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Dulce Suarez-Resnick: Some colleagues in my office are leaving, some of my customers and even some family and friends.In 2006, friends, who were also my customers, went from $8,000 on their windstorm policy to $17,000. They have every mitigation credit available for an older home. They are selling their home and moving to Central Florida because they can afford to live there on their fixed income.State Sen. Steven Geller: They're moving to North Carolina, they're moving to Georgia. They're getting out of Dodge . . . . I think the single most important issue facing the state is windstorm [insurance]....

Many brokers thrived last year amid record home sales, but this year the industry has taken a turn for the worse. TAMPA — The sneeze came first: Home sales in the Tampa Bay area dropped by a third from last year’s peak. For symptoms of the developing head cold, plunge into the exhibition hall at the Tampa Convention Center, where the Florida Association of Mortgage Brokers is holding its annual trade show. Puffed up to handle record-breaking home sales of last year, which poured money into savvy brokers’ pockets, the residential lending industry and affiliated businesses are mostly deflating this...

Urge to cash in on the housing bubble has spawned an industry of schemers: Every boom has a dark side. The merger mania of the 1980s produced insider trading scandals. The '90s stock bubble was busted for biased investment research. And so it is with real estate, the hottest market of the past eight years. The urge to cash in on rising home values has spawned a growing share of hucksters, schemers and rip-off artists. Learn how to avoid ten of the biggest real estate rip-offs or view Video: Real Estate Rip-OffsClick HereSo far, it is tough to know exactly...

WASHINGTON - The pace of U.S. home building fell more than expected in June as groundbreaking on single-family units logged the slowest pace in 1-1/2 years, according to a government report on Wednesday that added to signs of a broad cooling in the housing market. The Commerce Department said June housing starts fell 5.3 percent in June to a 1.850 million unit annual pace, from a downwardly revised 1.953 million unit pace in May. May’s rise had interrupted a string of three straight monthly declines. Economists had expected June housing starts to decline to 1.90 million units from May’s originally...

US 'could be going bankrupt' The United States is heading for bankruptcy, according to an extraordinary paper published by one of the key members of the country's central bank. A ballooning budget deficit and a pensions and welfare timebomb could send the economic superpower into insolvency, according to research by Professor Laurence Kotlikoff for the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, a leading constituent of the US Federal Reserve. Prof Kotlikoff said that, by some measures, the US is already bankrupt. "To paraphrase the Oxford English Dictionary, is the United States at the end of its resources, exhausted, stripped bare,...

Law allows lenders to go after personal savings as well as the house, unlike original mortgage. Homeowners behind in their mortgage payments after hocking the house to pay for a major remodel or a new boat or car may be in for a rude awakening. If they previously refinanced and their lender decides to foreclose, they may not only lose their house, but the bank also may be able to go after their other financial assets including stocks, savings and their paycheck. And even if the bank doesn't go after their other assets, a foreclosure may mean a big tax...

In the US, Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac are Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) which buy residential mortgages and repackage them to sell on as mortgage-backed bonds. Although these bonds are not backed by the US government, most believe the GSEs would never be allowed to fail. But Dan Denning reports below on how a US Treasury report has warned that this mistaken belief and the illiquid nature of property means that an ‘interest rate shock’ could topple the US mortgage market – making the Long Term Capital Management (LCTM) crisis look like a walk in the park... Could this...

Rising Interest Rates, Higher Gasoline Prices Make It Harder for Consumers to Handle Debt NEW YORK (AP) -- Rising interest rates and higher gasoline prices are putting the squeeze on consumers' budgets, and many are finding it harder to keep up with their bills. Credit counseling agencies say that consumers are coming in in droves seeking help. ADVERTISEMENT "My phones are going crazy," said Howard Dvorkin, president of the nonprofit Consolidated Credit Counseling Services Inc. in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. "Consumers are carrying an exorbitant amount of debt -- and they don't have any savings to fall back on if things...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. mortgage applications fell last week as interest rates hit their highest in over four years, an industry trade group said on Wednesday. ADVERTISEMENT The Mortgage Bankers Association said its seasonally adjusted index of mortgage application activity for the week ended June 23 decreased 6.7 percent to 529.6 from the previous week's 567.6. Borrowing costs on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages, excluding fees, averaged 6.86 percent, up 0.13 percentage point from the previous week, its highest level since April 12, 2002 when it reached 6.92 percent. The MBA's seasonally adjusted purchase mortgage index fell 6.2 percent to 389.0....

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The tell-tale sign of a stagnating real estate market? When homes for sale start lingering - and that's exactly what real estate brokers and other industry watchers say they're seeing now. The National Association of Realtors does not maintain national time-on-market figures. But inventory - the number of homes for sale - spiked 37 percent for the 12 months through April 30, the most recent data available. Homes are staying on the shelf longer. Languishing in hot markets There are no official regional statistics for the time homes spend on the market. Here are estimates for...

