Research Center

Southern California home sales hit a five-year high for September, rising above a year earlier for the first time in 12 months amid gains for mid- to high-end deals, CoreLogic DataQuick reported.

Wall Street still has those is-this-a-simple-correction-or-is-it-worse October sliding index blues, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 223.03 points, or 1.35 percent for the day.

The International Council of Shopping Centers forecasts that U.S. holiday retail sales will improve 4 percent this year compared with 2013 (the organization counts sales in November and December as holiday sales).

Trulia reported that asking prices for U.S. residential properties rose 0.8 percent in September, up in 92 of the 100 largest metro markets.

The Federal Open Market Committee released its notes from its Sept. 16-17 meeting, and as usual, it purposefully offered nothing conclusive about when interest rates will rise.

There were 4.8 million U.S. job openings on the last business day of August, up from 4.6 million in July, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in its Job Openings and Turnover Summary (JOLTS).

Black Knight Financial Services reported in its latest Mortgage Monitor that 5.9 percent of U.S. mortgages were delinquent in August, up from 5.64 percent in July.