Investing on the Go: 5 Useful Apps

Mobile technology keeps users connected wherever they are, with virtually all the functions of a computer available at the touch of a finger on a smartphone or tablet. The business of app – for “application” – creation is booming, and apps for business and finance...

Is the Housing Market Heating Up?

After the historic collapse of a few years ago, the housing market has been on a slow rebound marked by increases in new home starts and demand for a limited supply of available houses. Now, a new survey reported in Business Insider offers evidence that the US housing...

Strategic Defaulters: Boosting the Housing Recovery?

p>Not all mortgage defaults are created equal. That’s the conclusion of major mortgage lenders, who are opening their doors to a special subset of the distressed homeowners crushed by the housing collapse of 2008. These “strategic defaulters” who walked away from...

Why Do Housing Activists Hate Investors?

By a number of markers, the housing industry is rebounding smartly after the chaos of a few yeas ago. Housing inventories are low and so are interest rates, and even the rental market appears to be strong, thanks to an expanding pool of renters – many of whom are...

Disaster-Damaged Properties Have Hidden Costs

p>When a natural disaster strikes, houses suffer, and so do the people who own them. Although many homeowners jump right back in with a plan to rebuild, some decide to start over somewhere safer. The result? In a housing market faced with dwindling supplies of...

Fannie and Freddie Get a Makeover to Fix Mortgage Lending

For anyone involved in the housing market, they need no introduction: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, those venerable giants of the US mortgage landing market. So familiar that many don’t even know the official titles behind the nicknames, Fannie and Freddie have been a...

Rate Your Landlord? Tenants Turn the Tables

Credit checks, references and questions about employment are routine, if unpleasant, aspects of renting a place to live. And traditionally landlords have had the right to dig into a potential tenant’s life in any way that doesn’t violate housing discrimination laws....

Rising Home Prices: What Do They Mean?

p>As the housing market continues its fitful journey back to stability after the crash of 2008, many industry watchers believed that the bad old days of the housing “bubble” that led to the collapse were gone for good. But now, as housing prices continue to spiral...

Rising Home Values: A New Bubble?

The housing industry’s recovery from the aftermath of the bubble that burst so loudly a few years ago has been slow and fitful, and industry watchers remain on the alert for signs that the rebound in housing demand and supply is here to stay. Among the many indicators...

The Alternative Minimum Tax: A Fix for 2013?

The venerable Alternative Minimum Tax, or AMT, was conceived to extract income taxes from those in the highest tax brackets, who evaded standard income taxes through a number of investing loopholes. But because the AMT was originally not indexed for inflation,...