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General Electric's (GE - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr - Rating) crippled subprime mortgage business, WMC Mortgage, laid off most of its workers on Monday afternoon, TheStreet.com has learned. All loan processors, underwriters and loan officers have left the business. A customer service operator at the lender said it's still operating with a "skeleton crew." "They're working the pipeline that is here," said the operator. "They are taking originations, but we're down to minimal staff levels as of yesterday afternoon." GE announced that it was exiting the business over the summer, when the U.S. subprime mortgage fiasco caused a meltdown in...

<p>NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The battered markets for real estate and home building still have farther to fall, according to a range of economists who spoke Wednesday at a forecast conference sponsored by the National Association of Home Builders.</p> <p>The economists agreed that the problems with home finance markets will continue to hit housing into next year, and that even when there is a recovery, it will be a slow process that will see weakness continue into 2009.</p>

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...

By Reuters | 21 Oct 2007 | 05:23 PM ET Font size: An unusually high degree of risk taking across asset classes made recent financial market turmoil all but inevitable, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Sunday. "The financial crisis that erupted on August 9 was an accident waiting to happen," Greenspan said in a speech on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings. "Credit spreads across all global asset classes had become suppressed to clearly unsustainable levels." "Something had to give," he said. "If the crisis had not been triggered by a mispricing of...

<p>BOSTON (CNNMoney.com) -- For those in the real estate industry and for those looking to buy or sell a home, it could take until 2009 to catch a break.</p> <p>That's the forecast from Doug Duncan, chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), who will present his outlook to an auditorium full of real estate professionals on Wednesday morning.</p>

<p>NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Builders continued to slam the brakes on new homes in September, as the government's latest reading on the battered market out Wednesday showed housing starts and permits were weaker than expected at levels not seen for more than a decade.</p>

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The decline in 2007 sales of existing homes will be steeper than previously anticipated, a trade group for real estate agents said Tuesday. The eighth straight downwardly revised forecast from the National Association of Realtors calls for U.S. existing home sales to be 10.8 percent lower than last year as housing market struggles persist. In its October report, the association predicts 5.78 million existing homes to be sold in 2007, down from 6.48 million last year. Last month, the association predicted an 8.6 percent drop from a year ago. This year's sales would be the lowest since...

The U.S. subprime housing crisis will not peak until 2009 and total defaults could reach $150 billion, rating agency Standard and Poor's said on Tuesday, but robust emerging markets would help keep global growth strong. AP -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- S&P expected the world economy to grow 3.6% in 2007 and 3.5% in 2008. The U.S. economy would lag at 2% in both years, down from 2.9% in 2006. "World growth remains strong despite the weaknesses seen in the U.S. economy -- especially in emerging markets because of healthy domestic demand conditions and export strength to non-U.S. market," S&P said in a report...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The heat on U.S. mortgage lenders and servicers was turned up a few degrees this week when the country's chief bank regulator publicly proposed that they permanently freeze interest rates on subprime adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) for many homeowners. "Keep it at the starter rate. Convert it into a fixed rate. Make it permanent. And get on with it," Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair said in prepared remarks at an investor's conference. Mortgage Meltdown 2007 Subprime: Big talk, little help Mortgage lenders are having a hard time helping at-risk borrowers. (more) Double-digit home price drops...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- As the list of proposed remedies to the subprime crisis has grown longer, the chorus against helping troubled borrowers has gotten louder. On Wednesday the Democrats called on the White House to increase funding and implement proposals for foreclosure prevention. Mortgage Meltdown 2007 Subprime: Big talk, little help Mortgage lenders are having a hard time helping at-risk borrowers. (more) Activists not happy with loan-fix plan Community groups say Bush administration and Congress are giving too little help to troubled borrowers. (more) Double-digit home price drops coming The latest forecasts for top markets. (more) But judging from...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Bear Stearns said Wednesday it is laying off 310 workers and fusing its two mortgage businesses, after turmoil in the home loan industry contributed to a dramatic slide in the investment bank's profit. The Wall Street brokerage said it is integrating its Bear Stearns (Charts, Fortune 500) Residential Mortgage and Encore Credit divisions into a single subsidiary. It follows similar downsizing moves by Lehman Brothers (Charts, Fortune 500) and Morgan Stanley (Charts, Fortune 500). Video More video Equity Strategist Justin Fuller on investor fears over volatile economy. Play video Stung by decaying credit quality, investors soured...

<p>NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The meltdown in the mortgage market in August dried up the supply of buyers for homeowners looking to sell their homes, as an industry group report showed the lowest level of homes under contract on record.</p>

Fifty-three condominiums -- most of them in the 3900 block of Ohio Street in North Park-- will be on the block. The units are not foreclosures; they are brand-new units. They are being offered by REDC. The units were built by developer D.R. Horton. According to the company's Web site, the condos are anywhere from one-bedroom, one-bath, 694-square-foot units to two-bedroom, two-bath, 1,148-square-foot units. The homes have previously been valued at $309,990 will have starting bids of $149,000. Bidding for units previously valued at $546,900 will start at $249,000.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- U.S. stock futures fell Tuesday as signs that consumers may be cutting back fanned recession worries. Two major retailers warned late Monday about a slowdown in sales. Target cut its forecast for September same-store sales growth, saying that weak traffic will hurt sales, particularly in Florida and the Northeast, two areas that have been hit by the slowdown in housing. Video More video Money Magazine's Walter Updegrave gives advice on the steps you should take right now, to ensure a secure retirement down the road. Play video -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jeremy Batstone of Charles Stanley on why the...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The bullhorn message from the government to mortgage lenders has been: Bend. Do what you can to help struggling homeowners. The message to troubled homeowners has been: Call your lender. You may be able to work something out. Despite the persistent blare, there is not a whole lotta "loan modifying" going on yet. A survey by Moody's found that most loan servicers this year had modified only about 1 percent of their adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) that had reset to higher rates by the end of July. At the Consumer Credit Counseling Service (CCCS) of San Francisco,...

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...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Demand for big-ticket manufactured goods plunged in August by the largest amount in seven months, with widespread weakness signaling a slowdown in the nation's industrial sector. The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that orders for durable goods, everything from commercial jetliners to home appliances, fell by 4.9 percent in August, the biggest decline since a 6.1 percent fall in January. It was far larger than the 3.5 percent drop that economists had been expecting and resulted from across-the-board decreases in a number of categories. The concern is that the steep downturn in housing and turbulence in financial markets...

<p>SAN JOSE, California: The Torralba family's taste of the American dream began to sour in May 2006, two months after the Torralbas had bought a modest home at the southern end of Silicon Valley, when they received notice from a man who claimed that they owed him money.</p>

NEW YORK (AP) -- Worries about jobs and the economy flared in September, driving a key barometer of consumer sentiment to its lowest level in nearly two years, a private research group said Tuesday. The New York-based Conference Board said its Consumer Confidence Index fell to 99.8, an almost 6-point drop from the revised 105.6 in August. The reading was below the 104.5 that analysts had expected and marked its lowest level since November 2005 when the index was 98.3.

<p>The housing downturn, credit crunch, gloomy employment data and a parade of maudlin financial forecasts have been enough to send some investors scrambling for bubble gum and beer.</p> <p>While economists jawbone about whether the U.S. will sink into recession, investors already are thinking of ways to prepare their stock portfolios for a downturn.</p>