Personal Finance Advice and Commentary

The sluggish housing recovery is prompting President Barack Obama to consider ways to take foreclosed properties off the market and rent them until prices stabilize. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, home prices nationally were 7.4 percent lower in May than they were a year earlier, but when distressed and foreclosed properties are

Fannie Mae is reviving incentives to lure buyers, as it tries to unload its thousands of foreclosed homes. The agency is offering to give buyers up to 3.5 percent of the selling price to be used toward closing costs. The incentive applies to offers submitted on or after April 11 that close by June 30.

Properties in some stage of foreclosure (loan default, scheduled for action or lender-owned), accounted for 24 percent of all U.S. home sales in the second quarter of 2010, according to the RealtyTrac online foreclosure information service. And that percentage might well have been higher had the homebuyer tax credit not goosed the sales volume. The