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Economy - Monday (Investor's Business Daily)

Investor's Business Daily - The Treasury will auction $81 bil of notes and bonds in its quarterly refunding this week, the same as in the prior auction. Gov't officials said they've already raised enough to fund a budget deficit set to expand 14% this year. The Treasury's decision to stop increasing the size of its debt auctions could moderate the rise in bond yields, bolstering the economy as the Federal Reserve removes emergency stimulus. The narrower yield curve may cap mortgage rates as the Fed's $1.25 tril in mortgage-bond purchases is set to expire on March 31.

The latest developments in the real estate market.

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HOT REAL ESTATE NEWS
  • Forget the Mortgage, I'm Paying My Credit Card Bill (U.S. News & World Report) U.S. News & World Report - Amid high unemployment and sliding home prices, a growing number of struggling consumers are doing what was once considered unthinkable: paying their credit card bills instead of their mortgages. A recent study developed by TransUnion found the percentage of Americans who were current on their credit cards but behind on their mortgage increased to 6.6 percent in the third quarter of 2009, up from 4.3 percent in the first quarter of 2008. Meanwhile, the share of consumers making mortgage payments on time but behind on their credit cards moved in the opposite direction, sliding from 4. ...

  • Beazer Homes posts a $48 million profit for Q1 (AP) AP - Homebuyers spurred by low interest rates and government incentives helped lift Beazer Homes USA Inc.'s sales in the last three months of 2009, but the builder only turned a profit because of a hefty tax gain.

  • Rising Fortunes Are Building China's Housing Market (Investor's Business Daily) Investor's Business Daily - China's young and red-hot housing market got caught up in the recession along with the rest of the world. But its downturn became neither as severe nor as prolonged as in the U.S.

  • Mortgage investors try to regroup after meltdown (AP) AP - The financial wizards who concocted the complicated mortgage-linked investments that nearly brought down the world economy are trying to come back from the dead.

  • Design Awards Enable Aging in Place (U.S. News & World Report) U.S. News & World Report - Making homes suitable for elderly occupants is easy to describe, but it can be very expensive to do. The cheapest solution is to make homes senior-friendly when they are built, rather than trying to retrofit them. Some of the most elegant and cost-effective solutions are recognized each year by AARP and the National Association of Home Builders. The winning designs employ imaginative solutions that reduce energy consumption and use smart communications tools for home security and health-related "telemedical" applications. ...

  • Mortgage rates edge up slightly (AP) AP - Rates on 30-year fixed mortgages rose slightly this week, inching above 5 percent, Freddie Mac said Thursday.

  • Middle-class NYC housing complex to be sold (AP) AP - A judge has ordered the foreclosure sale of the historic Riverton Houses, a middle-class Harlem apartment complex that plummeted in value amid the housing downturn.