Boom | Bust

That landmark $25 billion civil settlement against five mortgage servicers charged with institutionalized foreclosure abuse? It also comes with a hefty $766.5 million fine. What's more, the fines won't

Federal and state agencies today announced a landmark $25 billion civil settlement against mortgage lenders after a year-long investigation into an institutionalized culture of foreclosure abuse. The settlement, over

JANICE ROMBECK - A seriously ill South San Jose woman who recently was evicted from her home of 41 years by Wells Fargo Bank is receiving support from

The new Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) spreads a wider net for struggling homeowners previously unable to take advantage of the federal program. With refinancing rates at record lows,

President Barack Obama heavily laced his 2012 State of the Union Address with comments about solutions for the nation's economic malaise, but he gave housing the short shrift. Housing

The five largest U.S. mortgage lenders have offered a $25 billion settlement proposal that could make it easier for some struggling homeowners to avoid foreclosure and have their

CENTER FOR RESPONSIBLE LENDING - As federal regulators consider setting down-payment standards on new mortgages, a new study shows such rules could push 60 percent of creditworthy borrowers

JOY BENDER - San Diego short sale real estate agent Joy Bender has launched a campaign to educate high-end homeowners on the alternatives to strategic default. A strategic default

The eighth record-low week of mortgage rates in a year doesn't amount to a hill of beans in the land of high unemployment, tight lending standards and weak

More than two dozen U.S. House of Representatives Democrats from California are asking President Barack Obama to make another end run around stonewalling Republicans, this time for the

Maria Lozano, a Los Banos, CA homeowner, recently struggled to pay her mortgage so she hired who she thought was a real estate broker. The broker charged her

A mashup of several market indices puts the housing recovery start somewhere between 2012 and 2013 thanks, in part, to growing consumer confidence in the economy. • Clear Capital's

Investors get it coming and going. They are speculating sinners after markets crash, but saintly saviors when demand for good times are here again. To wit. The Federal Reserve

• Silicon Valley's Julie Larsen Wyss, a broker associate with Intero Real Estate Services, recently met a couple who wanted to buy one of her listings, but had

While taxpayers were pumping $150 billion into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to rescue them from collapse, Fannie and Freddie executives allegedly lied to investors, the public and

Christmas just wouldn't be the Christmas without the workers you love, but many workers essential to the holiday shopping season can't afford to buy a home where they

"Foreclosures continue to hammer the housing market and subprime mortgages keep wrenching homeownership from millions." That's the same lead published here in 2009. Like it or not, it's still the

President Obama signed legislation to restore the maximum home loan limit of $729,750 for federally insured loans, but only for Federal Housing Administration Loans (FHA) not Fannie Mae

A California homeowner assistance program funded with $2 billion in federal stimulus money is upping the ante to help more struggling homeowners facing foreclosure and unemployment. The four-pronged