In a win for online discount real estate brokers, the Justice Department and the National Association of Realtors announced a settlement Tuesday that will let Internet brokers use the same for-sale home listings used by traditional bricks-and-mortar brokers.
The Justice Department says the proposed antitrust settlement will create more competition among traditional and discount brokers, while […]

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Woman Loses Home Over $68 Dental Bill
Utah Woman ‘Dumbfounded’ After Learning Her Home Was Sold Without Her Knowledge
Can you imagine losing your home over a $68 dental bill? That’s what happened to one Utah woman.
Sonya Capri Ramos says her Salt Lake City home was sold out from under her in 1996 to pay a collections […]

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WASHINGTON — Senate negotiators on Monday said they had reached a deal on legislation aimed at helping hundreds of thousands of homeowners in danger of foreclosure by expanding the availability of government-insured mortgages.
The Bush administration, which previously said it would oppose legislation to rescue troubled homeowners, suggested that it was willing to consider the Senate […]

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The U.S. Treasury is set to release a report today on what went wrong in the collapse of the subprime mortgage market last year and provide initial indications of how the country’s financial regulatory framework should be revamped, according to sources familiar with the announcement.
The report, which is the result of a seven-month effort […]

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Here comes another headache for banks suffering from the mortgage downturn: Losses on home-equity loans are soaring, even at some lenders that avoided big blunders on subprime loans.
When times were good, banks raked in billions of dollars in profit from home-equity loans, which allow borrowers to tap the accumulated value in their property with either […]

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WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben S. Bernanke, urged mortgage lenders and investors on Tuesday to reduce the principal on loans for many people whose homes are no longer worth as much as the amount they still have to repay.
Noting that delinquency and foreclosure rates have soared over the last year, and […]

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SEATTLE — As the Bush administration and Congress consider proposals to ease the home foreclosure crisis, local governments across the country have been lending money to imperiled homeowners and confronting some opposition.
Some of these municipal and state efforts have met resistance from people who consider the assistance undeserved and adamantly oppose anything that resembles a […]

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The backlog of unsold homes continued to pile up in January, a sign that home prices will continue to drop as would-be buyers hold out for better deals.
Sales of previously owned homes fell for the sixth consecutive month, dropping 0.4 percent, to an annual rate of 4.89 million, the National Association of Realtors said on […]

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PORT ST. LUCIE — After four months of house hunting, Tara MacDonald and family still were looking for a home to call their own.
“We’ve looked at 12 homes a weekend and put in offers, but nothing has panned out,” MacDonald said. “I’m just looking for a two-bedroom, two-bath house to start.”
So, the Port St. Lucie […]

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IMAGINE a letter slipped under an apartment door, and then a warning of a lawsuit in the offing: “As you may not be aware, we are both lawyers and both litigators, for whom the usual barriers to litigation are minimal.”
That was the curt beginning of a lawsuit at the Ansonia, a condominium on Broadway and […]

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