentage of change in employment,...