WASHINGTON - Sales of existing homes fell for the third time in the past five months in May, with the weakness led by a big drop in demand in the Northeast. ADVERTISEMENT The National Association of Realtors reported Tuesday that sales of previously owned homes dropped by 1.2 percent in May to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.67 million units. The median price of the homes sold in May rose to $230,000 in May, up 6 percent from the same month a year ago. That represented a slowdown from huge double-digit price gains last year at the peak of...

NEW YORK - Stocks dropped in early trading Friday after a report showed the first back-to-back decline in big ticket factory goods in two years, a surprising sign that the economy is modereating at a faster pace than many expected. ADVERTISEMENT Durable goods orders dropped 0.3 percent in May after a sharp 4.7 percent drop the month before. Economists expected orders to rise 0.4 percent. That raised concerns on Wall Street that the Federal Reserve's interest rate hikes, while fighting inflation, could slow the economy more than needed. With the Fed meeting Wednesday and Thursday — and widely expected to...

Based on the facts as I see them, the American people are about to get arguably the rudest awakening in the last one hundred years. The middle class will vanish, our social programs will fall into insolvency, and a select few people will make a hell of a lot of money at the expense of the rest of us. Imagine the arrogance necessary for one to believe he’s justified in wrecking three vibrant cultures – the US, Canada and Mexico – just to make his financial bottom line more attractive. Hitler, as twisted and evil as he was, sincerely believed...

San Diego County housing prices took their biggest-ever spring stumble last month as the median sales price fell to $490,000, down $15,000 from the previous month. JIM BAIRD / Union-Tribune Michael and Sarab Lopes saw increased interest from prospective buyers after cutting the asking price on their condo. The median price was just $2,000 higher than it had been a year earlier and was down 5 percent from the record level of $518,000 it reached in November, according to DataQuick Information Systems. Meanwhile, other indicators also pointed to a market that has weakened considerably after the region's lengthy real estate...

Contrary to popular belief, the housing market hasn't cooled off that much. In fact, residential real estate prices continue to soar in a number of key metropolitan areas, according to a new study released this week. That's a good thing, right? Actually, no–because the froth building in housing prices raises the distinct possibility of significant corrections to come in many of those regions. In the first quarter, home prices nationwide rose an additional 7.3 percent, according to a joint study by the financial services firm National City Corp. and the research firm Global Insight. As a result, there are now...

Herb Weisbaum -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- • Profile • E-mail There’s no denying it any longer. In most parts of the country, the sizzling house market has cooled. The latest numbers tell the story: Sales of existing homes are expected to drop 6.8 percent this year. The people who make their living selling homes prefer to put a more positive spin on these numbers. They say the marketplace is just going back to normal. “It’s not normal to have 15 offers on a property,” says Jim Warkentin, a Realtor in McLean, Va. “That’s just crazy.” For the most part, those crazy days are...

Twin Cities home sales for May were down from a year ago, as the housing inventory continued its record growth, the local Realtors associations reported Monday. There were 5,039 closed home sales in May in the 13-county metro area. That is down 9.3 percent from a year ago, but up 28.6 percent from April. The median sales price rose 1.1 percent to $230,000 in May, compared to $227,501 a year earlier. There were 5,749 pending sales in May, down 14.5 percent from 6,726 a year ago. New listings continued to soar in May, jumping 16.6 percent to 11,419. Following several...

Stock News: Homebuilders/Construction Builder Pain Spreads to WCI By Nicholas Yulico TheStreet.com Staff Reporter 6/12/2006 10:40 AM EDT Click here for more stories by Nicholas Yulico 1. Know Speculation From Investing 2. The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week 3. Rotate Out of Tech and Get Defensive 4. Crude Oil Moves Higher 5. TechWeek: Microsoft Gets Smart Homebuilder WCI Communities (WCI:NYSE - commentary - research - Cramer's Take) said second-quarter earnings would likely disappoint because of dismal orders at many of its high-rise condo and single-family housing communities in Florida. The Bonita Springs, Fla.-based company said new orders...

The housing spin There's nothing funnier or more satisfying (for me, at least) than watching the National Association of Realtors (NAR) change its tune these days. The latest news release from this sunny-Jim industry group finally fesses up to its past fiction, but even when it admits the bubble's going to pop, it can't muster the courage to just come out and say it. Nope, according to the news template the NAR released to the press on June 6, "The housing boom has ended, but sales at historically healthy levels will continue." Wow, sounds great! What about all those poor...

They are the new breed of mortgages, and home buyers in high-cost real estate markets can't get enough of them: interest-only and payment-option plans that cut monthly payments sharply in the early years of a loan. Lenders have marketed both types of mortgages aggressively -- often to people who need to stretch their incomes to afford homes -- but have said often that their borrowers have solid credit histories and excellent credit scores and that they fully understand the risks once payments reset in a few years. In some parts of the country, the share of buyers using interest-only and...