Free Republic

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Existing home sales sank 8 percent last month, to the lowest pace on record, according to the latest reading on the state of the battered real estate market released Wednesday. Sales of existing homes slowed to an annual pace of 5.04 million in September, compared with a revised 5.48 million sales pace in August, according to the National Association of Realtors. Last month's decline marks the largest since the current measure of existing home sales - which includes multiple-family dwellings - began in 1999. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast that sales would slow to a...

Late payments on U.S. home equity lines of credit rose to a 5-1/2 year high in the second quarter of 2007 but delinquencies on many other types of consumer loans fell, the American Bankers Association said Wednesday. In its quarterly report on consumer borrowing, the bankers group said delinquencies in repaying home equity lines of credit rose to 0.77 percent in the April-June period. That compared to a rate of 0.60 percent in the first quarter and represented the highest rate since the fourth quarter of 2001 when the rate was 0.81 percent. However, the rate of closed-end home equity...