John Mulkey, Housing Guru

A bill introduced in the House of Representatives would offer refinancing to as many as 30 million homeowners whose mortgages are held or backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. In an article today on HousingWire, the plan as described would allow qualifying borrowers to refinance with almost no reg...

This post will put me over 300,000 points, and while far from a record achievement, it reflects my efforts to post consistently during the two years I’ve been blogging here in the “Rain.” Thanks for the ride, Active Rain. The platform you’ve provided has allowed me to grow, to improve my blogging...

An article on Bloomberg reports that sales of new home in August came in below expectations and matching the second lowest level on record. Sales remained flat, equaling July’s number of 288,000 and appear to have been unaffected by continued low mortgage rates.   Competition from foreclosures an...

As always, Calculated Risk has provided us with an easy to interpret visual of existing home inventory. While inventory declined slightly from July, the more troubling fact is that inventory increased 1.5% year-over-year.  Now that we're entering the fall sales season, we can expect high inventor...

In a report released this morning from the National Association of Realtors®, existing home sales increased 7.6% for the month of August. Following last month's dismal report that fell well below expectations, the August report is slightly above the anticipated number of 7%. But with July existin...

The government has released the HAMP August Progress Report covering activity through August 31st and the results fall far below both expectations and commitment. To date there have been 448,937 permanent modifications approved, with 663, 538 trial modifications cancelled.   And while those recei...

Housing and Economic Predictions for 2011 and Beyond: Perhaps I should be pleased that my predictions for 2010 proved more accurate than those of many of the so-called experts, but gloating has little appeal when most of the country continues to suffer the effects of the worst recession in decade...

In most parts of the U.S., local ordinances allow for the collection of rainwater, most often from a home’s roof, and homeowners wishing to conserve water and save money use their recycled rainwater for lawn irrigation and for watering plants. However, while many of us have rainwater collection s...

According to a report on Fox Business this morning, Twitter has been hacked and users are being directed to a bogus website where their account information may be compromised or they may be subjected to virus attacks.  The report suggested that Twitter be avoided until it is certain that the webs...

A report released today from the National Bureau of Economic Research announced that what we’ve been affectionately referring to as The Great Recession is over. In fact, most of us missed the celebration because the official ending was June of 2009. I can’t imagine how I could have been unaware o...