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The National Association of Realtors released its quarterly home price survey today–and the trade group says median home prices dropped in two-thirds of the cities it surveyed. Median prices for pre-existing single-family homes fell in 100 of 149 metropolitan areas in the first quarter, NAR said; 48 urban areas posted price gains. One lone metropolitan area had no change. The national median home price also fell, dropping 7.7. percent from the January to March 2007 period to $196,300. The former median sales price was $212,600. NAR has been characteristically optimistic as of late about the housing market improving–let’s face it,…

The slowing economy has affected a number of industries in a number of ways–and it’s affected women and men differently, too. According to new data, women are faring better than men: From November through April, women in the U.S. age 20 and up added nearly 300,000 jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Two female-concentrated fields, education and health care, are growing, which has helped; some analysts have suggested that women also are a better fit for the knowledge economy because of their sensitivity, intuition and ability to act as a team, BusinessWeek says. Men, during the same period,…

Yesterday, the House passed a bill to help prevent foreclosures by urging the mortgage industry to write down the loan’s remaining principle in exchange for the Federal Housing Administration offering up a new loan with lower payments. The plan’s future effect–and really, future–is still really questionable (the program still needs to get through the Senate and the president, who has said he will veto it; plus it would be voluntary–and according to today’s Wall Street Journal, the mortgage industry isn’t exactly doing cartwheels about signing on). But the current state of the foreclosure market in this country is not–that’s actually…

During the housing decline, some markets seemed to be holding steady–avoiding large drops in home value and residential building. But now, according to some sources, even those resilient markets are feeling the housing slump’s effect. Seattle, Portland, Ore., Charlotte, N.C. and Salt Lake City all had home price increases last year–while more than half of the 150 markets the National Association of Realtors tracks posted declines, CNNMoney.com said. But those housing markets aren’t looking as strong these days. Prices in Charlotte declined about 3.4 percent from August 2007 to February, according to the S&P Case/Shiller Home Price Index. And the…

Over the past year, the real estate industry has become more and more concerned about Web sites that offer buyers and sellers new ways of connecting without an agent. And that concern should be growing because–according to some sources–those sites are about to step up their game. A recent CNN.com article said that soon, value estimates for almost any home in the U.S. will be available online–for free–on sites like Zillow.com, HomeGain.com and RealEstateABC.com. The danger, CNN says, is that such sites are free of the financial incentives agents have to push prices up in deals. An agent is working…

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been in the news often lately–and an interesting article in today’s New York Times touches on some of the challenges the agencies face that could make headlines in the future. The article illustrates why the mortgage market needs both companies, and discusses why it’s in danger of potentially losing them. (Given today’s announcement that Fannie Mae posted a more than $2 billion first quarter loss, that concern is more timely than ever.) And although the government has relied on both companies to help bail out the mortgage market, its close ties to Fannie and…

On Friday, we touched on why some new condos are transforming into rental buildings. Can single-family homes make a similar switch? Yes–and no. If a new single-family home doesn’t sell, turning it into a rental can be difficult. They’re just not quite as versatile, for a number of reasons: It could be costly, thanks to extra fees. Single-family homeowners don’t want a large number of rental properties on their street because rentals often aren’t maintained as well as owned homes–which can drive property values down for an entire area. Yet the foreclosure rate has caused that to happen in a…

As overall residential building declines, the multifamily and single-family housing markets are having two very separate experiences: Although both were down in March, they were down in varying amounts, and for different reasons. And that’s painting an interesting picture of how each may start to recover as we tentatively try to claw out of the housing slump. Thursday’s news showed that building in general has slowed considerably: Total housing starts fell 34.5 percent to 1.035 million in the first quarter. They’ll probably remain under 1 million until the middle of 2009, according to The Wall Street Journal. But single-family starts…

The Commerce Department said today that construction spending dropped in March–but the news was offset by a surprise revision to February’s numbers. The revision showed an 0.4 percent increase in construction in February–a vast difference from the original 0.3 percent decline that had been reported. And yet, spending fell 1.1 percent in March from the month before; total construction spending is down 3.4 percent from last year, MarketWatch reports. Residential spending didn’t do so well in March, either. Private residential construction declined 4.6 percent from February to March–hitting its lowest level since the department began calculating these statistics in 1993,…

The Fed announced a quarter percentage point reduction of its key interest rate today–which may be the last rate cut for awhile. The federal funds rate is now 2 percent. The Fed’s statement mentioned–as previous ones had–that rate cuts were meant to invigorate the economy. However, because the statement did not include the phrase "downside risks to growth remain," which had been present in previous statements, and also said that "uncertainty about the inflation outlook remains high," some sources, including CNNMoney.com, are forecasting the aggressive rate cut era is over. And maybe that’s best, since some sources, including Forbes, reported…