As Detroit home prices crash, sales are heating up. But with all of the plant closings and layoffs, who’s buying? Investors — some of whom are snapping up several at a time.
Recently a Californian purchased 178 properties, mostly one at a time, and most for under $10,000.
Source: CNN real estate news

Monthly condominium sales and median prices declined by double-digit percentages compared to a year ago. Condo sales plummeted 22 percent to 1,567 from 2,010 in May 2008. May was the seventh consecutive month that monthly condominium sales were down by more than 20 percent year-over-year. A total of 5,545 condos traded in the first five [...]

Single-family home sales and median home prices in Massachusetts continued to drop in May, according to a new report by The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman. But the rate of decline in monthly median home prices moderated.
There were 3,256 single-family home sales in May, down 13.1 percent from 3,749 a year earlier. Single-family [...]

Shouldn’t home insurance be getting cheaper by now?
If home values have fallen so much shouldn’t the price of home insurance fall as well?
Most people wold think so. But it’s not that simple. Here’s an explainer from InsWeb
P.S. This is probably not what you were hoping to hear.

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Hey John,
I remember reading your post the other week about the study that found that Craigslist will bring in a projected $100 million in revenue this year. I wanted to test the effectiveness of its free classifieds system, and so created a series of fake ads in multiple cities and tallied the amount and quality [...]

Three more banks failed last week, making 40 for the year.
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Massachusetts: Home sales and home prices climbed here in the Northeast. Detached single-family home sales were up 9.6% in April over March, with median home prices up nearly 8%, according to data from the Massachusetts Association of Realtors.
Now that ever thing is back to normal, would you like to buy a Boston Condo?

From The Wall Street Journal
Two Democratic lawmakers are calling on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to relax recently tightened standards for mortgages on new condominiums, saying they could threaten the viability of some developments and slow the housing-market recovery.
In March, Fannie Mae said it would no longer guarantee mortgages on condos in buildings where fewer [...]