USATODAY.com - A jury found former Cendant chairman Walter Forbes guilty of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and two counts of making false statements Tuesday in a massive fraud scheme that cost the travel and real estate company and its investors more than $3 billion. Read more…

Reuters - Pending sales of existing U.S. homes fell 1.1 percent in September but demand was expected to hold steady in the coming months, a realtors trade association said on Wednesday. Read more…

FT.com - BlackRock Financial is set to beat a number of rivals to market with the first European version of a complex, high-yield commercial real estate investment product that has proved very popular in the US over recent years. Read more…

The Motley Fool - If you're learning about mortgages, you'll hear the term "points" a lot. A "point" is 1% of the value of the mortgage loan. So, if your mortgage is $150,000, one point is $1,500. When someone takes out a mortgage, "points" are often involved. Typically, these are "origination" and "discount" points. Read more…

FT.com - The European market for bonds backed by mortgages and other assets saw very strong issuance growth in the third quarter driven mainly by what continues to be a surprisingly strong year for residential mortgage- backed securities. Read more…

If you are selling your own home as a FSBO and have a newspaper advertisement or a for sale by owner sign you will undoubtedly get many calls and unexpected visits from real estate agents. This will happen even if you say "no agents" in your advertisement, I guess they can't read very well. Read more…

Tucked away in the briefcase of Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab & Co., is a chart so scary she's hesitant to show it to investors. It plots the National Association of Home Builders' Housing Market index - a monthly measure of builder confidence - against the Standard & Poor's 500 stock market index, with a one-year lag. Read more…

When Chicagoans John and Judy Peeler decided to move to Philadelphia last spring, they blithely assumed they'd get more space for their money. Indeed, the couple quickly found a 2,500-square-foot, four-bedroom colonial in a well-regarded school district for $440,000, just about what they figured their 2,000-square-foot Windy City condo would fetch. Read more…

By now, you've probably heard the unlikely story of Crocs - not the rugged-skinned reptiles but the equally strange-looking shoes that have become a global phenomenon. Read more…

Center for American Progress: The Slump Further Deepens Household spending on new homes and home improvements dropped by 17.4% in Q3 By Christian E. Weller RISMEDIA, October 30, 2006—The Bureau of Economic Analysis has released its advance estimates for economic... Read more…

The pace of existing home sales continue to slip in the latest reading of real estate market strength from an industry trade group. Read more…

Tulsa, Oklahoma is the most affordable, big-time college sports town in the United States, according to an annual survey released Tuesday by Coldwell Banker. Read more…

U.S. homeowners took cash out of their homes in the third quarter at the highest rate in 16 years, spurred by high costs on other types of loans, according to home finance company Freddie Mac . Read more…

Home prices fell from July to August in seven of the 10 major housing markets covered by the S&P Case Shiller indexes. The composite index for all 10 cities fell 0.36 percent. Read more…

Marc and Lillian Harris met in Iraq, where he was a communications officer and she worked in intelligence. After they returned to the States, Lillian left the Army, but Marc was back in the Middle East within months. Read more…

Decades later, the view from the cramped, rock-hard back seat of my father's Porsche is imprinted clearly in my mind. I remember the sound of the air-cooled engine just behind me and the smell of his hair oil. Read more…

Thanks to social networking sites such as MySpace and video-sharing company YouTube, we now know that there are thousands of amateur auteurs yearning to express themselves in song and film. Indeed, sometimes it seems there's an entire cohort of young people who are natural born performance artists. Read more…

AFP - Potential home-buyers are being offered unprecedented loans to help secure a first property -- a nation where the average house price has soared almost 200 percent in a decade. Read more…

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As housing markets have cooled, buyers are making demands that wouldn't have flown during frothier times. Read more…

A financial planner who had never seen stock prices lose value probably isn't the best place to turn for investment advice. But many Americans are taking just that kind of a flyer when it comes to their most valuable investment - their home. Read more…

Wal-Mart is determined to ignite a fierce price war this holiday season. But some industry experts are betting that other merchants - if they're clever - won't take the bait. Read more…

Reuters - U.S. mortgage applications rose sharply last week, reflecting a surge in home refinancing loans as interest rates remained near recent lows, an industry trade group said on Wednesday. Read more…

AP - Fannie Mae said Wednesday it expects to spend more than $1 billion this year on the massive review of its accounting and preparing financial statements as the mortgage giant pushes to complete it by year's end. Read more…

We are a marketing firm that works with real estate companies, investment groups and Mortgage brokers in Southwest Florida. All of these properties 30-35% under market value. Read more…