Calif. median home price – February 08: $409,240   Calif. highest median home price by C.A.R. region February 08: Santa Barbara So. Coast $1,295,000   Calif. lowest median home price by C.A.R. region February 08: High Desert $220,380   Calif. First-time Buyer Affordability Index – Third Quarter 07: 33 percent   Mortgage rates – week [...]

The U.S. leading index rose 1 percent in March following five straight months of declines, due largely to the ongoing credit crisis and a slumping housing market, according to the latest data released by the Conference Board Tuesday. Vendor performance and favorable interest rates were positive forces on the index in March, offsetting the negative [...]

U.S. home prices rose by roughly 0.6 percent between January and February according to the latest monthly House Price Index from the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO). Since its peak in April 2007, the index is down 3.1 percent. The OFHEO monthly index, introduced in 2007, is calculated on purchase prices of homes [...]

Calif. median home price – February 08: $409,240   Calif. highest median home price by C.A.R. region February 08: Santa Barbara So. Coast $1,295,000   Calif. lowest median home price by C.A.R. region February 08: High Desert $220,380   Calif. First-time Buyer Affordability Index – Third Quarter 07: 33 percent   Mortgage rates – week [...]

Idling computers left on 24/7 gobble up electricity: the equivalent of a barrel of oil every 90 days. Fifteen perpetually idling computers in your brokerage are equivalent to the gas consumption of one car. That’s why UniblueTM Research Labs released LocalCoolingTM, a free power management tool that automatically optimizes your PC’s power consumption via a [...]

Pending sales of existing homes in February declined 1.9 percent to 84.6 from an upwardly revised reading of 86.2 in January, a 21.4 percent drop from the February 2007 index of 107.6, according to NAR’s recent Pending Home Sales Index. “The slip in pending home sales implies we’re not out of the woods yet, though [...]

The Bush Administration announced it is expanding federal mortgage assistance for subprime borrowers who are at risk of losing their homes, giving the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Federal Housing Administration (FHA) increased flexibility to insure more mortgages. Under HUD’s FHASecure expansion plan, some 500,000 families are expected to be able to refinance [...]

Al Gore’s documentary film “An Inconvenient Truth” raised awareness of the correlation between global warming and carbon dioxide gas, the main culprit of global warming. The film pointed out that global warming can be halted or reversed by reducing the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, that is, by reducing our collective and [...]

Online job vacancies took a slight dip in March to 3,733,200, marking a 0.6 percent decline from March 2007 levels, according to the latest data from The Conference Board. In March, there were 2.4 advertised vacancies posted online for every 100 individuals in the labor force, down from a high of 2.9 in April 2007. [...]

Total construction spending declined 0.3 percent to $1,121.6 billion in February, below the revised January estimate of $1,124.8 billion, the U.S. Dept. of Commerce Department reported Tuesday. Residential construction fell by 0.9 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $456.9 billion in February, below the revised January estimate of $461.1 billion.