Over at “The Big Picture,” money manager and financial writer Barry Ritholtz is known for being a pretty blunt guy. But today he brought to light an article that pretty much destroys what little respect I had left for the National Association of Realtors. Read the full article

The Massachusetts Association of Realtors (MAR) reports that the number of single-family homes and condominiums placed under agreement in July 2010 was well below last year's level. Read the full article

This past May, sales of new homes plunged to the lowest levels seen since such data began to be recorded in 1963. June and July sales have been tepid. Are home sales likely to remain in a funk for a few years? Some demographers think it’s likely. Read the full article

Late last year, Congress extended an $8,000 tax credit for new homebuyers and created a $6,500 credit for some existing homeowners who sell their old homes and buy new ones. These credits were originally available for houses purchased under contracts signed by April 30, 2010 and closed by June 30, but new legislation may give a break to those who can’t meet the June 30 deadline. Read the full article

This past summer I wrote about the novel Macroshares trusts released this year that enable investors to speculate on the direction of housing prices. Earlier this week, MacroMarkets announced that instead of terminating in 2014, the trusts will terminate next week. Read the full article

As the end of the year approaches, it’s always a good idea to take see if there are any last-minute moves that make sense for you. Here are four opportunities for tax savings: Read the full article

Yesterday the New England Economic Partnership (NEEP) held its Fall Economic Conference at the Boston Federal Reserve. Regional economists reported that they expect unemployment in New England to peak next year, despite improvements in the national economic outlook. Read the full article

Congress just couldn’t resist the urge to give more money away. Read the full article

Today I found a nice article at Smartmoney.com that summarizes several indicators that can help you make an educated guess as to whether housing prices in an area are likely to go up. Read the full article

As the November 30th deadline for the $8,000 first-time homebuyers credit approaches, members of both the House and the Senate are floating ideas for ways to extend the credit. Read the full article

Yesterday’s second hour of the radio program “On Point” featured the author of “Buy Ketchup in May and Fly at Noon: A Guide to the Best Time to Buy This, Do That, and Go There.” Read the full article

At this time of year it’s a good idea to look for last-minute opportunities to minimize your taxes. Most opportunities require some action before the end of the calendar year; here are several ideas to consider. Read the full article

Home mortgage interest has been a tax-deductible expense on Federal tax returns since 1913. But in a report issued recently, the General Accounting Office (GAO) has recommended that the IRS do a better job of enforcing the rules that apply to the mortgage interest deduction. Read the full article

I can’t say I’m very surprised by this: the IRS is reporting its first prosecution of a fraud scheme involving the new $8,000 first-time homebuyer credit. Read the full article

Last May I attended a talk by Yale economist Robert Shiller in which he indicated that his company, MacroMarkets, was seeking SEC approval for a derivative product tied to home prices. Finally, this week the new “housing ETFs” are available. What are they about, and who should buy them? Read the full article

With the economy still in the doldrums, doing a home renovation could be an excellent idea. It’s a bit counter-intuitive, but hear me out. Read the full article

Today I received updated figures from First American CoreLogic, which maintains one of the nation’s largest databases on residential property transactions. Their January results confirm a wide disparity in housing price changes across the U.S. over the last year. In general, the news is not good. Read the full article

For buyers in the most expensive housing markets, the rules concerning “conforming” mortgages have been confusing over the last year or so. Conforming mortgages are eligible to be purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government-run companies that together own or guarantee most home mortgages. One benefit of a conforming mortgage is the all-important interest rate: mortgages whose values exceed a specified amount are not conforming and typically carry interest rates that are ¾% or more higher than conforming mortgage rates. Read the full article

The final version of the 1071-page American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 is due to be signed by President Obama tomorrow. My summary of the bill's key tax items two weeks ago was not far off the mark, but there are a number of nips and tucks in the final version. Read the full article

As promised, the House and Senate have been busy working on The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which includes several tax law changes intended to boost the economy. Read the full article

With so much attention being given to the $700 billion bailout of banks and the financial industry in the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, not much has been said about the individual income tax provisions included in the massive 440-page bill passed last month.

If you'd like to avoid searching the full bill for the parts that might be personally relevant, here's a quick summary of some provisions that could be interesting to you even if you're not an enormous bank. Read the full article

Although most of us are still basking in the joys of summer, winter will be here before we know it. The University of Massachusetts Donahue Institute released a report today projecting the impact of increased energy costs on heating bills in Massachusetts over the next couple of years, and the news is pretty bleak. Read the full article

The Senate bill passed today provides aid for homeowners on the brink of foreclosure, relief for beleaguered mortgage finance firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and something else: tax breaks for first-time homebuyers and a deduction for homeowners who normally aren’t able to itemize their deductions. Read the full article

Many homeowners struggling to keep up with mortgage payments are probably using their credit cards to make ends meet. Now, apparently, people who can't pay their mortgages have a new alternative: they can charge their monthly mortgage payments to a credit card directly. I wish I were making this up, but I'm not. Read the full article

Over the last fifty years, suburban neighborhoods outside of cities grew for a variety of reasons: families wanted more space than city homes provided, urban crime rates were higher than now (peaking in the 1960's and 70's), and the idealized vision of suburban life grew in popular imagination to become a mark of prestige. Less consciously, perhaps, suburban living was enabled by cheap gas and good roads; the "driveable suburb" within striking distance of city jobs became the ideal place in which to build a home. In the 1948 film, "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House," Cary Grant played an advertising executive whose family flees its cramped New York apartment for a country home in Connecticut. For Jim Blandings, trains enabled the commute; that wasn't the case for most workers who decamped from the cities. The ability to drive to and from work relatively cheaply made the suburban "dream house" possible. Read the full article

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