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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...

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 - Young workers in the United States are twice as likely as older colleagues to steal office supplies for home use without thinking it is wrong, a new study says. And all those missing paper clips and pens add up to more than $50 billion a year. One in five workers age 18 to 24 did not feel it was wrong to take home office supplies, said the Spherion Workplace Snapshot, an online survey. Story continues below « -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- advertisement -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Among those young workers, one in four said they had taken supplies home in the past year,...

WASHINGTON - Average interest rates on U.S. 30- and 15-year fixed rate mortgages reached four-year highs in the latest week, while rates on one-year adjustable rate mortgages rose to a level not seen since 2001, mortgage finance company Freddie Mac said on Thursday. Rates on U.S. 30-year mortgages were at 6.71 percent, compared to 6.63 percent the previous week, a rate not seen since June 2002. Fifteen-year mortgages rose to an average of 6.36 percent from 6.25 percent. They were last higher in May 2002, at 6.37 percent. One-year adjustable rate mortgages also climbed to 5.75 percent from 5.66 percent,...

CINCINNATI, Ohio (Reuters) - When Keith Gersin saw the perfect four-bedroom house in southern Ohio four years ago, he jumped to buy it before anyone else could snap it up. When he finally sold it last month, it went for $30,000 less than he had hoped -- and that after seven months on the market. In retrospect, the 41-year-old physician admits he overestimated the U.S. housing market, which has begun cooling after five years of record-breaking sales and double-digit price appreciation. "I was naive," said Gersin, who sold his Cincinnati-area home in May to move to North Carolina with his...

One of the nation's most prominent hedge funds, Pequot Capital Management, is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for possible insider trading, according to government officials briefed on the case.

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...

It's not stagflation, but what is it? Rising inflation, rising unemployment and slowing growth in the 1970s created stagflation, a phenomenon that led to double-digit interest rates in the early 1980s as the U.S. Federal Reserve tried to fix the damage made by loose monetary policies in the previous decade. Then as now, there was unrest in the Middle East and an oil shock that drove energy prices sharply higher. There were also steep U.S. budget deficits. The dollar was falling and commodity prices were rising. But economists say it is unlikely that the economy will slump into the painful...

Foreclosures rising with debt, job losses Adjustable rate mortgages surprise some homeowners By BECKY YERAK Chicago Tribune CHICAGO - Foreclosures on home mortgages are on the way up. Nationally, foreclosures are up 38 percent, higher than in any quarter of last year, property tracker RealtyTrac said. The numbers are even grimmer in the Midwest. Michigan and Ohio, battered by automotive-related job losses, together recorded 45,000 mortgages entering some stage of foreclosure in the first quarter. Those are increases of 91 percent and 39 percent, respectively, compared with last year's fourth quarter. There are many reasons for the growing number of...

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...

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...

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...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - The number of people applying for home loans fell last week, an industry group said Wednesday. The Mortgage Bankers Association said its seasonally adjusted index of mortgage application activity for the week ended June 2 fell 1.4 percent to 534.4 from the previous week's 541.9. Borrowing costs on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages, excluding fees, averaged 6.60 percent, down 0.06 of a percentage point from the previous week. The MBA's seasonally adjusted purchase mortgage index rose slightly to 395.6 from the previous week's 395.5. The index is considered a reliable gauge of U.S. home sales. The trade group's...

Realtors call for Fed to stop raising rates as market grows ‘vulnerable’ The National Association of Realtors cut its 2006 forecasts for both existing-home and new-home sales. The housing industry's biggest trade group Tuesday lowered its forecast for U.S. home sales this year and called on the Federal Reserve to stop raising interest rates because parts of the housing market are “vulnerable.” “Experiencing a slowing from a hot market is a good thing because we need a solid housing sector to provide an underlying base to the economy, and slower appreciation will help to preserve long-term affordability,” said David Lereah,...

“It feels like a solution in search of a problem,” says Pete Bonnikson, vice president of mortgage operations for E-LOAN, describing the latest product to hit the home mortgage market: The 50-year mortgage. Reportedly the problem this hyperextended loan addresses is affordability for homebuyers in high-cost areas. By stretching the repayment calculation over 50 years, so the argument goes, monthly payments fall by enough that borrowers unable to qualify for any of the other dozens of mortgage options can get a loan. For certified financial planners like Nancy Flint-Budde in Salem, N.Y., it is a tossup as to whether helping...

The second quarter is proving to be troublesome for homebuilders. They have been cutting their full-year earnings projections in droves as orders look weak and cancellation rates rise. The latest salvo came Monday after Standard Pacific (SPF:NYSE - news - research - Cramer's Take) and Technical Olympic (TOA:NYSE - news - research - Cramer's Take) announced weak order numbers, sending builder shares lower across the board. The selloff suggests that investors are having trouble seeing a bottom for the group and would rather not buy into a sector that may represent a value trap. "If it is not already painfully...